Customer Reviews

Neo-Pagan Sacred Art and Altars: Making Things Whole (Folk Art and Artists Series)

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At a recent conference I attended a talk on "NeoPagan Sacred Art & Altars" by Sabina Magliocco who was speaking from her monograph. Ms. (Dr.?) Magliocco is an assistant professor at CSU Northridge (in Southern California). This fascinating book describes the Wiccan and NeoPagan aesthetic as viewed by an academic (this is definitely a book whose intended audience is scholars and folklorists).

The art described ranges from community art (altar building, fine art, statue creation) to the personal (costuming, jewelry making, henna tattooing). There are black and white pictures and also color plates in the back of the book which will give you some small idea of the beauty of the art discussed.

One of the main topics is altar building, both in the sense of the altar as a liminal space between the worlds and as an intuitively assembled collection of natural and crafted objects to express an emotion or harmonize with a natural force. I learned a new word - "bricolage", which Merriam-Webster defines as "construction or something constructed by using whatever comes to hand". Magliocco uses this word especially to describe festival-built altars and other multi-person creations. She interviews artists and altar builders with sympathy and insight.

Another theme is the juxtaposition of natural and human images (both iconographically and in terms of natural objects and human/artist created objects) in Pagan art, which she describes as violating the boundaries between human/animal and cultural/natural. Looking around my home and temple I can say that I am a participant in the artistic movement she describes. I am looking around me with new eyes thanks to reading it. The book is an intriguing read for those interested in NeoPagan material culture.

This is a worthwhile little book if you are interested in the intersection of art and (mild) religion. The modern art values overwhelm the religious ones even though the resulting presentations are intriguing and often beautiful. However, if you are looking for a heart-felt guide to neo-pagan religious expression this isn't it. The book does not give coherent instructions for how to conceptualize, structure, or build satisfying altars that speak to the deepest human longings for God in all his/her transcendent manifestations. In fact, in spite of the well-executed altar art, the completed works trivialize and even satirize what is supposed to be sacred expression. If you are truly interested in altar building, you would be better served to research the careful construction and symbolism of traditional Dia de los Muertos altars first.