A Field Guide to Modern Pagans in Hamilton, Ontario by Neil Jamieson-Williams © 2008 Australopithecine Press ISBN 978-1894602112 146 Pages Paperback $19.95 (U.S.) Available from www.Lulu.com

Every once in awhile I get a chance to step into the world of academia, which I enjoy. I am, by no stretch of the imagination, an academic, so such excursions broaden my perceptions. About a year and a half ago I had the opportunity to review Toward an Academic Study of British Wicca, which gave me an appreciation of the origins of British Wicca. Now this book offers a look into Canadian Paganism.

More importantly, the author lays out procedures for those who will follow him. He explains a variety of ways to collect data, while at the same time explaining why hard facts and numbers will be difficult to come by. He took years to accumulate the data contained in this small book. In spite of the fact that he scrupulously shielded the identities of his respondents he has spoken with, he still manages to convey a significant amount of information.

This book provides a snapshot of the Modern Pagan community in the Hamilton, Ontario, Canada region. While this is a small geographic area, and it isn’t wise to generalize from such a small sample area, the techniques used can be expanded to obtain information over a wider area.

Essentially, the value of this work lies not in the comments made about the various groups (most of them are extremely small groups with minimal effect on the local community), but in the detailing of various ways of gathering the information and how to interact specifically with minority religious groups.

As he is quick to point out, the Modern Pagan community is in an almost constant state of flux, not only in Canada, but elsewhere in the Western world. He draws no conclusions from his research, although he does offer some of his own thoughts as regards the Modern Pagan population (which he clearly indicates are, at best, guesstimates.

This is a work which will have a moderately limited appeal, unfortunately. It may, however (and this is a personal desire on my part) spark enough interest in others to pursue and expand upon this work. It will never be possible to deliver the definitive work on Modern Pagans, due to the constant evolution of the culture, but the more attention that is paid to its development, the better understood it can become. Understanding why people choose this belief system; how they interact with each other and the surrounding culture; and what their hopes and fears are can (with any luck at all) help those hopes to materialize and the fears to diminish.