People of the Outside
Witchcraft, Cannibalism, and the Elder Folk
by Lee Morgan
Taste the Forbidden History. Witchcraft owned your skin before you ever knew you did. You slipped into it down the drain-pipe of a birth cord, and it had you sewn into the flesh-purse of your baby hide. Many tales have come down to us over the past few hundred years, stories of outsiders reflected in a mirror darkly. The People of the Outside is a different sort of history, some of the deepest buried sediment to be found in a cave and sifted for traces of the past. It is a history of the dust. It pulls apart binaries and invites us to use our hybrid brains – every tool, from science to intuition – to untangle the elf-locks that endure as a clever-cord, an elongated witch’s ball, one that reaches all the way back to our own almost extinct ancestors. Welcome to the witchcraft of the dispossessed, from the almost until recently forgotten forebears to eating people, and an unflinching examination of what it means to be a person of the outside.
REVIEW
5 out of 5
Morgan has a unique writing style, that evokes vivid imagery, while leading you through a path of knowledge of history and ancestors. If chapter one doesn’t grab your attention and draw you in, then this isn’t the book for you. The subject of how things have changed, how witches no longer have to hide in the shadows is also broached. We live in an unprecedented time, when in many countries, witches and pagans no longer need to hide. We can be open about our practices and beliefs. Between the history of witches and how often they’ve been othered throughout history, we get to dive a little deeper into different cultures and their historic views on witchcraft. There is a (very) extensive bibliography, should you want to dive deeper on your own. I learned some new things, and realized some things I should’ve known, but just hadn’t really thought about.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lee Morgan lives on a communal homestead on kunanyi/Mt Wellington in nipaluna/Hobart, where he creates sanctuary for other weirdos, raises books, people, and ideas from the grave. He has had novels and non-fiction published by Moon Books, Three Hands Press, The Witches Almanac and Rebel Satori. Having survived an enormous tumour, Lee currently is busy filling the room in his skull with new brains, writing Folk Horror, and queering the world one step at a time.
