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Magickal Pop Culture



Over at MadGhoul, there’s a short book review of Taylor Ellwood’s Pop Culture Magick. It features a rather different perspective on the work than the review of it I did myself a few weeks ago. Might be worth checking out as counter-point to my take on the work. A sample:

Most of those that get into the occult do so from various other mediums, whether it is comic books, role-playing games, or paranormal television shows. Most also struggle when first entering the occult scene because of the voluminous amounts of texts and practices required to make any real progress. Many give up on the occult not long after due to frustration.

Ellwood’s book presents the occult framed by the modern images of popular culture, including those aforementioned comic books and role-playing games. If ever there was a book that eased the transition from fantasy to reality, this would be it.

This might be a good opportunity to ask how you got interested in the occult? What was the “gateway drug” that got you really hooked on the harder stuff? Was it role-playing games, comics, a particular author, a weird friend with blacklight posters, what? Was it something that could be considered pop culture or something totally outside that framework?







5 Reader Responses

  1. alistair Says:
    July 21st, 2005 at 7:28 pm

    my mum and her friends doing seances in the dining room with a uijia board. seeing the look on one of mum`s friends face when the wine glass hoped off the table into her lap for the third time. left an impression in my six year old mind. much more than the mind-numbing stuff at the church on sunday. i guess i`ve always been a special effects guy.

  2. James Russell Says:
    July 22nd, 2005 at 2:57 am

    I have no idea any more. The most I can say is that one day I found a book about Dr John Dee at my local library. I have no idea why I was in that section, nor why I picked up the book. I probably absorbed a few occult ideas via H.P. Lovecraft before that.

  3. Haeresis Says:
    July 22nd, 2005 at 3:11 am

    As a teen, I had a friend who tried to seduce me with Poe poems and guitar songs. When that failed, he introduced me to magick.

  4. human? Says:
    July 22nd, 2005 at 11:22 am

    somebody up my street was throwing out a ton of books.

    Isis Unveiled, a bunch of Rosicrucian stuff, some Manly P Hall ,etc etc

    i grabbed a few (not enough, but too much even!)…

    one year later, went back the same day (thanksgiving) and there were more books… not as good a selection… but still…

    that would be my introduction to the “occult”….

    but there are a whole bunch of things that went down before that, where i knew something was different than i had thought it was….

    taking acid when i was younger was probably one of the first steps…. then several “mystical” occurances… the meanings of which im still not sure, that i would consider occult in their nature…

    but until i found those books… i was into mostly philosophy & techno-whatever (Rushkoff etc..) & Socialism (marx, huey p., walter rodney) & religious texts (bible, apocrypha, kebra negast) ….and then when i found that Blavatsky book, i realized wholy shit… there is a lot im not checking…

    one
    human?

  5. human? Says:
    July 22nd, 2005 at 11:26 am

    but more to the point of the original post…..

    role playing games and anime were a good occult primer….

    and i suppose ive been always doing “magic” :)



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