HELL FIRE AND DAMNATION

Geoffrey Ashe. The Secret History of Hell-Fire Clubs from Rabelais and John Dee to Anton LaVey and Timothy Leary. Bear & Company. 4th ed. 2019.

Geoffrey Ashe is not a name you would associate with Hell-Fire Clubs. He is a venerable British historian known for his expert research on the subject of King Arthur. At the time of writing this review, in May 2020, I found that he is still thriving at the age of 97 and living in Glastonbury, where he is an Honorary Freeman 'in recognition of his eminent services to the place as an author and cultural historian'.

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ABSOLUTELY QUACKERS

S. D. Tucker. Quacks! Dodgy Doctors and Foolish Fads Throughout History. Amberley, 2018.

‘Purity’ has been the theme of a few books I have reviewed lately, basing my views on Peter Rogerson’s comments in his last ever Magonia piece: “… surely all the worst crimes are committed in the name of purity and pure lands: pure religion, pure nation, pure race, new model pure people, a pure world cleared of ‘human pollutant’, pure souls freed from organic bodies, pure lands that no actual-existing human being is ever pure enough to inhabit.”

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CULT HELL: THE SURVIVORS’ STORIES

Janja Lalich and Karla McLaren, Escaping Utopia: Growing Up in a Cult, Getting Out, and Starting Over. Routledge, 2018.

If ever there was clinching evidence that devoting oneself to a modern cult is essentially enslavement, this book is it. To befuddled, scarily bright-eyed converts, it might be willing enslavement – at least in the heady honeymoon period - but spare a thought for their children, growing up in a dystopia weirder than any sci-fi nightmare and as cruel as pretty much any brutal regime has ever inflicted on the young and vulnerable.

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HOLY DEATH

Tracey Rollin. Santa Muerte. The History, Rituals and Magic of Our Lady of Holy Death. Weiser Books,  2017.

How-to-do-it books on magic, almost unobtainable a generation ago, are a growth industry. Those in English, at least, are rooted in the practices of the Golden Dawn and Wicca, even when some quite different slant is ostensibly given to them, such as ‘Practical Egyptian Magic’.

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MAPPING UTOPIA

Michael D Gordin, Helen Tilley and Gyan Prakash (editors). Utopia/Dystopia: Conditions of Historical Possibility. Princeton University Press, 2010.

Utopia, the good place which is no place at all, and dystopia, the utopia gone wrong, still haunt our imagination, despite their official exorcism from modern culture. These essays cover a range of utopian imaginings, often in the form of petty utopias, ranging from urban design to preserving archives.

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