Taft-1 "Magic"

[DocRailgun]

The (various) Necronomicon that one might find in the New Age section of Barnes and Noble or other large chain book stores are there because the people who purchase titles for those sections have no clue of the difference between a serious title and garbage.
The matter gets more muddled because a well-known "wiccan/pagan/whatever" (as Bruno puts it, :) ) author named Donald Tyson released a fictional (but well-done) Necronomicon in 2004. Though he made clear it's fiction, likely some people assumed it was non-fiction just because it was written by Donald Tyson (who writes fiction in addition to his magical writing).
I will spare everyone my rant about New Age sections in bookstores (having worked in several for years and finally getting those sections in shape, I have some experience there).
[/I]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Well, see, this is the hard part. The Necronomicon as found in Lovecraft's writing isn't real. But you can go to the bookstore and buy two or three different books called "The Necronomicon" at any given time, and most of the ones that stay in print fall into the "wiccan/pagan/whatever" category. They're perfectly real. They don't have a very long history, but I'm atheist, I really can't slag someone for basing their religious beliefs around a new book that some guy wrote over an old book that I (personally) figure some other guys wrote.

But I do feel more comfortable making confused faces at people who think the Necronomicon they bought in the bookstore was written in the Dark Ages by a mad Arab sorcerer.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by DocRailgun

The matter gets more muddled because a well-known "wiccan/pagan/whatever" (as Bruno puts it, :) )

Hey, that was knarfs term (and I don't blame him for being uncertain, I'm not sure there's a specific term yet for someone who uses any modern printing of the Necronomicon as their religious text, other than "confusing").

It's very very difficult to come up with an acceptable collective term for a large diverse group of people who have nothing in common beyond "people of faith who don't belong to centrally-organized religious groups". Mostly because any category large enough to hold them all borders on meaningless...

[knarf]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Hey, that was knarfs term (and I don't blame him for being uncertain, I'm not sure there's a specific term yet for someone who uses any modern printing of the Necronomicon as their religious text, other than "confusing").

It's very very difficult to come up with an acceptable collective term for a large diverse group of people who have nothing in common beyond "people of faith who don't belong to centrally-organized religious groups". Mostly because any category large enough to hold them all borders on meaningless...

It was mostly because I knew this person very briefly a long time ago (The Necronomicon conversation was the longest we ever had at about 3 minutes). I wasn't 100% sure which label she applied to herself, so I felt it best to stay vague.