Beetlejuice and The Sacred Clown Part 1: The Koshare and The Ritual of Breaking Every Rule
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Beals, Ralph L. Preliminary Report on the Ethnography of the Southwest. Berkeley, CA: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Field Division of Education, 1935. This is one of the major historical comparative sources behind the sections on Pueblo ceremonial organization, clown societies, katsina dances, agriculture, rain ceremonialism, medicine societies, and policing functions. Benedict, Ruth. Tales of the Cochiti Indians. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 98. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1931. This is the primary historical source for the Cochiti narratives we used, particularly “The Recovery of the Koshare” and the material concerning the recovery of the katsinas. Howard, Courtney. “[Interview] Costume Designer Colleen Atwood Fashions Character Into Clothing in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.” Fresh Fiction, September 19, 2024. Interview with Colleen Atwood discussing Aggie Guerard Rodgers’ work on the original film and Atwood’s statement that the original Beetlejuice appearance derived from a Tim Burton sketch centered on the striped suit. Mathiowetz, Michael D. “The Keepers of Tradition: Clown Societies in the Casas Grandes and Puebloan Worlds.” KIVA: Journal of Southwestern Anthropology and History 91, no. 2 (2025): 147–179. https://doi.org/10.1080/00231940.2025.2461803. Particularly important for understanding Pueblo clown societies as institutions associated with governance, katsina ceremonialism, medicine societies, and the agricultural cycle, rather than merely as comic performers. Parsons, Elsie Clews. Taos Pueblo. General Series in Anthropology 2. Menasha, WI: George Banta Publishing Company, 1936. Used as part of the historical ethnographic background concerning community sanctions, ridicule, Pueblo social organization, and ceremonial clowning. Parsons, Elsie Clews, and Ralph L. Beals. “The Sacred Clowns of the Pueblo and Mayo-Yaqui Indians.” American Anthropologist 36, no. 4 (1934): 491–514. https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1934.36.4.02a00020. One of the foundational comparative studies of Pueblo ceremonial clown traditions and particularly useful for demonstrating that the various clown societies should not be collapsed into one supposedly universal Native American figure. Roediger, Virginia More. Ceremonial Costumes of the Pueblo Indians: Their Evolution, Fabrication, and Significance in the Prayer Drama. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1941; reprinted 1991. The principal historical source used for the detailed descriptions of black-and-white body striping, hair arrangements, cornhusk elements, clown behavior, mimicry, village gossip, and ceremonial appearance. White, Leslie A. The Pueblo of Sia, New Mexico. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 184. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1962. Particularly important for the Sia/Zia material concerning Koshairi and Kwairina, ceremonial societies, katsina dances, corn-dance responsibilities, contrary behavior, doorkeepers, clowning, and disciplinary authority. Wenger, Tisa. We Have a Religion: The 1920s Pueblo Indian Dance Controversy and American Religious Freedom. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009. This is the major modern scholarly source behind our discussion of missionary accusations, alleged obscenity, Charles Burke, federal regulation of Pueblo dances, religious suppression, and the political struggle over whether Pueblo ceremonies would be recognized as “religion” under American religious-freedom discourse. Swentzell, Roxanne. Oral history interview by Mija Riedel, November 8–9, 2011. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Inst
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Links For The Occult Rejects https://linktr.ee/theoccultrejects Occult Research Institute https://www.occultresearchinstitute.org/ Substack https://substack.com/@theoccultrejects?r=7auau0&utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page Cash App https://cash.app/$theoccultrejects Venmo @TheOccultRejects Patreon https://www.patreon.com/TheOccultRejects PART TWO BIBLIOGRAPHY Christianity Created the Western Occult Primary Sources Paracelsus. Paracelsus: Essential Theoretical Writings. Edited and translated by Andrew Weeks. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2008. This is the edition I’d use for Paracelsus rather than modern occult compilations; it gives the German and English texts with extensive scholarly commentary. Wellcome Collection Dee, John. John Dee’s Five Books of Mystery: Original Sourcebook of Enochian Magic. Edited and translated by Joseph H. Peterson. Weiser Books, 2003. A modern edition of Dee’s Mysteriorum Libri Quinque and one of the most useful primary-source collections for the early angelic sessions. Red Wheel/Weiser Böhme, Jakob. Aurora: The Day-Spring, or Dawning of the Day in the Orient. Originally written 1612. Any scholarly or reliable critical edition can be used for the primary material concerning Böhme’s early cosmology. Böhme, Jakob. The Way to Christ. Useful for the explicitly Christian and regenerative side of Böhme rather than treating him merely as an abstract occult cosmologist. Swedenborg, Emanuel. Heaven and Hell. Originally published in Latin in 1758. I’d use the New Century Edition, translated by George F. Dole, because it includes scholarly historical material and annotations. Swedenborg Foundation Saint-Martin, Louis-Claude de. Theosophic Correspondence between Louis Claude de Saint-Martin and Kirchberger, Baron de Liebistorf. Translated by Edward Burton Penny. Especially useful for documenting Saint-Martin’s engagement with Böhme and his increasingly interior understanding of Christian theosophy. Theosophy Society Eckartshausen, Karl von. The Cloud Upon the Sanctuary. The A. E. Waite translation is historically useful because Waite’s transmission of the text is itself part of its later occult reception. Lévi, Éliphas. Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual. Translated by A. E. Waite. Important as a primary document for Lévi’s synthesis of Kabbalah, ceremonial magic, Christian symbolism, priesthood, polarity, and magical theory. Lévi, Éliphas. The History of Magic. Again, use this as a primary source for what Lévi believed, not as reliable modern historiography. Waite, Arthur Edward. The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal. Essential for understanding the specifically Christian-mystical dimension of Waite’s esotericism. Waite, Arthur Edward. The Secret Tradition in Freemasonry. Useful for Waite’s conception of mystical initiation and the “secret tradition.” Fortune, Dion. The Mystical Qabalah. First published 1935. Essential primary material for Fortune’s attempt to interpret Qabalah through the twentieth-century Western Mystery Tradition. Medieval Grimoires, Ritual Magic & Angelic Practice This is the group I would rely upon heavily for the material we added concerning Christian prayer, exorcism, angels, grimoires, consecration, and the unstable boundary between religion and magic. Kieckhefer, Richard. Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer’s Manual of the Fifteenth Century. Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997/1998. Absolutely essential. Kieckhefer edits and analyzes a real medieval magical manuscript containing prayers, conjurations, astral operations, spirit catalogues, and ceremonies for consecrating magical books. PSU Press Fanger, Claire, ed. Invoking Angels: Theurgic Ideas and Practices, Thirteenth to Sixteenth Centuries. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012. One of the strongest sources for our thesis because it specifically examines medieval and Renaissance attempts to obtain knowledge or supernatural assistance through angels. PSU Press Fanger, Claire. Rewriting Magic: An Exegesis of the Vis
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