Pagan librarians rescue books, preserve history

TWH – Michael Smith, acting director of the New Alexandrian Library, became spellbound as he was packing up books and materials recently donated by the Theosophical Society of Washington, D.C., including four decades of bound volumes of Theosophist magazines dating to 1901. One of Smith’s husbands, Jim Dickinson, became perturbed. “When we were boxing up the Theosophical Society library, my husband Jim yelled at me – a lot,” Smith said, chuckling at the memory. “He kept saying, ‘Put the book in the box so we can move it.’ It was such an incredible collection of all sorts of esoteric topics that I had never seen before.”

Thanks to two Pagan-centric institutions — the New Alexandrian Library, located near Georgetown, Del., and the Adocentyn Research Library, a similar enterprise located in San Francisco’s East Bay — Pagans and the general public alike now have access to thousands of Pagan, metaphysical, and esoteric books and periodicals, including rare and out-of-print works. Both libraries continue to accept donations of Pagan and Pagan-related books.

Mystical Mashup: Sacred Space Joins Forces with Between the Worlds

HUNT VALLEY, MARYLAND –When at any single Pagan conference with a robust lineup of workshops, panels, and rituals, a participant might find it difficult to choose what to attend and what to pass on. When two conferences join forces, those decisions become, at very least, four times as difficult to make. Such was the experience for 3-400 people who attended the combined Sacred Space and Between the Worlds conference in Maryland this past weekend. These two events became one this year through a combination of cooperation and astrology. Sacred Space is an annual conference which is held around this time.