Take Witchcraft: The Gay Counterculture Depicted By Arthur Evans File Pamphlet

Amazing. Must read. Major things to think about, It was very interesting to learn about homosexuality in Europe and how it was seen in preChristian religions.
However, I did miss reading some more about lesbians and transgender people it was basically all about male homosexuality.
But it was really easy to read, and that's something I appreciate in non fiction books, For a book that has been receiving a fair amount of hype lately, I was a little disappointed.
A majority of the book gives historical examples of the oppression of queer individuals at least what today we would most likely call queer and how their sexuality was a challenge to the State and Capital.
Similar to Against HisStory, Against Leviathan, Arthur Evans traces these pockets of resistance and their eventual defeat, abolition, or recuperation.
In many ways this narrative comes off as "the same old story," while offering little in the way of excitement of course, I'm already very familiar with this tale.
However, the last chapter shines through as Evans makes the call to destroy industrialism, create collectives the examples given are a sort of doityourself type, reestablish a connection with nature, and take part in the "spontaneous violence of autonomous anarchist collectives.
" Es caótico y repetitivo, Como ensayo es bastante torpe, como manifiesto es radical y tiene ideas interesantes, como libro de curiosidades está muy bien porque uno se entera de muchas cositas que no sabía aunque no tantas para lo largo que es el libro.
Hay que leerlo también con perspectiva, que han pasadoaños muy convulsos desde que se escribió.
Really refreshing, though saddening, to recover and absorb the gruesome history of queer lives, Many of the criticisms of modern politics remain quite relevant, especially those of liberalism, socialism, and the gay bourgeoisie.
The conclusion and Evans new socialism is less than concrete, however, The text drifts away from solid footing then, although I do not disagree with the mission and potential of a deindustrialized collective community.
Frankly, the vision really needs much more than “magic” as a means to the end, I think it is a really romantic view of pastoral, preChristian societies when we cant really know whether their values were as humane as we imagine.
This is one of those seminal books no pun intended that marks original research into a topic that just wasn't on anyone's radar before it appeared.
Brilliant history and insightprovoking commentary on the ways in which Gay men were persecuted along with women who faced the wrath of the Inquisition amp related witch trials throughout Christendom for which sexual diversity was akin to heresy.
Graphics support its points it is a fascinating work that was groundbreaking in its day and will certainly enlighten and interest anyone for whom the cultural history of sexuality and of samesex sexuality are of interest! "Magic is inherently a collective activity.
. . " A great read into how Christian and European culture eliminated nature based culture and beliefs, and the impact we still see today.
Strong focus on

how practices and traditions within preChristian Europe were oppressed, with smaller amounts on the rest of the world.
He does do a good job of calling out the prejudices of the white writers who recorded nonEuropean practices, but could probably go even a step further in viewing their claims with skepticism.


More a history than a witchy book, and one that will leave you depressed chapter after chapter.
A must read for students of queer history who have been struggling to find anything indepth about our history before thes.


My largest complaint would have to be the cisgender lens that the author places on cultures of the past seeing those who lived outside the binary of man or woman as "gay men/gay women transvestites.
" Like the terms he's using, it may very much be a sign of when the book was written, but feel that we are missing some additional insights when limiting past expressions of gender in this way.
Especially solely in the language of contemporary western queer culture,

And while I dont share the beliefs in his methods from the final chapter, it is still sad to see how we have moved further down the path of industrialization, inequality and queer complacency Artur outlines.
Evans writes about some really fascinating and regrettablyunknown history in this book, I admire how boldly he unearthed and reclaimed gay history, and how clear the message in his writing is.


Once in a while, the subject rapidly changes with little transition or warning, The age of the text also shows, but much of it is still relevant today, I disagree a little with some of his conclusions at the end I genuinely believe that medical industrialism specifically has the potential to be of immeasurable value to the entire human race, we can keep that during and after the green revolution, please, but the historical elements of the book are fascinating.
Recommended!

Borrowed from the Black Cat House, "It may be surprising but is nonetheless true that 'war is a comparatively late development in the history of humanity.
'" I first read this book back when I was in college, The book was an inspiration for the Radical Faeirie movement, The book examines the role of homosexuality in preChristian Western Europe, It is mostly idealized more then it is actual historical research, but the book was very inspirational to many gay men who were searching for spiritual answers.
Este ensayo me parece una apuesta creativa para explicarnos la instauración del heteropatriarcado en occidente, Me ha conmovido bastante conocer una Otra historia que no tiene miedo en narrarnos a través de las joterías de nuestras abuelas.
This review is rambling, and a bit angry, but I'm not rewriting it again, . .

This was a very depressing read and reminded me of Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States.
" This is a history of the development of human society told from the point of view of the wiped out native cultures, pagans, witches and homosexuals.


As a gay man I've often been alienated from the domesticated, bourgeois homosexuality of modern society.
This stems from both the suffocating force of HIV/AIDS which has haunted gay sexuality for decades and made sex a rendezvous with Thanatos, and the emergence of "corporate pride" and our desperate seeking of respect and inclusion from a society that hates us.
This book is a call for the stark rejection of that,

Paternalistic societies became increasingly militaristic, and many disfunctions follow from that, In his chapter on Rome it's easy to see parallels to today the military consumes most of the resources, dictates what leaders can do, enforces a "cult of discipline" throughout society, and creates a topheavy strangulation of local life entirely out of touch with the needs of the people.
Christianity came to dominate, "Ascetic religion became an opiate for the pain, enabling people to stifle their real needs and feelings, and thus avoid the suffering of constant frustration.
The government was welldisposed to ascetic religion because it kept people quiet and obedient, " He goes on to make a fairly compelling argument for how this set the stage for the later Industrial Revolution.


This is quite an eyeopening account of the history of Christianity we never hear about, particularly the early sects of Christianity.
Evans goes into detail about the Cathars for example who engaged in orgies and homosexuality, rejected marriage and held a downright antinatalist view toward bringing new life into the world.
Others, such as the Gnostics are covered too,

Homosexuality aside, Evans talks about the persecution of women, the erasure of maternal societies and abortion.
The idea of witches engaging in child murder and molestation in underground caves and tunnels is also mentioned.
If that sounds familiar it's because during the McMartin preschool trial during the Satanic Panic people were convinced child molestation was occurring in vast tunnels underneath the school.
Qanon fools still think it's happening today, Well, Jeffrey Epstein and his elite billionaire pals are an exception, I've no doubt they're all goat headwearing psychopaths.
Class is a recurring theme here, the powerful urban elites adopting ascetic Christianity while the rural poor cling to their pagan ways.


Christianity is a history of repression, hierarchy and alienation from nature and one's own body and sexuality.
Evans even touches on things like long hair on men and hallucinogenic drugs, This selfdenial is so common and totalitarian in our lives, we don't even see it by comparison to societies that had naturebased religions.


Evans' chapter on America is great, He notes how the settlers coming to America arrived with no respect for nature left in them, paganism having died out long before in Europe and so they saw the country as a capitalist enterprise from the start.
That's likely a clue as to why there's no class consciousness in America and the poor see themselves as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" and are punitive to those poorer than themselves.
This is ironic considering the average person is infinitely closer to the homeless man on the curb than the corporate titan raping children in a tunnel.
The United States government was formed to protect the rich against the poor and wage war, destroying native cultures, imposing paternalism and extracting resources.
At home the tentacles of the militaryindustrial complex are embedded throughout American society and create a militarized atmosphere that suffocates the appreciation for nature, creation of art and enjoyment of sex.


One of the most depressing aspects was how much worse things are in several respects than they wereyears ago when this was written.
He mentions the Vietnam War as the longest running American war and of course we've been in Afghanistan even longer and are dropping bombs on the heads of people in countries Americans have never heard of daily.
Once Obama was elected the antiwar movement dissipated like frost in the morning sun and then Trump was elected and liberals lost their minds over Russia for three years at the expense of real concerns of people who are increasingly unable to afford children and are taking their own lives in increasing numbers.
Then, after Putin Fever blew up in their faces liberals have embraced the neoconservative ghoul architects of the Iraq War and the Intel community, which helped bring us Trump in the first place.
It's all a depressing daisy chain clusterf, without the sex, Evans ends the book with a passionate call for a return to inclusive tribal collectives, a return to nature and magic, and sex without shame.
It's all rather sad and naive in light of the dark tunnel society is headed down,

Besides feeling a bit outdated, some conclusions Evan's reaches feel a little farfetched, especially in etymology for example.


Arthur Evans died in, I can only imagine he watched as his predictions of gay domestication came true.
"You'll be accepted if you're a bourgeois striver and emulate middle class values, we'll turn a blind eye to what you do in your own bedroom, even though we still despise you, and make a joke of you behind your back.
" My quote.

"The whole industrial system is like one great night of the living dead where the entire populace has been reduced emotionally to the level of zombies.
It has deadened us to our environment, deprived us of art, sterilized our animal nature, robbed us of the skills of survival, degraded our labor and leisure, and decimated our sexual lives.
And so it has made us like the living dead dead to nature, dead to each other, dead to ourselves.
".