Voodoo Vibes

It's a time for children to dress up as princesses and pirates and go from house to house, calling, "Trick or Treat!" Their eyes will get big as they are rewarded with treasures and sweets. And perhaps you will celebrate Halloween by going to a costume party or a haunted house. But did you ever wonder where all this holiday gaiety came from and what it means? Silver RavenWolf (I'm sure you know her!) reveals the answers in Halloween. The book begins by sharing the history of where this harvest holiday came from. Did you know it was originally called Samhain? Samhain means "the end of summer". You'll find out what the ancient people did to celebrate this holiday and how the ideas about it have changed over the years. Did you know it has really become wildly popular in the U.S. only over the last 100 years? It's true! You'll also find out why ghosts and skeletons, jack-o'-lanterns and vampires are associated with October 31 of each year. Halloween shows you lots of neat stuff you can do, either by yourself or at a party. First you can learn to do divination (or foreseeing the future) in a variety of ways. You can use pumpkin seeds or magick mirrors, nuts or tap water to find out what is going to happen. There are all sorts of recipes for Halloween treats and fun you can have in the kitchen, making things like "tuna ghouls" or "magickal mice." They're tasty, too! Next you can do real magick. There are spells here for protection, love, prosperity and much more. Finally, you'll learn rituals to honor the dead. Honor the spirit of this hallowed harvest holiday with the rituals, recipes, and spells you'll find in Halloween.

More than 100,000 people, mainly women, were prosecuted for the crime of witchcraft between 1450 and 1750. This new anthology looks at the connections between gender and witchcraft and how notions of witchcraft changed over time.

Mention Haiti, and images of poor and battered refugees risking their lives attempting to reach America, or a barren Caribbean island prone to military coups and hideous zombies, come to mind. But when anthropologist-choreographer Katherine Dunham first traveled to Haiti in 1936 to study the country's dance traditions, she fell in love with the people and their culture. Island Possessed, originally published in 1969, captures Dunham's experiences of the island's intricate voodoo religious dances and customs; the friction between the black peasants and the mulatto elites; and the brutal dictatorships that have plagued the nation. Of her three-day initiation into the voodoo religion as a "bride" to the Haitian serpent god Damballah, she writes, "My feeling was closer to belonging to something all-encompassing than I have ever known since." Called by the Haitian people "Mama Katherine," Dunham has contributed a humane and comprehensive overview of the world's first black republic. --Eugene Holley Jr.

Just as surely as Haiti is "possessed" by the gods and spirits of vaudun (voodoo), the island "possessed" Katherine Dunham when she first went there in 1936 to study dance and ritual. In this book, Dunham reveals how her anthropological research, her work in dance, and her fascination for the people and cults of Haiti worked their spell, catapulting her into experiences that she was often lucky to survive. Here Dunham tells how the island came to be possessed by the demons of voodoo and other cults imported from various parts of Africa, as well as by the deep class divisions, particularly between blacks and mulattos, and the political hatred still very much in evidence today. Full of the flare and suspense of immersion in a strange and enchanting culture, Island Possessed is also a pioneering work in the anthropology of dance and a fascinating document on Haitian politics and voodoo.