Powerful Market for Magic Enchants Publishers: on the occult spirituality and historical shelves, at least. Most exciting for me is a new John Dee book, which I need like a fat hole in my head because I’m done researching, really and for true…
Bulgaria was the catalyst for Elizabeth Kostova’s “The Shadow Land”: I loved Kostova’s “The Historian” and this new book sounds unusual enough that I’ll probably give it a whirl but I’m a tad disappointed that she “[shies] away from [‘historical fiction’ as a category] because it’s gotten kind of a bad name” (??)
Speaking Martian: Dee and Kelley weren’t the only medium/interpreter duo to invent/discover/come up with a strange language. Hélène Smith produced “Martian” language over several years with the assistance of psychologist Théodore Flournoy. Being of a less wanting-to-believe ilk than Dee, Flournoy suspected glossolalia from the outset, though he never seemed to have discouraged or tried to cure Smith during their séances. His publication of his suspicions in the book “From India to the Planet Mars” was a shock to Smith and they parted company soon after. In the 1930s the Surrealists promoted her as a “muse of automatic writing” and she became a painter in her own right. An intriguing story I wish I had time to delve into further!
