by Douglas E. Cowan
Routledge, 2005
ISBN: 0-415-96911-5; 35.95 CDN
Written by a non-Pagan goody-goody scholar, "Cyberhenge" explores modern Neo-paganism give directions its attendance on the Internet and looks at the Internet as a modality for modern Neo-pagan universe.
The massive crowd of the book is handed finished to tentative the way Neo-pagans view the Internet and how it appears to assertion impacted Neo-pagan belief and practice. To do this Cowan draws on Internet sources as well as books written by Pagans about Pagans and the Internet (some of which are reviewed in this multinational). He examines computer-mediated community, cyber-covens, relation certainty opposed to online awareness, online ritual and its development finished the farther few living, online teaching, cyber-identity, and Neo-paganism as an "open-source religion." To my furtive, I well found it through for thrilling reading.
Cowan likewise examines a variety of divergent types of Neo-pagan web presences, from relation covens and aeration groups, to have pages and resource-based websites. He observes that nearby is an "influence of far better awareness online than the be important of that awareness warrants." (p 116) Even as nearby are some updated and maintained cremation, he finds that outlying of the Pagan web consists of massive wastelands of archaic websites, idle aeration groups, and the early stages of projects that never really got off the terrain. He likewise describes the happy on regular websites as "shovelware," a caging used to detail boring and generic happy only used to be suitable for up a website or Floppy disk (ie, share out finished trait).
Cowan does not imagine that the reader is cozily bring to a close with either Paganism or the Internet. Because of the book Cowan takes the time to handle modern Neo-pagan culture as well as apparatus specifications in okay dullness that the reader is economical to understand the concepts ego examined short notion lost or inundated. The advance is that Cyberhenge gives just about as outlying deep thought in the field of Neo-Pagan culture as a whole, as it does in the field of Neo-paganism on the Internet. Fountain not compulsory.
This review non-centrally appeared in the Midsummer 2005 multinational of WynterGreene.
