So, Fields Book Store, My Old Nemesis, We Meet Again
Fields Book Store on Polk Street in San Francisco, pound for pound the best occult bookstore in the English-speaking world, delivered unto me its ritual thrashing today. (Yes, I know I'm on Austerity. But mollpeartree said I could buy one book there as a Valentine's Day gift to myself, and if you take that book out of the equation, I've barely spent nine dollars a month there. I just spent it all at once.)
As they did last year, Fields toyed with me at first, allowing me to find a remaindered biography of Algernon Blackwood for about a quarter its normal price, a used copy of Magika Hiera, a remarkably underpriced (for a British paperback) and relatively fact-rich (for a book called The Lost Zodiac of the Druids) volume claiming that the Gundestrup Cauldron represents the Celtic zodiac, and an overstock Cult of the Cat in the delightful Thames and Hudson series of illustrated esoterica for five bucks. I even got a little of my own back in the "Occult Nazis" section: Fields was reduced to selling me two pamphlets instead of whole new volumes, and I knew about one of them already (Hans Thomas Hakl's killjoy literature-review Unknown Sources). Boo-yah!
But then, like unto the proverbial mule-renter, Fields brought the beatdown. First, a quick left hook to the head, in the form of Wolfgang Behringer's Witches and Witch-Hunts: A Global History, the first book I know of to address the European Witch-Craze explicitly in the context of the various witch-crazes throughout Africa and Asia in the last two centuries. A jab to the body rocked me back: Robert Temple's latest crazy ancient-science book The Crystal Sun, this one 640 pages on ancient lenses and optics, with an appendix on the Crystal Skull of Doom. (I don't yet know whether he's going to steal Dame Flavia Anderson's barking theory that the Holy Grail was a crystal ball magnifying glass. Temple may feel the Grail is too declasse for his refined classicism, of course.) And last, the uppercut right to the jaw, Joy Hancox' The Byrom Collection, prequel to Kingdom For A Stage: Magicians & Aristocrats in the Elizabethan Theatre, which I bought at psychic gunpoint last time around.
To soften the sting, all three of the above were at least paperbacks, albeit British paperbacks. To further soften the sting, the nice lady who collected the money from my spent and bleeding carcase recognized me from last year, and even quoted the relevant LJ entry. So, if you're reading this one: Ave, worthy anima! Next year, give me a discount on something. Or stock my books, even. Cut a palooka a break, hmmm?
As they did last year, Fields toyed with me at first, allowing me to find a remaindered biography of Algernon Blackwood for about a quarter its normal price, a used copy of Magika Hiera, a remarkably underpriced (for a British paperback) and relatively fact-rich (for a book called The Lost Zodiac of the Druids) volume claiming that the Gundestrup Cauldron represents the Celtic zodiac, and an overstock Cult of the Cat in the delightful Thames and Hudson series of illustrated esoterica for five bucks. I even got a little of my own back in the "Occult Nazis" section: Fields was reduced to selling me two pamphlets instead of whole new volumes, and I knew about one of them already (Hans Thomas Hakl's killjoy literature-review Unknown Sources). Boo-yah!
But then, like unto the proverbial mule-renter, Fields brought the beatdown. First, a quick left hook to the head, in the form of Wolfgang Behringer's Witches and Witch-Hunts: A Global History, the first book I know of to address the European Witch-Craze explicitly in the context of the various witch-crazes throughout Africa and Asia in the last two centuries. A jab to the body rocked me back: Robert Temple's latest crazy ancient-science book The Crystal Sun, this one 640 pages on ancient lenses and optics, with an appendix on the Crystal Skull of Doom. (I don't yet know whether he's going to steal Dame Flavia Anderson's barking theory that the Holy Grail was a crystal ball magnifying glass. Temple may feel the Grail is too declasse for his refined classicism, of course.) And last, the uppercut right to the jaw, Joy Hancox' The Byrom Collection, prequel to Kingdom For A Stage: Magicians & Aristocrats in the Elizabethan Theatre, which I bought at psychic gunpoint last time around.
To soften the sting, all three of the above were at least paperbacks, albeit British paperbacks. To further soften the sting, the nice lady who collected the money from my spent and bleeding carcase recognized me from last year, and even quoted the relevant LJ entry. So, if you're reading this one: Ave, worthy anima! Next year, give me a discount on something. Or stock my books, even. Cut a palooka a break, hmmm?