Goth Craft: The Magickal Side of Dark Culture

Calling all Hot Topic Shoppers.....

If I could describe this book in a word, it would be disorganized. As much as I wanted to like this book, it was poorly written, poorly edited, and basically just rehashed all the stereotypes on Goths and Pagans found on amateur internet blogs and websites. Digitalis?s description of Paganism is cursory and sensationalistic, while his version of Goth could only be compared with a Hot Topic advertisement, geared toward suburbanites who are impressionable enough to swallow empty slogans, such as ?Goth is not something someone does; it is something someone is.? Like the catch phrase of the day or the latest tv commercial, it may sound glamorous, but the words are empty.
The problems here are numerous, but the biggest one by far is that Digitalis does not succeed in his aim to discuss the link between the two subcultures. There are a few ways in which this book could have worked. The first would have been to talk about the Goth musicians who are Pagans, explaining their philosophies and the Pagan references in their songs. The second would have been to talk about Pagan rituals that are compatible with or can be incorporated into the Goth lifestyle. The third would have been to do a more personalized diary, or ?day in the life? sort of memoir. Instead the author discusses Goth and Paganism separately, in alternating chapters. The closest he comes to linking the two is by randomly inserting one page illustrated lists of Goth or Pagan oriented entertainment, which come off as filler used to make up for the lack of interesting content. Exacerbating the separateness of the Goth and Pagan sections of the book is Digitalis?s distracting shifts of tone. In the Pagan sections the tone is formal, while the tone of the Goth section is jocular, peppered with embarrassing phrases, like ?we are children of the night, and are damn proud of it!?
Digitalis makes a lot more blunders in the Goth chapters than the Pagan ones. He starts off with the age old question ?What is goth??, discussing he historical origins of the word, as linked with the Ostrogoths and Visigoths in Europe, as well as the literary use of the word. After describing how Goth music emerged as a darker, less anarchistic version of punk, he assails us with an exhaustive listing of Goth types, and an overview of other phenomenon that affect the scene, such as S&M, BDSM, body modification, etc? He even throws in a gratuitous meditation of a night on the Goth scene, which isn?t really a meditation at all, but rather a lame journal entry, in which Digitalis talks about how wonderful he feels when he gets dressed up to go clubbing. He suggests that the way people dress in each subgenre of the Goth scene influences his musical tastes, forgetting his own explanation of how Goth originally started as an offshoot of the punk music scene, not the runway. Not that it really matters anyway, since he doesn?t bother to tell us about the Goth bands responsible for starting the scene. As if his arbitrary subgenres of Goths weren?t mindless and random enough, he then categorizes Goth music by the four elements: earth, air, fire, and water, lessening his credibility even further. Throughout all this disorganized exposition, he adopts a preachy tone when repetitively dispelling popular myths about how to be responsible with the darker sides of the Goth scene, such as drugs, suicide, and self-mutilation. Nowhere in the Goth chapters of the book does Digitalis discuss why Goths might consider Paganism, or how Paganism lends itself well to the Goth lifestyle.
In the Pagan section, Digitalis fares better. Here, we get a thorough, if dry, overview of Paganism, with page length summaries of different occult orders. There is also an explanation of Pagan symbols that Goths generally wear, such as the ankh and pentacle, one of the few places in the book where a connection between the Goth and Pagan lifestyles is actually made. A few rituals are included, such as the Lemon House Charm, the Bottle Protection Spell, and the Cultivating Love and Compassion Meditation, but Digitalis does not talk about any of the inner workings of his own sect, the Opus Aima Obscurae. This is a shame, because it would have rendered the material less stale and text bookish.
My biggest problem with this book is that Digitalis doesn?t seem to know who his audience is. Though clearly not his intent, the way he writes often comes off as a parents? guide more than anything else. Why else would he need to include constant disclaimers, such as ?Goths don?t kill people!? Is he worried about being sued? I can?t think why else he would waste precious pages discussing what Goth and Paganism are not, rather than what they are. In the introduction, for example, he states ?I understand that all sorts of people, with different levels of understanding, will read this book, and therefore it is still necessary to include some information dispelling many stereotypes and misunderstandings.? Then, on the next page, he says ?It is not an introductory book.? The book is riddled with contradictions like this, where Digitalis starts off with wishy washy statements like ?there is no set religion, attitude, or fashion that holds true for all Goths,? then proceeds to proclaim the exact opposite in upcoming pages, by pigeonholing Goths with the creation of arbitrary categories that serve no purpose whatsoever. What he is trying to convey about Paganism is even more confusing. Like in the Goth section, where he provides way too generic an overview and doesn?t discuss any specific bands, when discussing Paganism, he provides Wikipedia type stock entries that do nothing to elucidate to the reader why a Goth, more than the average person, would be open to these types of beliefs.
Goth Craft is more concerned with hyping up the mystique surrounding the two subcultures than talking about what it?s like to be a part of them. Even though Digitalis clearly has love for the subject matter, the work is flawed by its aimlessness and grandiosity. Discussions of Goth and Paganism can fill entire books in and of themselves, and to try to address both without a clear purpose in mind only calls attention to the fact that Digitalis is a novice author who was unable to narrow his scope enough to create a focused work. For example, why, if not for shock value, does he randomly include a page from the Gardnerian Book of Shadows, which makes reference to pagan sex, even though he states earlier on that Goth Craft is ?a guidebook, not a grimoire.? Having read the book, I feel none the wiser about the function of either subculture, but instead feel pity for a new writer who was overly ambitious, and did not have the sense to use a good editor. Choosing to include the Encountering the Angel of Death, in an ?introductory? book such as this illustrates the depth of his ostentatiousness. This meditation, aimed at making contact with the Azrael, the archangel of Death, is pretty over the top, even for a book as pretentious as this one. The fact that the book ends with this ritual just about says it all.