Dept of Yayfulness: a new book by Ronald Hutton, this time on witches: The Witch: A History of Fear from Ancient Times to the Present.
And, Dept of Cults and the fears generated within enclosed communities: An account of the writer’s own life and her father’s in the Exclusive Brethren, and the chaos and freedom that followed the decision to walk ( Read more... )

There was an essay in the most recent Slightly Foxed on Esin Eden and Nicholas Stavroulakis, Salonika: A Family Cookbook, which mentions that Eden was from a family of 'Salonika's strangest and most secretive sect', pejoratively known as the Donme - followers of the C17th self-proclaimed Messiah Sabbatai Zevi, who converted to Islam in order to ( Read more... )

Okay, there are quite a number of 'cult books' of the 60s and 70s that I have never read, partly because it seemed to me at the time - and largely seems still - that a significant proportion were Bloke Books of the blokiest kind.
Among these books I have never read is numbered 'Luke Rhinehart's The Dice Man.
There is an interview with the actual ( Read more... )

Lately spotted in The Observer:
Shock! Horror!! The National Childbirth Trust is now run by a man!!!
I might be all about the woezery myself, did I not know (I R archivist, I haz knowingz) that the NCT was specifically set up to promulgate the doctrine of Natural Childbirth as detailed in the works of Grantly Dick Read.
Who was, my dearios, A MAN ( Read more... )

Lately saw this somewhere: Christian 'naturism' advocate appointed Bishop of Sherborne.
What this enquiring mind wants to know is, does she cite the tradition of the Ranters? Or Blake playing Adam and Eve in his South London garden?
(I am not sure why the scare quotes round 'naturism' in that headline.) This entry was originally posted at http:// ( Read more... )

Oft, my dearios, have I complained about reviewers greeting something as NEW! REVELATION!! when, really, not so much.
That new book on JtR that was mentioned in this post, is reviewed today in The Guardian Saturday Review: o dear o dear o dear o dear.
A new, deeply researched Ripper theory from the writer of Withnail and I centres on Freemasonry ( Read more... )

On today's 'Long Read' in The Guardian, which is on fruitarians and controversies and feuds within the fruitarian community.
We heaved a sigh, but were not exactly surprised, when this particular manifestation is dated to, ooooh, the 70s.
Except, you know, not: goes back a lot further. {Though this is one of the areas I shall have to investigate ( Read more... )

Apparently the Telegraph thinks the following are 'cult books', which in most cases I feel is a designation that could only have been applied by someone the only books in whose house are probably collected volumes of Reader's Digest Condensed Books that they inherited from their great-aunt and who thinks reading is a sinister cult in itself:( Cut for list )

The byline on this piece (via
( Read more... )

It is more like, hello, locate yourself in the present!

An apercu brought to you by having to deal with an enquiry transmitted by fax (why not carrier-pigeon, we ask?) with only a fax number to respond to.

Readers, you will not believe the amount of time sending a response required, of which sorting out and writing the actual substance of the ( Read more... )