In the Halls of Heritage: Exploring Our Museums Page
Hello, and welcome back to another weekly blog post from the staff here at The Occult Library. Last week, we took the time to detail the contents of the Community section of our site. This week, we’d like to explore the most recent addition to this section, and survey some of the intentions behind it. We are speaking of the Museums page, and we are delighted to offer information and links to a number of incredible spaces which curate and care for occult materials and artifacts.
As we briefly mentioned in last week’s blog post, our decision to include museums comes from a conviction that the curation & care of occult artifacts helps to preserve the heritage of the occult community. Museums also offer historical commemoration, and context to the community.
Because it is from the occult community that books & texts emerge, we found importance in amplifying the various organizations that preserve the community heritage – offering it a quality that is at once historical and living.
Currently, eleven museums are listed on the page. As follows, they are:
● Buckland Museum of Witchcraft & Magick
● Hexenmuseum Schweiz
● Hex! Museum of Witch Hunt
● Magicum
● Museo di Triora
● The Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft
● Museum of Magic, Fortune-Telling & Witchcraft
● The Museum of Witchcraft and Magic
● The Mystic Museum
● Salem Witch Museum
● Zugarramurdi Witchcraft Museum
As our initial selections for the Museums page, we felt that these eleven organizations best reflect the richness and breadth that a high quality museum ought to maintain.
For each selection, we have included a brief description of the museum, as well as a link for directly visiting the website of a given organization.
Take for example what is perhaps the most renowned and well-known witchcraft museum in the world –The Museum of Witchcraft and Magic (M.W.M.) located in Boscastle, Cornwall, England. Previously called the Museum of Witchcraft,the M.W.M. is dedicated to detailing, understanding, and caring for the heritage of European witchcraft & magic.
Upon visiting the M.W.M. webpage via our link, a number of resources can be found. Because these resources are particularly useful, they serve as a greater tool for exploring the culture of the occult community in their own right – another consideration that spurned our inclusion of museums on our project.
For example, the M.W.M. contains a Resources menu with opportunities for patronage, access to scholarly work, a detailed visual and textual history of the museum itself, a news archive, audio visual materials, and a museum journal – The Enquiring Eye of the Witchcraft Research Center.
All of the other Museums listed include similar offerings and, in turn, serve as repositories of knowledge and information for seekers of diverse backgrounds and areas of interest. As such, our inclusion of museums is not simply a matter of detailing buildings or collections: It is also a matter of directing our users to even more additional resources for widening their personal scopes of practice, research, experience, and knowledge.
We hope, for some of our users, this page will prompt both locals and travelers to consider visiting these museums in person to explore and engage their offerings. These spaces – great halls of heritage for the occult community – offer so much more than mere collections. They resist fossilization and, in fact, serve both as living links to both the historical past and the potentials of the present and future expressions of the community.
We look forward to your continued use, explorations, and readership. All best wishes,
– The Occult Library Staff
