Magic, Supernaturalism, and Religion, by Kurt Seligmann. Pantheon Books, 1948

This book is not a how-to, DIY tome; it is a history of its subjects, told in a neutral, dispassionate vein. It starts with Mesopotamia, goes through Persia, the Hebrews, Egypt, Greece, Gnosticism, the Roman Empire, the shifts to Europe and the magical arts that survived during Christian times. The author takes neither a “magic was bad and misguided” nor a “Christianity was a bully that took over and destroyed magic” that is today’s take on the subjects; he stays totally neutral. Yes, he does talk about the witch trials and the trials of alchemists, but it’s told in a ‘just the facts, ma’am” tone. I found it pretty interesting, although quite dry. When you don’t take sides there isn’t any passion in writing, I guess. The illustrations were fascinating; pen and ink drawings of magical principles and things like palmistry charts fill the book.

 

God is in the Crowd: Twenty-first Century Judaism, by Tal Keinan. Spiegel & Grau, 2018

This is a hard book to categorize. The first part is autobiography; Keinan was raised in the US and went to school here, but then moved to Israel and joined the Air Force. He was the only non-Israeli fighter pilot there. After his time with the military, he became a financial man as well as chairing a nonprofit that lends to projects including ones by Israeli Palestinians. The next section explores what he feels is a crisis in Judaism. Many US and European Jews are marrying outside the faith, and not raising their children as religious Jews. If that continues, he sees the end of Judaism as it’s known- and been known- for centuries. Judaism survived the Diaspora, pogroms, and the Holocaust only to face extinction by marrying out. His proposed cure for this is program that would fund (via voluntary donations by members) long term camps for Jewish youth, wherein they would spend one year in America and one in Israel, learning the culture of whichever one they didn’t grow up in; it would also pay for the college education of the children. He also proposes that the president of Israel (largely a ceremonial position at this point) be given power over all Jewish religious affairs- a sort of Pope for Judaism- and that the president be elected by *all* Jews the world over, not just Israelis. Right now, Israel has religious issue being adjudicated by ultra-Orthodox Jews, while American Jewry is composed mainly of Reform and Conservative Jews. He feels that the wisdom of the crowd- having all branches of Judaism involved- will save, even though it may change it, Judaism. He doesn’t seem to take sides in a right/left battle; he’s fairly even handed. It is an interesting look into what’s happening to Judaism. Three and a half stars. 

I received this book free from the Amazon Vine Program in return for an unbiased review. This did not affect my opinions. 

No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters, by Ursula K. LeGuin. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017

This is a collection of short essays that LeGuin originally put up on her blog. Basically they are short form essays, and the book is divided roughly into subjects that include aging, sexism, politics, morals, nature, religion, swearing, writing, and, in between, are the Annals of Pard. Pard being the author’s latest cat, who is still a youngster- a year old when procured. But these are not your ordinary old woman with a cat entries; she examines the moral issues of cats catching mice.

LeGuin is in her eighties now, and has seen a lot of changes in the world. Always the feminist and anti-authoritarian, she has said a lot about those subjects in her novels and continues to have lots to say about them. Her essays are written in simple but elegant prose and are a delight to read. Five stars. 

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I received this book free from Net Galley in return for an honest review. 

Neither of these things influenced my review. 

In the Days of Rain: A Daughter, a Father, a Cult, by Rebecca Stott. Spiegel & Grau, 2017

Rebecca Stott was born into a cult. So was her father. He was a high ranking official in the church called the Exclusive Brethren. An End of Times cult, they felt they had to purify themselves so they would be bodily taken up when the Rapture occurred. The rules became more restrictive through the years; not only did they restrict all information sources to the Bible and their own publications, but they limited contact with outsiders to almost nothing. Women were to be seen and not heard. Then they started attacking their own members, trying to force confessions of sin from them; they removed the victim’s family members from the house and isolated them. Some committed suicide. Businesses and jobs were lost.

Growing up in this cult, Stott lived a life of fear, which seems to have been common among members. Fear that she could not live up to the strict standards of the cult- which of course she equated with the strict standards of God. But when things got too bad (the church leader, J.T. Junior, who was instituting all these rules, emerged as an alcoholic and blatant womanizer, going so far as to be fondling women’s breasts in front of others), her father broke with the church. He was the last member to have been allowed to go to college and had read ‘worldly’ books. Sadly, his education did not save him from folly; he became a chronic gambler and womanizer and left his wife trying to provide for the family.

The idea for the book began when her father, Roger, found out he was dying. He wanted help in finishing his autobiography, which he had started years before. Rebecca set out to record their talking sessions, and found that while he could talk about his early life, her father could not get past the years when he, as part of the Brethren, had led interrogations of members. Something in his mind could never get past what he had done, no matter how he tried to reconcile the person who had done that with the person who had sought to do the right thing.

One part of the book tells us about the Brethren movement itself; another about her family’s part in it. Then there is her father’s life; and then her own, as she sought to outgrow the philosophy she’d grown up with. While a lot of the writing is very good, it is in places disjointed, switching between her father’s life and hers. I found myself confused in places. I also found myself getting bored with the details of the Brethren’s history. While I feel this book is important to understanding how cults work and how people become coerced and dependent in them, I feel it could have used a lot more editing. 3.5 stars out of five. 

The above is an affiliate link. If you click through and buy something- anything- from Amazon, they will give me a few cents. 

This book was given to me free by the Amazon Vine program in return for an unbiased review. 

Neither of these things influenced my review.