Far from the Mainstream

This is the first place that has been entirely mine, where every piece of art or display has been chosen because it represents something important to me, something that makes me happy. Trying to see it with another set of eyes feels distancing, like a particularly unpleasant magic trick. I suppose that’s fitting.

Pagan Community Notes: Week of October 24, 2022

In this week’s Pagan Community Notes: Parliament of the World’s Religion’s Declaration for the Dignity and Human Rights of Women is re-circulating; due to overwhelming crowd sizes, Salem, MA is asking visitors to leave their cars at home and arrive by train, ferry, or broom; Mountain Rose Herbs announces winners for “Grants 4 Plants” program; burial site of a priestess of Aphrodite found in Russia; and more news

Column: To Make the Voice of the Criminal Audible

Jean Genet’s text “The Criminal Child,” previously unavailable in English, was translated and published in December 2015. An anonymous commentary on the text, included as an afterword within the same pamphlet, reads “The Criminal Child” as an intricately coded set of instructions for magical initiation and ordeal. “The Criminal Child” was originally written in 1948 as a speech to be read on a radio show in order to address reforms to France’s youth prisons that had been proposed at the time. It was rejected and never read on the air. When Genet published the censored text the following year, he wrote in his introduction, “I would have liked to make the voice of the criminal audible.