Mexican correspondent Jaime Gironés discusses a new book on the ties between the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador, and populist, evangelical Christianity.
Des Hynes
Columna: Dos reseñas sobre Reiki y animales espirituales
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International columnist Alan D.D. reviews two recent books, In Focus Reiki by Des Hynes and The Illustrated Bestiary by Maia Toll.
book review
Review: Heathen Garb and Gear
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Lyonel Perabo reviews the book “Heathen Garb and Gear: Ritual Dress, Tools, and Art for the Practice of Germanic Heathenry” by Ben Waggoner and Kveldulf Gunnarson with Diana Paxson.
Paganism
Column: Musings on Queer Magic
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Storm Faerywolf reviews the book “Queer Magic: LGBT+ Spirituality and Culture from Around the World” by Tomás Prower.
Bell Book and Camera
Book explores witches in film, TV from Oz to Sabrina
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ATLANTA — Almost four decades after the Wicked Witch of the West plagued Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, the green-skinned, bushy-browed one lost her broom on, of all places, Sesame Street. Actress Margaret Hamilton reprised her famous role in an episode of the children’s TV series that aired on Feb. 10, 1976, writes Heather Greene in her new book Bell, Book and Camera: a Critical History of Witches in American Film and Television (McFarland, April 2018, 234 p). “With the exception of Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch, the inhabitants of Sesame Street are visibly frightened of Hamilton’s character,” Greene writes. The Wicked Witch also scared the hades out of young viewers, just as she had done for decades since the release of Oz in 1939.
astrology
Review: Shakespeare’s hidden astrology revealed
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TWH — “Lord, what fools these mortals be!” the mischievous sprite Puck says to Oberon the faerie king in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Shakespeare was no fool when it came to incorporating the magical and astrological worldviews of his time into his immortal works. That’s the premise of the fascinating, exhaustive (but not exhausting) book Shakespeare and the Stars: the Hidden Astrological Keys to Understanding the World’s Greatest Playwright (Ibis Press, 547 p.) by professional astrologer and English literature teacher Priscilla Costello. Costello weaves not just astrology but extensively-researched aspects of the Elizabethan worldview, Renaissance magic, ancient history, mythology, modern psychology, and more into her examination of Shakespeare’s works. While she discusses the bard’s plays as a whole, Costello delves deep into six specific works, including three of his most “magical” plays: The Tempest (with its story of the exiled nobleman Prospero, who takes up the magical arts and frees the air spirit Ariel), Macbeth (with its “double, double, toil and trouble” witches who prophesy Macbeth’s doom), and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (with its tale of a love quadrangle fostered by a quarrel between Oberon and his faerie queen Titania, and heightened by the errant spell-casting antics of Puck).