Iron Mountain: a Journal of Magical Religion Vol 01, No
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Valdosta State University Archives and Special Collections Digital Commons @Vtext New Age Movements, Occultism, and Spiritualism Research Library MS/150-1 Spring 1986 Iron Mountain: A Journal of Magical Religion Vol 01, No. 04 For this and additional works see: https://vtext.valdosta.edu/xmlui/handle/10428/2169 UUID: B3A501DD-CCBF-288F-420C-BA7BB39FEF68 Recommended Citation: Clifton, Chas S., and Mary Currier-Clifton, eds. Iron Mountain: A Journal of Magical Religion (Artemisia Press) 1, no.4 (Spring 1986). New Age Movements, Occultism, and Spiritualism Research Library. Archives and Special Collections. Valdosta State University. Valdosta, GA. http://hdl.handle.net/10428/2753. This item is free and open source. It is part of the New Age Movements, Occultism, and Spiritualism Research Library at Odum Library Valdosta State University Archives and Special Collections. If you have any questions or concerns contact [email protected] Spring 1986 Vol. 1, No. 4 $5 Crafts Images of the Old Ones . & the New Ones . functional sculpture: oil lamps, censers, shrines, articles for personal altars, percussion instruments. the unexpected! Send large S.A.S.E. for illustrated brochure Fly by Night 5701 E. Colfax Ave. (at Ivanhoe St.) Denver, CO 80220 321-0867 P.O. box 11337 Eugene, Oregon 97440 Send $3 for complete mail order catalog. Book searches. Table of Contents EDITORS VOLUME 1, NUMBER 4 Chas S. Clifton Mary Currier-Clifton CONTRIBUTING On the Slopes of Iron Mountain...............................................................2 EDITORS John Crank L etters..............................................................................................................3 Although the copyright to Re-vamping the World: On the Return of the Holy Prostitute— contributions may remain Deena M etzger.........................................................................................5 with the author, it is Magical Religion Pervades Brazil— understood that in return Carol D o w ............................................................................................ 17 for publication, Iron Mountain has the Book Reviews................................................................................................. 29 nonexclusive right to publish the contribution Index to Volume 1 .........................................................................................39 and the continuing right, without limit, to include the contribution as part of any reprinting of the issue and/or volume in which the contribution first appeared, by any means and in any format. Iron Mountain does not guarantee to review unsolicited books. Entire contents Copyright (c) 1986 by Artemisia Press Published by Artemisia Subscriptions to Iron Mountain are $9 for one year (two Press, P.O. Box 227, issues); $16 for two years. Advertising information and Florence, Colorado 80306. rates furnished on request. ISSN 8756-3142. Iron Mountain welcomes scholarly, informed journalistic or literary work relating to magical religious traditions and practices worldwide. Potential contributors should send a long, stamped, self-addressed envelope for the Iron Mountain writer’s guide before submitting material. SPRING 1986 On the Slopes of Iron Mountain Iron Mountain is a journal on the move. This time, we’re returning to southern Colorado, to the upper Arkansas River bioregion, if you’d like to think of it that way. Our new address will be P.O. Box 227, Florence, Colorado 81226. We apologize for any inconvenience this might cause. This issue has been slightly delayed because of preparations for the move and because of some mechanical problems in production. But the real reason for delays in Iron Mountain is not machinery glitches or a lack of money—sometimes it’s a lack of time—but rather our refusal to print material that doesn’t meet our standards of what will be interesting to our readers. “ Re-Vamping the World,” the piece by the feminist writer and critic Deena Metzger in this issue, has already been reprinted once, a shorter version having appeared in the August-September 1985 issue of Utne Reader, a bi-monthly anthology of “ the best of the alternative press” (P.O. Box 1974, Marion, Ohio 43305 $18/1 year/6 issues. Canada $23; other foreign $28 ). We are told a version also appeared in Burning Times. Nevertheless, this article has probably had its greatest circulation in photocopy form, and so we’re happy to give it another exposure on the printed page. Carol Dow, our other major contributor this issue, is one of a group of American scholars taking a closer look at Umbanda, the Brazilian magical religion whose influence pervades that society, even when it is ignored officially. Given that most Iron Mountain readers probably aren’t familiar with the basic history and terminology of Brazilian religious movements, her article can only touch the surface, but this is a topic to which we hope someday to return. The woodcuts scattered through this issue were done by Kenneth J. Carpenter, and are reproduced from Straight With the Medicine, reviewed in this issue. Lastly, for the benefit of new readers and bibliographers, we introduce in this issue what we hope will become an on-going cumulative index of articles, poems, reviews and other material that has appeared in previous issues. Since early issues are no longer available, we are offering photocopied reprints of individual articles, with the fees for reprints given in the index. The Editors 2 IRON MOUNTAIN Letters To the Editors: witch and we had a very interesting I am sorry, though not really surprised, to discussion. It turned out that he had been see that your contributor Aidan Kelly has influenced by the sensational rubbish that brought the controversy over the origins of was being printed in the popular press at that “Gardnerian” Witchcraft down to the level time, and really knew very little about the of personal abuse. In my reply to his Old Religion and its followers. I ended up contribution, “Inventing Witchcraft,” I did having tea with Mr. Roberts and his wife in not abuse him. I simply told him that he was the House of Commons tea room, and I am wrong. The venomous response which this glad to say that he did not pursue his has called forth from him certainly has proposed legislation any further. established one thing: he can no longer I remember giving an interview on our represent himself as being an impartial national radio at the time, telling people that scholar. His emotional involvement in the I was a witch and why I was going to the matter is self-evident. Why, he alone knows. House of Commons. I stuck my neck out to Of course', it is much easier to attack do this precisely because I was one of the few people’s character than to admit that your people at that time who could come out of pet theory has just collapsed like a house of the closet. Others had jobs to hold down cards. But Mr. Kelly has, as usual, got his and children whose custody they might have facts wrong. From from having hidden in been deprived of, in the atmosphere of the closet for 25 years, I was giving public anti-witch hysteria that the gutter press was lectures and making television appearances trying to generate. as a witch before Mr. Kelly every founded My book An A.B.C. of Witchcraft Past & his NROOGD, which I am told took place in Present was first published in 1973. In it I 1967. Everyone in Britain who knows we at started quite clearly that I was a witch and all well knows this, and they also know that I that I used to work with Gerald Gardner. was initiated by Gerald Gardner and made Mr. Kelly’s allegation that I kept my some contribution to the present-day “ Gardnerian” initiation a secret for 25 years “ Gardnerian” rituals. So Mr. Kelly’s and that I have only now “come so far out attempt at character assassination will make of the closet” because of his activities is little impression over here. therefore demonstrably false from evidence It was back in 1964 that I addressed the in print. As it is upon the basis of this famous Pentagram dinner at a London allegation that he has chosen to impugn both hotel. My speech was printed in Pentagram my sincerity as a person and my good faith magazine and called forth the rather snide as a writer, I must ask him for an apology comment from one who claimed to be a and a retraction. If he refuses, then he will traditional witch that it was “ full of be doing a great deal more harm to his own Gardnerian sweetness and light.” The word credibility than he will to mine. “ Gardnerian” was just beginning to come But even if Mr. Kelly had been right into use in those days. about this, how would that exonerate his In 1970 I went to the House of Commons conduct in circulating his allegations behind to lobby a Member of Parliament, Mr. my back? I note with amusement how Gwilyn Roberts, who was trying to introduce speedily he leapt in to claim his right of new legislation to get witchcraft banned in reply. Did it really never occur to him that I Britain. I introduced myself to him as a had the same right? Or does he think, like SPRING 1986 3 the authors of the Malleus Maleficarum, the expediency of the moment. that witches are not entitled to the same I have told the truth about what I know of standard of fair play as anyone else? And these matters. I shall continue to do so. And how touchy he is about Meredydd if Mr. Kelly cannot accept my word because Barrowman-Harper’s remarks! Doesn’t it it conflicts with his pet theory, well, tough occur to him either that if he insists on luck. I am more interested at the moment in impugning everyone else’s motives and writing my autobiography than in arguing sincerity, then his own may legitimately be with him.