“Witchcraft” captures the dizzying clip at which its subject has shape-shifted over centuries, a cipher capable of embodying society’s deepest fears and desires, and their considerable overlap.
Queer as folk nude series#
Through more than 400 works of art - interspersed with personal and wide-ranging essays by present-day practitioners and aficionados - the latest installment in Taschen’s “Library of Esoterica” series surveys the shadow and the light the witch has cast across the Western imagination. “Witchcraft,” a lavish coffee-table book edited by Jessica Hundley and Pam Grossman, is a decadent feast for the eyes, laced with belladonna.
In “Gothic: An Illustrated History,” Roger Luckhurst sets forth an extensive, macabre taxonomy of the protean genre and its hallmark “pleasant shivers,” dark tendrils grasping through time and space to ensnare gloomy castles, suburban shopping malls and even the most desolate - though maybe not quite unoccupied - reaches of the cosmos.Ī professor of 19th-century studies at Birkbeck College, University of London, Luckhurst manages to balance granular detail (in the margins I scribbled reminders to myself to investigate further the enticingly breadcrumbed movies, video games and other references) with liveliness and charm. What does “Gothic” mean to you? For me, the word conjures images of an ancient Eastern Germanic tribe, a flying buttress and myself circa 2003, loitering in front of a rack of studded belts at Hot Topic. TAROT FOR CHANGE Using the Cards for Self-Care, Acceptance, and Growth By Jessica Dore WITCHCRAFT The Library of Esoterica Edited by Jessica Hundley and Pam Grossman GOTHIC An Illustrated History By Roger Luckhurst