Scope
The Picatrix sets abundant waters beside Adocentyn, with fish of many kinds. Ours are the periodicals: small, quick, numerous, and easily lost.
Books record what a tradition wished to say for the ages. Newsletters record what it was actually doing on a given weekend, who was quarreling with whom, and what a ritual cost to put on. For the history of modern Paganism and occultism they are often the only source there is.
| Class | What is shelved there |
|---|---|
| W 1 | Journals and magazines: scholarly journals, commercial magazines, and the long-running journals of societies |
| W 2 | Newsletters and zines: coven, grove, lodge, and study-circle newsletters; amateur press; personal zines |
| W 3 | Ephemera: flyers, festival programs, course lessons, catalogs of booksellers and suppliers, calendars and almanacs |
| W 4 | Papers: correspondence, minutes, membership lists, and scrapbooks deposited with the periodicals they relate to |
Strengths
- The Sevenfold Lamp (1986 to 2003), a local seasonal newsletter, complete.
- Fogline Grove News (1991 to 2009), the newsletter of a coastal Druid grove, nearly complete.
- The Saltmarsh Circle Letter (1978 to 1994), mimeographed, with the editor's subscription ledger.
- Mail-order catalogs of booksellers and suppliers from the 1950s to the 1990s, which show what a reader in a small town could actually obtain.
Access
Periodicals are consulted in the Waters room, next door to the reading room, during the same hours. Ask at the main desk. Unpublished papers and membership lists less than seventy-five years old are consulted at the desk, under the privacy rule in our collection policy.
If you hold old newsletters
Most of what we have was saved by one person with a cardboard box. If that person is you, a few habits will keep the paper alive:
- Keep issues flat and in order, in a folder or box, away from damp, heat, and sunlight.
- Remove rubber bands and rusting paper clips. Leave staples alone unless they are staining the paper.
- Do not laminate, tape, or glue anything. None of it can be undone.
- Write notes in pencil on a separate sheet, not on the item. Record what you know: who made it, where, how many copies, who appears in the photographs.
- Keep the envelope if the postmark is the only date.
- Photograph mimeograph and spirit-duplicator pages, which fade.
- Tell someone what the box is. An unlabeled box of newsletters is the first thing cleared from a house.
When you are ready to find the box a permanent home, see Give Books or Time.