Featured Resource: Valdosta State University's NAMOSRL
Hello readers & friends, and welcome back to our blog as the year nears its midway point.
During the course of our project, a number of resources served as inspiration to us: digital archives, library collections, and fellow cataloging projects. In light of this, we feel that is is pertinent to include an aligned Resources page within our Community section. Here, our readers might access university collections, and other open resources for expanding knowledge, scholarship, and practice.
Today, we’d like to feature one of these resources in the form of a research center within a university library. Further, in juxtaposition with tremendously large institutions — like those within the American Ivy League — we feel that a smaller research center will help highlight the work that librarians accomplish on every institutional level.
In turn, we have chosen to examine and explore Valdosta State University in Georgia, United States. A public university in the American south, roughly 12,000 students at all levels attend the institution.
Within the university’s own Odum Library lies a unique research center called the New Age Movements, Occultism, and Spiritualism Research Library (NAMOSRL).
On an historical note, NAMOSRL’S web space notes that:
"The origins of the New Age Movements, Occultism, and Spiritualism Research Library (NAMOSRL) can be traced back to 2004 when Guy Frost and Cliff Landis began discussing the preservation of hard to find and at risk Pagan periodicals.”
These include many issues of Michael Howard’s Cauldron periodical — a work which we at the Occult Library have been working diligently to catalog in full.
As the creator and source of many acquisitions, Guy Frost continues to spearhead the project.
The collection is both substantive and diverse, containing a unique catalog of physical and digitized works. A alrge swathe of these center on contemporary witchcraft traditions in particular. The collection contains numerous other independent journals, zines, mailing lists, books, correspondences, ephemera and more.
NAMOSRL main web page with information, background, and search tools.
Within the catalog, one can find Michael Howard’s legendary, aforementioned Cauldron magazine, Fritz Muntean’s The Pomegranate journal, countless books, and entire collections boxes containing numerous objects, materials, and resources. What is not digitized can perhaps be scanned for private research use with a correspondence to the center.
Some previously & currently cataloged titles, collections, and items that caught the eye of our staff are as follows:
- Pomegranate: A New Journal of Neopagan Thought. Issue 18. Feb. 2002.
- Nine Apples: A Neopagan Anthology. 1979. Open Source Alexandrian and Witches' Order of the GoldenDawn Collections Dawn Collections
- Linda Kerr Faerie Faith Papers
- Book of Shadows collections box containing much 1960’s materials
These collection boxes can be found here.
Here, for example, we find the cover and first contents page for Nine Apples: A Neopagan Anthology. 1979:
Many of our readers, especially those familiar with neopagan traditions, will find familiar names within: Alexandrian Wiccan Stewart Farrar, neopagan bard Gwydion Penddwerwen, and community artist Prairie Jackson.
Nearly 20 copies of Fritz Muntean’s The Pomegranate journal can also be accessed digitally. Again, readers will find familiar name such as Chas S. Clifton and Daniel A. Schulke. Take a likewise look at the cover and reader’s forum page for the aforementioned Pomegranate issue below:
In all, NAMOSRL demonstrates an incredible breadth and diligence of effort. This resource not only represents the institutional library work occurring at every level — it also demonstrates the profound importance of archival efforts preserving the material, artistic, and textual culture of the occult community.
We would like to commend the folks at NAMOSRL for their hard work and inspiration!
The entire portal for NAMOSRL can be found via the link below, and we encourage our readers to spend some time exploring the site:
https://archivesspace.valdosta.edu/repositories/2/resources/1
The image you see in our thumbnail is sourced from Nine Apples: A Neopagan Anthology. 1979. The artist’s signature is hard to make out, but archivist Guy Frost informs that:
"The image is by Prairie Jackson (also known as Mari Jackson), both pseudonyms for Mary Beth Brenneman Jackson (1952-2010). A very popular feminist artist from Texas." It can be seen below:
We hope today’s feature will spurn our readership to explore this and similar resources via our portal. The Occult Library has always felt allied with such efforts, and we believe they only help to color, expand upon, and inform the work we ourselves carry out.
We thank our readers again for their support and kind words. Please stay posted for upcoming interview features, navigation tips, and more via this blog as we continue to write each week.
All the best for your coming week,
— The Occult Library staff.