Sunday, November 08, 2009

Montréal Magical Mercantile Tour


A group of Pagan Studies scholars started Friday at the big John Waterhouse exhibit at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. It offered the largest selection of his paintings ever, plus sketches, drawings, and letters. When the docent suggested that "The Magic Circle" was not really about religion, she was quickly corrected. Poor, well-meaning, volunteer docent!

Then off to the first magical establishment, where we also got a presentation on the work of the Montréal Pagan Resource Centre.

And what's this? Another Waterhouse painting on a book cover! Extra points if you know which of his paintings has served as cover art for which book.

The shop cat stood guard while someone behind the curtain received a Tarot card reading.

Elsewhere, the price of gri-gri was $9.95 per sachet.

The door to the basement temple promised mysteries underground.

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3 Comments:

Blogger Yewtree said...

The painting on the cover of the Laurie Cabot book also appears on the cover of "Witches, Druids and King Arthur" by Ronald Hutton.

I like the cat.

7:50 AM  
Anonymous Rombald said...

The painting is Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses. I once saw it, in some provincial art gallery - I can't remember where. Circe was sometimes seen as the type of all enchantresses - the Linnaean name for enchanter's nightshade is Circaea - so the picture is quite well-chosen for the book.

12:16 AM  
Anonymous Devon Ellington said...

Oh that looks like fun!

The cat is great, too.

8:19 AM  

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