{"id":5581,"date":"2011-08-01T01:10:28","date_gmt":"2011-08-01T06:10:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paganpages.org\/content\/?p=5717"},"modified":"2011-07-20T17:18:49","modified_gmt":"2011-07-20T22:18:49","slug":"book-review-weisser-field-guide-to-the-paranormal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/2011\/08\/01\/book-review-weisser-field-guide-to-the-paranormal\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Weisser Field Guide to the Paranormal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Weisser Field Guide to the Paranormal <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/9781578634880.jpg\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-5718\" title=\"9781578634880\" src=\"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/9781578634880.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"237\" height=\"400\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Paperback:<\/strong> 224 pages<\/li>\n<li><strong>Publisher:<\/strong> Weiser Books (December 1, 2010)<\/li>\n<li><strong>Author:<\/strong> Judith Joyce<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>A Paranormal Spectacular [Fail]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Last month I got to review an absolutely amazing book, <em>The Clavis or Key to the Magic of Solomon<\/em> as edited by Joseph Peterson.\u00a0 While that was an interesting and illuminating experience, its far more fun to take on a popular book where I don&#8217;t have to worry about dusting off 18th century references and doing what passes for fact checking in my columns.\u00a0 Fortunately I&#8217;ll have none of those tasks this month as I&#8217;m reviewing the <em>Weisser Field Guide to the Paranormal<\/em> [1].<\/p>\n<p>The short review:\u00a0 don&#8217;t buy this book.\u00a0 Don&#8217;t even buy books that resemble it to make sure you don&#8217;t buy it accidentally.\u00a0 Now you can go read another column and be free from the screed that follows.\u00a0 You are welcome.<\/p>\n<p>Still with me?\u00a0 On with the fun!\u00a0\u00a0 First, the book in question is called a &#8220;field guide to the paranormal.&#8221;\u00a0 Which begs the question, what is the paranormal, and where exactly in the field would you need a guide to assist you?\u00a0 If you guessed, um&#8230;nowhere? You might find a lot of self-satisfaction in your cynicism, but I would disagree.\u00a0 Field guides seem to my untrained eyes to involve a disposition on the nature of the subject and then a detailed set of reference material detailing either how to identify them, or some other useful information one would need in the field [2].\u00a0 There are many paranormal and occult things encountered accidentally or deliberately out in fields, and a detailed guide might just provide good armchair, or even practical, reading.<\/p>\n<p>The idea of a field guide is that it might be actually used in the field.\u00a0 Thus they are smallish books, and often printing on robust paper designed to survive being chucked into and out of a backpack under gritty, damp, conditions.\u00a0 My <em>Peterson&#8217;s Guide to the Atlantic Seashore<\/em> [3] follows the general pattern of a field guide perfectly, its small, sort of waterproof, and has a broad and interesting introduction to seashore related stuff in the front (intertidal zonation anyone?).\u00a0 With plates in the middle (who would not want at least another page on the brown seaweed &#8220;sausage weed&#8221;?), worms in the back, and an extensive bibliography to ensure that you know that it was written by real serious scientists with the intent of walking you through the complex muddle that is the Atlantic seashore it is both interesting to read and somewhat useful in the field.\u00a0 And it\u2019s written in type and layout designed for 30 year olds (field guides are too serious for 20&#8217;s and apparently not read by those over 50 without glasses).\u00a0 And it contains an information density resembling a well-written encyclopedia on the Atlantic Seashore.\u00a0 This is pretty much what I expect when I pick up a field guide.<\/p>\n<p>Now, given all this, what, exactly, should a Field Guide to the Paranormal cover?\u00a0 First we have to decide what we mean by &#8220;paranormal.&#8221;\u00a0 The most obvious definition would be &#8220;not normal&#8221; but then many of our co-workers and relatives would need to be included.\u00a0\u00a0 Generally &#8220;paranormal&#8221; means things that are not easily explained by science, but could be explained if we could either catch them in a net or try a little harder with our experiments.\u00a0 This differs from the occult in that it is not just dealing with hidden, secret, or mystical knowledge, but tangible things that exist in the world.\u00a0 Overall the basic cut seems to be that cryptids (Bigfoot) and UFOs are included in the paranormal while they are excluded (by most circles) from the Occult.<\/p>\n<p>This means that a field guide to the paranormal must encompass a huge range of subjects. \u00a0The key ones would be ghosts, UFOs, cryptids, strange events (spontaneous combustion), strange places (ley lines), and magic to name a few.\u00a0 Ghosts could have a field guide all their own.\u00a0 But life at the seashore is no small topic, so it should be possible to organize a book that helps people deal with paranormal events in the field.\u00a0 In general it should cover the key topics, and it should do so in detail.\u00a0 Ghosts, for example, would require a section on various ghost hunting procedures and technologies, an identification guide, and likely locations where they might be seen. \u00a0Bigfoot would have illustrations of the different types and a chart showing their worldwide distribution.\u00a0 In color [4].\u00a0 The same thing should apply to UFOs, other cryptids, and strange places or people.<\/p>\n<p>At least that is how I would write and organize such a book.\u00a0 It would be what it says:\u00a0 a guide for people dealing with this stuff in the field.\u00a0 For believers.<\/p>\n<p>So lets see how this guide compares.<\/p>\n<p><em>Weiser&#8217;s field guide is organized like an encyclopedia or dictionary, not a field guide. <\/em><\/p>\n<p>Entries are listed alphabetically, with little regard for whether they are related.\u00a0 Looking up Ghosts (under &#8220;G&#8221;), for example, gives a five and a half page write up that indicates paranormal investigators look for EVP and EMF readings.\u00a0 But it neither explains what they are, nor indicates that by looking under &#8220;E&#8221; the reader will be able to cross reference those entries into the field guide.\u00a0 Poltergeist and Stone Tape Theory [5] are called out in the entry under Ghosts, but residual haunting does not appear as an entry in the guide.<\/p>\n<p>What all this means is that the &#8220;field guide&#8221; reads as a bathroom book.\u00a0 A dictionary or encyclopedia would have cross-references to other articles that allowed the reader to follow related topics.\u00a0 This book seems to assume you are reading it from front to back.\u00a0 And cross-references would be easy in an encyclopedia dealing with a narrow subject like the paranormal.\u00a0 This book is one of those generic encyclopedias of the occult\/witchcraft\/magic\/whatever that we find taking up shelf space in the new age or paranormal section of the bookstore.<\/p>\n<p><em>The writing is both skeptical, and colloquial. <\/em><\/p>\n<p>Remember I said that field guides go a long way toward establishing scientific decorum with references and neat little line figures and whatnot.\u00a0 Here the author seems to take the opposite approach.\u00a0 Many entries begin with a breezy question:\u00a0 &#8220;Does the human soul survive death?&#8221; is the opening line for Ghosts while the entry for Ghost Club [6] references Harry Potter and Casper in the first sentence.\u00a0 This style would be fine for a bathroom book, but just looks odd in a field guide.<\/p>\n<p>Even worse, in many of the entries the author comes across as skeptical.\u00a0 While the author is clearly not a skeptic in the classical sense, she is also not writing as if the existence of these phenomena is a given and all we need to do is experience them.\u00a0 Many times she comes across as winking at the reader, implying something along the lines of &#8220;look at all this stilly stuff that scientists don&#8217;t believe in.&#8221; Which is not what I would expect from a book that takes seriously the subject it was discussing.\u00a0 For example, on ghosts:\u00a0 &#8220;Modern science-oriented societies, however, ridicule this belief in ghosts.\u00a0 Paranormal societies, thus, focus on providing the existence of ghosts in a scientific manner.&#8221;\u00a0 While this is certainly true, the emphasis and focus here and throughout the book is more balanced than would be the case for a normal field guide.<\/p>\n<p><em>There are too many extraneous entries. <\/em><\/p>\n<p>This is a field guide, so why would you include entries that have nothing to do with what goes on in the field.\u00a0 The biographical entries (Thomas Edison, Eddy Brothers, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to name a few) are puzzling because I&#8217;m unlikely to run into them in the field, except perhaps on a ghost hunt.\u00a0 The information contained under their entries could easily go elsewhere.\u00a0\u00a0 Or the space could be devoted to more detail on the relevant entries.<\/p>\n<p><em>But, seriously, this isn&#8217;t a field guide. <\/em><\/p>\n<p>Instead it is yet another example of the endless number of regurgitated encyclopedias and dictionaries on the occult thrown up by publishers.\u00a0 The reason why publishers publish this stuff in such volume totally escapes me.\u00a0\u00a0 The sheer number of them means that if someone even does manage to poop out a good one, it will be lost in the hundreds of bad ones.\u00a0 \u00a0And this one wasn&#8217;t good at all.<\/p>\n<p>The crappy layout and aesthetics of the book are obvious indicators it was done on the cheap.\u00a0 It is double-spaced.\u00a0 Let me repeat that.\u00a0 It is double-spaced.\u00a0 Lots of white space to makes your reading easier, but I suspect its there because it fills out the page count.\u00a0 The figures are black and white clip art that meagerly illustrate their subjects and do nothing to enhance the book aesthetically or pedagogically.\u00a0 \u00a0Go to any bookstore, or even your own shelf, look at a real field guide, they are far from double-spaced, and are lavishly illustrated.<\/p>\n<p>This whole project looks like someone had a gap in the schedule for a printing press and had to throw something on the schedule to make sure the down time was not wasted.\u00a0 &#8220;Hey, lets get a lesser-known writer experienced in the occult to poop out some text, throw in some clip art, double space it and cut it down and hey, we&#8217;ve got something that we can sell as a field guide.\u00a0 That will keep old Betsy the printing press working over the holidays.\u00a0 And those crazy investigatin&#8217; kids will like the idea of a field guide.\u00a0 Yeah, that&#8217;s the ticket.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I am being hard on this book for a reason.\u00a0 While this book is about the paranormal, and I don&#8217;t care a lot about the paranormal, it too much resembles other books occupying shelf space on subjects I do care about. \u00a0I care deeply about Paganism, Magic, Witchcraft, and the Occult beliefs. \u00a0And there are too many of these silly dictionary\/encyclopedia\/survey books churned out about them.\u00a0 We need fewer of these sorts of books because they hurt our religion.\u00a0 Let me repeat, they hurt our religion, and our reputations.\u00a0 \u00a0And we need to ask publishers to stop putting so many of them on store shelves and start putting more books of substance and vision on the shelves.\u00a0 And we need to be writing more visionary and substantive works.<\/p>\n<p>How many kids or curious adults pick up these books thinking they will learn something serious about the craft or our religion or even the paranormal and instead find dreck?\u00a0 Too many do, and too many walk away because of it. \u00a0Many start with an interest in the paranormal and find their way to Paganism.\u00a0 Many starting on their journey don&#8217;t know the difference, particularly kids.\u00a0 A really good book on the paranormal, like Colin Wilson\u2019s book, might just capture their imaginations, might just cause them to seek deeper truths.\u00a0 These naive readers are exactly who this book is most likely targeted at.\u00a0 Given that you are reading this column means you would look at this book and probably never even pick it up.\u00a0 But someone who knew little or nothing about the paranormal just might.\u00a0 And that makes me sad.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps some who have the true voice of the Goddess talking to them will persevere despite this crap.\u00a0 We can tell ourselves that.\u00a0 But in this economy, when the kid is from a family that has a tight budget, even buying books like this at a yard sale wastes something more precious than money.\u00a0 It wastes a life that could be transformed by the Goddess.\u00a0 And that&#8217;s why I really don&#8217;t like this book.<\/p>\n<p>[1]\u00a0 Judith Joyce<em>, The Weisser Field Guide to the Paranormal<\/em>, Weisser, 2011.\u00a0 Interestingly Judith Joyce is a pseudonym.\u00a0 The author is Judika Illes, an aromatherapist and scholar of many things occult.\u00a0 http:\/\/www.judikailles.com\/.\u00a0 She seems like a sensible and nice person who writes professionally.<\/p>\n<p>[2] The books I pulled off the shelf are all about seashells and the North American seashore, including one <em>Peterson Field Guide to the Atlantic Seashore<\/em>.\u00a0 This stems from my inherent dislike of going to the beach with my family.\u00a0 As a skin cancer victim I see it more as a slow motion death chamber than a vacation.\u00a0 Thus I tend to wear big hats and try to remain interested by pestering the wildlife.\u00a0 And, yes, I grew up a block from the beach in Florida.<\/p>\n<p>[3]\u00a0 Kenneth L. Gosner, <em>Atlantic Seashore (Peterson Field Guides)<\/em>, Houghton-Mifflin, 1978<\/p>\n<p>[4]\u00a0 Bigfoot\/Sasquatch are not topics in the book.\u00a0 Let me repeat.\u00a0 Not.\u00a0 Even. Topics. But cryptids and chupacabra and Charles Fort are topics.\u00a0 Thump, thump, thump, that\u2019s the sound of the obvious hitting the table over and over again. \u00a0As yet another aside, I find it remarkable that Bigfoot was left out given the sasquatchploitation bandwagon we are currently on.\u00a0 I just love it when they call them &#8216;squatch on Animal Planet&#8217;s <em>Finding Bigfoot<\/em> show.\u00a0 Sounds like a particularly dirty kind of squat.\u00a0 (http:\/\/animal.discovery.com\/tv\/finding-bigfoot\/).\u00a0 And yes, I come by all my paranormal creds honestly, by watching TV.<\/p>\n<p>[5] An interesting theory that I have never heard of that means &#8220;residual haunting.&#8221;\u00a0 Why the author has an entry under &#8220;stone tape theory&#8221; and not &#8220;residual haunting&#8221; escapes me.<\/p>\n<p>[6] Some sort of United Kingdom ghost club claiming to be the oldest in the UK.\u00a0 Ok, fair enough, but if you put in a page about this organization, why nothing about The Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS) and the US ghostploitation movement it has spawned?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Weisser Field Guide to the Paranormal Paperback: 224 pages Publisher: Weiser Books (December 1, 2010) Author: Judith Joyce A Paranormal Spectacular [Fail] Last month I got to review an absolutely amazing book, The Clavis or Key to the Magic of Solomon as edited by Joseph Peterson.\u00a0 While that was an interesting and illuminating experience, its far more fun to take on a popular book where I don&#8217;t have to worry about dusting off 18th century references and doing what passes for fact checking in my columns.\u00a0 Fortunately I&#8217;ll have none of those tasks this month as I&#8217;m reviewing the Weisser Field Guide to the Paranormal [1]. The short review:\u00a0 don&#8217;t buy this book.\u00a0 Don&#8217;t even buy books that resemble it to make sure you don&#8217;t buy it accidentally.\u00a0 Now you can go read another column and be free from the screed that follows.\u00a0 You are welcome. Still with me?\u00a0 On with the fun!\u00a0\u00a0 First, the book in question is called a &#8220;field guide to the paranormal.&#8221;\u00a0 Which begs the question, what is the paranormal, and where exactly in the field would you need a guide to assist you?\u00a0 If you guessed, um&#8230;nowhere? You might find a lot of self-satisfaction in your cynicism, but I would disagree.\u00a0 Field guides seem to my untrained eyes to involve a disposition on the nature of the subject and then a detailed set of reference material detailing either how to identify them, or some other useful information one would need in the field [2].\u00a0 There are many paranormal and occult things encountered accidentally or deliberately out in fields, and a detailed guide might just provide good armchair, or even practical, reading. The idea of a field guide is that it might be actually used in the field.\u00a0 Thus they are smallish books, and often printing on robust paper designed to survive being chucked into and out of a backpack under gritty, damp, conditions.\u00a0 My Peterson&#8217;s Guide to the Atlantic Seashore [3] follows the general pattern of a field guide perfectly, its small, sort of waterproof, and has a broad and interesting introduction to seashore related stuff in the front (intertidal zonation anyone?).\u00a0 With plates in the middle (who would not want at least another page on the brown seaweed &#8220;sausage weed&#8221;?), worms in the back, and an extensive bibliography to ensure that you know that it was written by real serious scientists with the intent of walking you through the complex muddle that is the Atlantic seashore it is both interesting to read and somewhat useful in the field.\u00a0 And it\u2019s written in type and layout designed for 30 year olds (field guides are too serious for 20&#8217;s and apparently not read by those over 50 without glasses).\u00a0 And it contains an information density resembling a well-written encyclopedia on the Atlantic Seashore.\u00a0 This is pretty much what I expect when I pick up a field guide. Now, given all this, what, exactly, should a Field Guide to the Paranormal cover?\u00a0 First we have to decide what we mean by &#8220;paranormal.&#8221;\u00a0 The most obvious definition would be &#8220;not normal&#8221; but then many of our co-workers and relatives would need to be included.\u00a0\u00a0 Generally &#8220;paranormal&#8221; means things that are not easily explained by science, but could be explained if we could either catch them in a net or try a little harder with our experiments.\u00a0 This differs from the occult in that it is not just dealing with hidden, secret, or mystical knowledge, but tangible things that exist in the world.\u00a0 Overall the basic cut seems to be that cryptids (Bigfoot) and UFOs are included in the paranormal while they are excluded (by most circles) from the Occult. This means that a field guide to the paranormal must encompass a huge range of subjects. \u00a0The key ones would be ghosts, UFOs, cryptids, strange events (spontaneous combustion), strange places (ley lines), and magic to name a few.\u00a0 Ghosts could have a field guide all their own.\u00a0 But life at the seashore is no small topic, so it should be possible to organize a book that helps people deal with paranormal events in the field.\u00a0 In general it should cover the key topics, and it should do so in detail.\u00a0 Ghosts, for example, would require a section on various ghost hunting procedures and technologies, an identification guide, and likely locations where they might be seen. \u00a0Bigfoot would have illustrations of the different types and a chart showing their worldwide distribution.\u00a0 In color [4].\u00a0 The same thing should apply to UFOs, other cryptids, and strange places or people. At least that is how I would write and organize such a book.\u00a0 It would be what it says:\u00a0 a guide for people dealing with this stuff in the field.\u00a0 For believers. So lets see how this guide compares. Weiser&#8217;s field guide is organized like an encyclopedia or dictionary, not a field guide. Entries are listed alphabetically, with little regard for whether they are related.\u00a0 Looking up Ghosts (under &#8220;G&#8221;), for example, gives a five and a half page write up that indicates paranormal investigators look for EVP and EMF readings.\u00a0 But it neither explains what they are, nor indicates that by looking under &#8220;E&#8221; the reader will be able to cross reference those entries into the field guide.\u00a0 Poltergeist and Stone Tape Theory [5] are called out in the entry under Ghosts, but residual haunting does not appear as an entry in the guide. What all this means is that the &#8220;field guide&#8221; reads as a bathroom book.\u00a0 A dictionary or encyclopedia would have cross-references to other articles that allowed the reader to follow related topics.\u00a0 This book seems to assume you are reading it from front to back.\u00a0 And cross-references would be easy in an encyclopedia dealing with a narrow subject like the paranormal.\u00a0 This book is one of those generic encyclopedias of the occult\/witchcraft\/magic\/whatever that we find taking up shelf space in the new age or paranormal section of the bookstore. The writing is both skeptical, and colloquial. Remember I said that field guides go a long way toward establishing scientific decorum with references and neat little line figures and whatnot.\u00a0 Here the author seems to take the opposite approach.\u00a0 Many entries begin with a breezy question:\u00a0 &#8220;Does the human soul survive death?&#8221; is the opening line for Ghosts while the entry for Ghost Club [6] references Harry Potter and Casper in the first sentence.\u00a0 This style would be fine for a bathroom book, but just looks odd in a field guide. Even worse, in many of the entries the author comes across as skeptical.\u00a0 While the author is clearly not a skeptic in the classical sense, she is also not writing as if the existence of these phenomena is a given and all we need to do is experience them.\u00a0 Many times she comes across as winking at the reader, implying something along the lines of &#8220;look at all this stilly stuff that scientists don&#8217;t believe in.&#8221; Which is not what I would expect from a book that takes seriously the subject it was discussing.\u00a0 For example, on ghosts:\u00a0 &#8220;Modern science-oriented societies, however, ridicule this belief in ghosts.\u00a0 Paranormal societies, thus, focus on providing the existence of ghosts in a scientific manner.&#8221;\u00a0 While this is certainly true, the emphasis and focus here and throughout the book is more balanced than would be the case for a normal field guide. There are too many extraneous entries. This is a field guide, so why would you include entries that have nothing to do with what goes on in the field.\u00a0 The biographical entries (Thomas Edison, Eddy Brothers, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to name a few) are puzzling because I&#8217;m unlikely to run into them in the field, except perhaps on a ghost hunt.\u00a0 The information contained under their entries could easily go elsewhere.\u00a0\u00a0 Or the space could be devoted to more detail on the relevant entries. But, seriously, this isn&#8217;t a field guide. Instead it is yet another example of the endless number of regurgitated encyclopedias and dictionaries on the occult thrown up by publishers.\u00a0 The reason why publishers publish this stuff in such volume totally escapes me.\u00a0\u00a0 The sheer number of them means that if someone even does manage to poop out a good one, it will be lost in the hundreds of bad ones.\u00a0 \u00a0And this one wasn&#8217;t good at all. The crappy layout and aesthetics of the book are obvious indicators it was done on the cheap.\u00a0 It is double-spaced.\u00a0 Let me repeat that.\u00a0 It is double-spaced.\u00a0 Lots of white space to makes your reading easier, but I suspect its there because it fills out the page count.\u00a0 The figures are black and white clip art that meagerly illustrate their subjects and do nothing to enhance the book aesthetically or pedagogically.\u00a0 \u00a0Go to any bookstore, or even your own shelf, look at a real field guide, they are far from double-spaced, and are lavishly illustrated. This whole project looks like someone had a gap in the schedule for a printing press and had to throw something on the schedule to make sure the down time was not wasted.\u00a0 &#8220;Hey, lets get a lesser-known writer experienced in the occult to poop out some text, throw in some clip art, double space it and cut it down and hey, we&#8217;ve got something that we can sell as a field guide.\u00a0 That will keep old Betsy the printing press working over the holidays.\u00a0 And those crazy investigatin&#8217; kids will like the idea of a field guide.\u00a0 Yeah, that&#8217;s the ticket.&#8221; I am being hard on this book for a reason.\u00a0 While this book is about the paranormal, and I don&#8217;t care a lot about the paranormal, it too much resembles other books occupying shelf space on subjects I do care about. \u00a0I care deeply about Paganism, Magic, Witchcraft, and the Occult beliefs. \u00a0And there are too many of these silly dictionary\/encyclopedia\/survey books churned out about them.\u00a0 We need fewer of these sorts of books because they hurt our religion.\u00a0 Let me repeat, they hurt our religion, and our reputations.\u00a0 \u00a0And we need to ask publishers to stop putting so many of them on store shelves and start putting more books of substance and vision on the shelves.\u00a0 And we need to be writing more visionary and substantive works. How many kids or curious adults pick up these books thinking they will learn something serious about the craft or our religion or even the paranormal and instead find dreck?\u00a0 Too many do, and too many walk away because of it. \u00a0Many start with an interest in the paranormal and find their way to Paganism.\u00a0 Many starting on their journey don&#8217;t know the difference, particularly kids.\u00a0 A really good book on the paranormal, like Colin Wilson\u2019s book, might just capture their imaginations, might just cause them to seek deeper truths.\u00a0 These naive readers are exactly who this book is most likely targeted at.\u00a0 Given that you are reading this column means you would look at this book and probably never even pick it up.\u00a0 But someone who knew little or nothing about the paranormal just might.\u00a0 And that makes me sad. Perhaps some who have the true voice of the Goddess talking to them will persevere despite this crap.\u00a0 We can tell ourselves that.\u00a0 But in this economy, when the kid is from a family that has a tight budget, even buying books like this at a yard sale wastes something more precious than money.\u00a0 It wastes a life that could be transformed by the Goddess.\u00a0 And that&#8217;s why I really don&#8217;t like this book. [1]\u00a0 Judith Joyce, The Weisser Field Guide to the Paranormal, Weisser, 2011.\u00a0 Interestingly Judith Joyce is a pseudonym.\u00a0 The author is Judika Illes, an aromatherapist and scholar of many things occult.\u00a0 http:\/\/www.judikailles.com\/.\u00a0 She seems like a sensible and nice person who writes professionally. [2] The books I pulled off the shelf are all about seashells and the North American seashore, including one Peterson Field Guide to the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5581"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5489,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5581\/revisions\/5489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}