Neo-Pagan Sacred Art and Altars by Sabina Magliocco

Neo-Pagan Sacred Art and Altars - Making things Whole

Above is the full title. This is more of a mid-90's reference book or a snapshot of that time. I like the in-depth views of certain peoples altars and practices around their altar and devotional decorations in the book. I find that fascinating, individualistic and yet can feel some common threads. I LOVE what people do to create celebration in this tangible way.

Reading anything by Sabina Magliocco is more like a view into something rather than a participatory sense of it. She is an anthropology professor and she has that sensibility. Her writing is like a snapshot of the time she is studying.

Since this book seems to primarily reference people she met and studied from around the mid-1990's, it feels a little outdated. In her introduction she references that in the 60s there were about 100,000 Neopagans / Wiccans / New Age / Spiritualists accounted for in the USA. At her writing, she says it is about 200,000. Since the growth of the internet, I read a statistic in the last month that stated Neopagans / /Wiccan / New Age / Spiritualists are now about 3 million in the USA. That's quite a leap in the last 10 years and explains why some of this book seems already a view backwards! But it's still worth viewing for those curious about how others practice in this manner. It's still valid, but I consider it only a subset of what all is happening today.