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  • Popular Witchcraft: Straight from the Witch’s Mouth
  • Michael D. Bailey
Jack Fritscher Popular Witchcraft: Straight from the Witch’s Mouth, 2nd ed.Madison: University of Wisconsin Press/Popular Press, 2004. Pp. xix + 262.

This book, a revised second edition, appears under the imprimatur (one hopes not the nihil obstat) of the University of Wisconsin Press, which recently acquired the Popular Press line in which the book first appeared in 1972. The updating for the 2004 edition was surely not difficult. Since the book has no real structure or argument, snippets of new information, mainly references to Mel Gisbon’s film The Passion of the Christor the Harry Potter books, could simply be tossed into the mix. None of the vast scholarship on witchcraft that has appeared in the last thirty years is taken into account, but then, the first edition did not reference any real scholarship either. [End Page 249]

Jack Fritscher was ordained an exorcist in the Catholic Church in 1963, but by the late 1960s he had become interested in the occult and counterculture scene in San Francisco. The book beings by reprinting a 1971 interview with Anton Szandor LaVey, founder of the San Francisco–based Church of Satan, that now is little more than a time-capsule piece. The first real chapter addresses witchcraft and the law, and is the most historical part of the book, if such a term can be applied to this mishmash of misconstrued information wrenched from any meaningful context. On a single page the author jumps from Frankensteinto My Fair Ladyto Ovid’s Metamorphoses(in that order), all putatively to explain something about the gender-identity dynamics of the Malleus maleficarum(p. 42) Very little attention, in fact, is given to the long and complex legal history of witchcraft. Instead witchcraft is simply presented as a thing opposed by intolerant, oppressive Christianity. In this capacity, it is lumped crudely with Judaism and homosexuality. There is no doubt that historically, Christianity did not approve of witchcraft, Judaism, or homosexuality. Simply saying so again and again, however, adds little to our understanding.

The second chapter focuses on modern pop culture and its appropriations of witchcraft and the occult, speedily surveying movies, music, television, advertising, and other cultural areas. No one can deny that occult elements have figured in all these fields. Given the many obvious references on which to draw, one wonders at the need to cite Bing Crosby’s “rather Wiccan ‘White Christmas’” (p. 79). The reference is never explained, but the songs of another crooner, Frank Sinatra, are put under more extensive scrutiny. It is revealed, for example, that “Old Blue Eyes’ “ nickname is actually a coded reference to his ability to cast the evil eye (p. 80). In the realm of movies and television, Fritscher hits some obvious targets. Rosemary’s Babygets extensive consideration; The Exorcistgets a mention or two. We also learn, however, that The Godfatheris a prominent occult masterpiece, since the Mafia is a “secret society” (p. 82), apparently no different in its goals and activities than the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Even more jarringly, the talking horse Mr. Ed is presented as a prime example of “lycanthropy” (pp. 115–16). But the value of such assertions is beside the point. Fritscher is not building any argument; he is simply presenting a laundry list of such dazzling disarray that it ultimately conveys nothing.

The third chapter focuses on sex and witchcraft. Again, one would think there would be plenty of ground to cover dealing either with the complex ways historical witchcraft has been linked to female sexuality, or the ways in which modern culture has sexualized much of the occult. Instead, Fritscher discourses mainly on male homosexuality, which he reports “has survived as [End Page 250]a secret culture as old as witchcraft itself “ (p. 137). It is revealed, in fact, that the first witch was actually a homosexual man. “The scenario is this: Abel, with his queer eye, saw through his brother, Cain, and laughed ironically at his brother’s patriarchal demands, because Abel’s secret knowledge made him the first seer, the first witch, the first...

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