Witches of America
Alex Mar
Oct 2015 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Amanda Dolan
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12 hr 4 min
Unabridged
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About this audiobook
When most people hear the word witches, they think of horror films and Halloween, but to the nearly one million Americans who practice Paganism today, it's a nature-worshipping, polytheistic, and very real religion. So Alex Mar discovers when she sets out to film a documentary and finds herself drawn deep into the world of present-day witchcraft.
Witches of America follows Mar on her immersive five-year trip into the occult, charting modern Paganism from its roots in 1950s England to its current American mecca in the San Francisco Bay Area. Along the way she takes part in dozens of rituals and becomes involved with a wild array of characters: a government employee who founds a California priesthood dedicated to a Celtic goddess of war; American disciples of Aleister Crowley, whose elaborate ceremonies turn the Catholic mass on its head; second-wave feminist Wiccans who practice a radical separatist witchcraft; and a growing "mystery cult" whose initiates trace their rites back to a blind shaman in rural Oregon.
Witches of America follows Mar on her immersive five-year trip into the occult, charting modern Paganism from its roots in 1950s England to its current American mecca in the San Francisco Bay Area. Along the way she takes part in dozens of rituals and becomes involved with a wild array of characters: a government employee who founds a California priesthood dedicated to a Celtic goddess of war; American disciples of Aleister Crowley, whose elaborate ceremonies turn the Catholic mass on its head; second-wave feminist Wiccans who practice a radical separatist witchcraft; and a growing "mystery cult" whose initiates trace their rites back to a blind shaman in rural Oregon.
When most people hear the word witches, they think of horror films and Halloween, but to the nearly one million Americans who practice Paganism today, it's a nature-worshipping, polytheistic, and very real religion. So Alex Mar discovers when she sets out to film a documentary and finds herself d...
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About the author
Alex Mar is a writer based in New York City. Her work has appeared in the Believer, the Oxford American, the New York Times Book Review, Elle, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2015. She is the director of the documentary American Mystic. Witches of America is her first book.
Amanda Dolan is a New York City-based actor. She has an MFA from Brown University and tries to put it to good use as often as she can. In addition to acting, Amanda works as a theater educator and a musician.
Alex Mar is a writer based in New York City. Her work has appeared in the Believer, the Oxford American, the New York Times Book Review, Elle, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2015. She is the director of the documentary American Mystic. Witches of America is her first book.
Amanda Dolan...
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