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gabrielrobartes 's review for:
This is the 2006 revision of a book I first read in 1984. It's a book that stayed with me in the back of my head through thirty odd years of spiritual dabbling and wandering and, given where I am now, has an additional fascination.
What strikes me most is how the tone of the book feels so much more personal than it did when I was 22. It's not an academic tome (though the research is thorough, the biases are clearly and reflexively pointed out and Adler goes to great trouble to present alternative points of view). Today, I'd say it's a useful counterpoint to Ronald Hutton's The Triumph of the Moon, offering the US version of neo-pagan history but with an insider's access. It's also full of common sense and good humour. Adler values the absurd and no time for power trips. If I feel she's sometimes a little kinder than she needs to be, that's probably my own bias showing through.
Sadly, Margot Adler died in 2014. The table I'll need for my Great Heavenly Dinner Party (of people I wish I'd met when they were alive) keeps getting bigger and bigger.
What strikes me most is how the tone of the book feels so much more personal than it did when I was 22. It's not an academic tome (though the research is thorough, the biases are clearly and reflexively pointed out and Adler goes to great trouble to present alternative points of view). Today, I'd say it's a useful counterpoint to Ronald Hutton's The Triumph of the Moon, offering the US version of neo-pagan history but with an insider's access. It's also full of common sense and good humour. Adler values the absurd and no time for power trips. If I feel she's sometimes a little kinder than she needs to be, that's probably my own bias showing through.
Sadly, Margot Adler died in 2014. The table I'll need for my Great Heavenly Dinner Party (of people I wish I'd met when they were alive) keeps getting bigger and bigger.