The Shining Shelves: On Our Resources Page
Hello all, and a welcomed return. As we reach another week of The Occult Library blog, we’d like to feature a few of the educational and literary offerings found in our Resources page on the website. These include primary materials of classic texts, digital library resources, and university collections. We felt that these resources were pertinent to add for a number of reasons.
The Resources page is found under the Community heading in the menu of the site. Currently, eight chief resources can be found, all featuring brief descriptions and links to their source. As of this writing, they are:
Cornell University Witchcraft Archives
CUNY Digital Occult Library
Damon Collection of Occult and Visionary Literature
Internet Sacred Text Archive
Paralibrum
Twilit Grotto: Archives of Western Esoterica
Valdosta State University New Age Movements, Occultism, and Spiritualism Research Library (NAMOSRL)
Our primary goal in adding this Resources section dealt with an expansion of knowledge-building resources, information, and supplemental materials. Yet, we also felt that by directing folks to other resources in the community, a sense of solidarity, breadth of community, and shared offerings might be instilled.
Some of the resources found contain viewable, digitized materials. This is especially useful for folks who hope to seek out primary source works — including some which are novel in their own right.
For example, consider Valdosta State University’s Odum Library. Within the Odum Library, a division called the New Age Movements, Occultism, and Spiritualism Research Library (NAMOSRL) exists.The library’s search portal is eminently accessible with an incredibly wide-ranging and diverse collection.
Of note, NAMOSRL contains a wide breadth of materials related to contemporary witchcraft traditions — traditional witchcraft, neopaganism, Wicca, folk traditions, and numerous other movements within the craft. The collection holds independent journals, zines, mailing lists, books, correspondences, ephemera and more.
In the catalog, one can find Michael Howard’s legendary Cauldron magazine, Fritz Muntean’s Pomegranate journal, countless books, and entire collections boxes. What is not digitized can potentially be scanned for private use with a quick email to the university.
Some titles and collections that caught our eye are as follows:
Pomegranate: A New Journal of Neopagan Thought. Issue 18. Feb. 2002.
Revival!: Graphic Magazine of the Craft, Special issue no.4 (Libra 1976).
Nine Apples: A Neopagan Anthology. 1979.
Open Source Alexandrian and Witches' Order of the Golden Dawn Collections
Linda Kerr Faerie Faith Papers
Book of Shadows collections box containing much 1960’s materials
Upon visiting the Odum Library website via the Resources page, simply search "NAMOSRL," to access bibliographic data for the entire physical and digital collection catalog.
With all of this considered, we believe these materials will not only serve to inform and enliven the lives of readers visiting our page, but will also help to frame our role in feature resources and building community.
We look forward to hearing about your findings!
All the best,
— The Occult Library staff