I’ve noticed that a lot of Patheos Pagan authors post book reviews, and since I’m nothing if not a sheep baaaa adventurous, I decided to try my hand at it as well. There are a ton of new and interesting books on shelves at the moment, but for my first review, I’m going to tackle the one that seems to be getting the most attention: The Horned God of the Witches by Jason Mankey.
This should be fun. For everyone except Jason Mankey.
The cover art of The Horned God of the Witches was created by Laura Tempest Zakroff, so straight away, we’ve got some serious gaslighting to unpack. It’s almost as if Jason Mankey “asked” Tempest to “contribute,” and she “agreed.” Nothing about this situation is trustworthy.
I’m just saying that if Jason Mankey spent less of his day maintaining his full head of luscious curls, he might have time to design his own book covers, instead of blackmailing strong-arming busy content creators into doing it for him.
Check your hair privilege, Jason Mankey.
Books traditionally start with page one on the right-hand side, and The Horned God of the Witches does not deviate from the norm at all here. I’ve long suspected that Jason Mankey is a sock puppet for Big Typesetting, and frankly, this is all the proof I need. One wonders what kind of kickbacks Jason Mankey received for using Times New Roman instead of a progressive, sans serif font produced by an independent studio that probably went out of business over this.
The book itself is 305 pages. Three of them cover Elen of the Ways. There are also a couple of paragraphs on other female horned figures, and a few sentences on Green Women. Since less than two percent of the book is devoted to Goddess concepts, it is exceedingly clear that Jason Mankey hates men. And not just men who refuse to pick up after themselves and listen to Creed unironically. All men. And Tilda Swinton.
It’s probably just Stockholm Syndrome, though. I’m sure he’ll be fine once we rescue him from the Gynocracy. Somebody get on that.
Throughout the book, Jason Mankey provides information on a variety of Horned Gods, including Pan, Dionysos, Cernunnos, the Green Man, Herne the Hunter, Lucifer, and the Witchfather. This is, of course, a woefully incomplete list, so I have thoughtfully compiled some blatantly obvious aspects of the Horned God that Jason Mankey fails to acknowledge:
- Tim Curry as the Lord of Darkness in Legend.
- Mickey Rourke as Hyperion in Immortals.
- The Wicker Man.
- The original Wicker Man, that is. Not the Nicholas Cage travesty.
- Ye Gods but that was a terrible remake.
- It’s probably best to just avoid Nicholas Cage movies in general.
- Except for Color Out of Space. That one was pretty good.
- Although there was that scene early on where the teenage daughter is practicing Witchcraft down by the river, and some random dude interrupts her and is all, “Oh, you’re Alexandrian.” How would he even know that? I didn’t like that part.
- The lead singer of Heilung.
- The Minotaur’s younger brother, Kevin.
- You know, now that I think about it, Willy’s Wonderland wasn’t bad, either.
- Channing Tatum.
Jason Mankey does put some effort into discussing Krampus, the Christmas Devil, but he makes no mention whatsoever of the fact that my friend Douglas and I were into Krampus way before it was cool. I, for one, am profoundly unamused by this clearly intentional oversight, and I’m sure Douglas is pretty devastated, too. Or at least he will be when he finds out. (He’s got a sinus infection at the moment, and I am not about to drop this kind of oppression on him when he can’t breathe right.)
Oh, and speaking of cold-hearted erasure, Jason Mankey’s wife, Ari, is not in the index. The hell, Jason Mankey? How are we supposed to find the Ari passages? Are we expected to read the whole book? Do we even look like people who read entire books? I feel personally attacked. Again.
Anyway, to sum this up:
The Pros
It’s definitely a book.
The Cons
It’s definitely a book by Jason Mankey.
Which leads us to…
The Actual Review
Okay, seriously, y’all. The Horned God of the Witches is really, really terrific, and I think you’ll get a lot out of it. I know I did. Now let us all head over to Amazon and post five-star reviews to counteract any negative comments left by douche-nuggets who are threatened by the thought of gender equality.
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