Margot Adler
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Margot Susanna Adler (April 16, 1946 – July 28, 2014) was an American author, journalist, and lecturer. She worked as a correspondent for
National Public Radio National Public Radio (NPR) is an American public broadcasting organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It serves as a national Radio syndication, syndicator to a network of more ...
for 35 years, became bureau chief of the New York office, and could be heard frequently on nationally syndicated
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and
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on
National Public Radio National Public Radio (NPR) is an American public broadcasting organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It serves as a national Radio syndication, syndicator to a network of more ...
(NPR). A
Wicca Wicca (), also known as "The Craft", is a Modern paganism, modern pagan, syncretic, Earth religion, Earth-centred religion. Considered a new religious movement by Religious studies, scholars of religion, the path evolved from Western esote ...
n high priestess, Adler wrote ''Drawing Down the Moon'', a seminal work on neopaganism in America.


Early life

Born in
Little Rock Little Rock is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Arkansas, most populous city of the U.S. state of Arkansas. The city's population was 202,591 as of the 2020 census. The six-county Central Arkan ...
, Arkansas, she was the only child of Dr. Kurt Adler, and the only grandchild of renowned psychologist
Alfred Adler Alfred Adler ( ; ; 7 February 1870 – 28 May 1937) was an Austrian medical doctor, psychotherapist, and founder of the school of individual psychology. His emphasis on the importance of feelings of belonging, relationships within the family, a ...
, a contemporary and associate of
Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( ; ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies seen as originating fro ...
’s and
Carl Jung Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and psychologist who founded the school of analytical psychology. A prolific author of Carl Jung publications, over 20 books, illustrator, and corr ...
’s in Vienna before the
Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
. She was also the only child of her mother Freyda Nacque Adler (née Pasternack) who was the daughter of uneducated immigrants, both of whom were dead by the time Margot was born. Freyda was charismatic--Margot likened her to Auntie Mame, beautiful, and a renowned political activist, and beloved mother to Margot. Both parents were Jewish although neither practiced the religion nor observed its religious holidays. In her autobiographical account of growing up in the 1960s, ''Heretic's Heart'', she branded herself, “an alien in America.” Her paternal grandfather had been a personal friend of
Leon Trotsky Lev Davidovich Bronstein ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky,; ; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky'' was a Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician, and political theorist. He was a key figure ...
’s. Trotsky was ruthlessly hunted and ultimately assassinated by
Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...
and his henchmen. Her grandfather had brought his family to the United States to avoid persecution by Stalinist, anti-Trotsky factions in Austria. But he was unable to save his oldest daughter, Valentine, who was imprisoned in Russia.
Albert Einstein Albert Einstein (14 March 187918 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who is best known for developing the theory of relativity. Einstein also made important contributions to quantum mechanics. His mass–energy equivalence f ...
, a friend of the family interceded on the Alders’ behalf and learned that Valentine and her husband had died in a
gulag The Gulag was a system of Labor camp, forced labor camps in the Soviet Union. The word ''Gulag'' originally referred only to the division of the Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies, Soviet secret police that was in charge of runnin ...
in 1942. Margot describes herself as “raised by left-wing parents,” a red diaper baby, in the height of the McCarthy era. Her father, like her grandfather, was a psychiatrist, who remained a cipher to Margot. He devoted his life’s work to analyzing his father’s theories of human psychology and drawing parallels to those of Karl Marx’s theories of economic socialism, although this work remained incomplete at the time of his death. Margot wrote, “The only thing that was beaten in my head was the Adlerian notion of ‘social interest,’ which, while never clearly defined in my youth, seemed to have something to do with being cooperative and merging your individual desires with the needs of society—rather like socialism”. Margot grew up in Manhattan where she attended the liberal
City and Country School City and Country School is a progressive education, progressive independent preschool, elementary school and middle school for children aged 2–14 that is located in the Greenwich Village section of New York City. Founding City and Country Sc ...
in Greenwich Village, “my utopia, and the place that remained whole and intact and vibrant, even when my own family fell apart” . It was here that she fell in love with the stories of the gods and goddesses of myth that were later foundational in her decision to become a Wiccan priestess. There she also discovered her love of singing and performance which would influence her to go to the High School of Music & Art (later joined with the High School of Performing Arts to become the LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and the Performing Arts) in New York City. It was her mother Freyda to whom she was closest and with whom she lived after her parents’ divorce. Her mother retained the family apartment on Manhattan’s West Side overlooking
Central Park Central Park is an urban park between the Upper West Side and Upper East Side neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City, and the first landscaped park in the United States. It is the List of parks in New York City, sixth-largest park in the ...
, which Margot inherited when it was still a rent-controlled apartment and which she and her husband subsequently purchased when the units became condominiums. Margot referred to the apartment as her bit of heaven on earth, high up on the western edge of Central Park with a view of the city. It came with all of the family mementos stored there since Margot’s childhood, including the letters that formed the basis of ''Heretic’s Heart''.


Education

Adler received a Bachelor of Arts in political science from the
University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...
and a master's degree from the
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism is located in Pulitzer Hall on the university's Morningside Heights campus in New York City. Founded in 1912 by Joseph Pulitzer, Columbia Journalism School is one of the oldest journalism sch ...
in New York in 1970. She was a Nieman Fellow at
Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...
in 1982. The focus of ''Heretic’s Heart'' was Margot’s experiences in the 60s. She was a freshman at Berkeley when the Free Speech Movement (FSM) erupted there in 1965 in response to the University of California’s crackdown on student and faculty rights to meet and organize on political issues, specifically to enlist students as workers in the Civil Rights Movement in the South. Campus protests and finally a sit-in at Sproul Hall, the Berkeley Administration Building, resulted in the largest mass arrest of students for political protests in the nation’s history. Following in her mother’s footsteps, Margot did not shy away from political activism. She embraced it, drawn to issues, feeling matters deeply to the point where she willingly went to jail for 90 days for her protests in FSM when she might have escaped her punishment. It was at this time that Margot began working as a volunteer journalist reporting on FSM for Pacifica Radio, KPFA, in Berkeley. In 1965, the summer of her freshman year, she went to Mississippi to volunteer with the Democratic Freedom Party to register African Americans to vote. This was not a positive experience on many levels. There was discord between the volunteers and regular staff workers; little success in registering many voters; and finally, she found herself stranded with other volunteers on a lonesome country road where they were forced at gunpoint to abandon the one African American volunteer who was with them and who ultimately walked back to safety on his own. The experience left Margot shaken and she decided to return home to New York. She stopped ''en route'' in Little Rock, (where she had been born while her father was stationed there during the Second World War) to visit a family friend who lived in an all-white neighborhood and who shared with Margot her regret at the recent school desegregation in that city. This served to further underscore Margot’s sense of alienation in her own country. At the core of ''Heretic's Heart'' is the correspondence between Margot and a GI in Vietnam that took place while she was a student at Berkeley. They wrote 200 pages of letters between the spring of 1967 to later that year when they finally met after he returned in October from a war he didn’t support but had had to fight to survive. He and Margot finally rendezvoused in San Francisco and spent several days together. However, the love affair did not last, and there is no record that they stayed in touch afterward although it came closest to the romantic obsessions spinning in her mind. After graduating from Berkeley Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in political science, she chose to pursue a career in journalism and was accepted into the Master’s Program at Columbia University. But being part of the establishment did not end her political activism. She and a friend, as part of their studies, joined the Venceremos Brigade harvesting sugar in Cuba to support the Cuban revolution and to counter the crippling impact of the USA's economic embargo against the country. Her stay ended when she was called back to her mother’s bedside in the final days of her battle with lung cancer. She died in 1970 at the age of 61.


Journalism and radio

In 1971 Margot went to Washington, D.C. during the Nixon years to serve as bureau chief for Pacifica radio. These were difficult times for her. She struggled with her weight and body issues and felt “I was way over my head in the strange land of Richard Nixon’s Washington. On the outside I tried to look reasonably ‘straight’ and presentable; I spoke softly and politely. On the inside I was raging.” After returning to
New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
, she worked at its sister station, WBAI-FM, where, in 1972, she created the talk show '' Hour of the Wolf'' (still on the air as hosted by Jim Freund), and later another talk show, called ''Unstuck in Time''. Adler joined NPR in 1979 as a general assignment reporter, after spending a year as an NPR freelance reporter covering New York City, and subsequently worked on a great many pieces dealing with subjects as diverse as the death penalty, the
right to die The right to die is a concept rooted in the belief that individuals have the Self-ownership, autonomy to make fundamental decisions about their own lives, including the choice to Suicide, end them or undergo voluntary euthanasia, central to the b ...
movement, the response to the war in
Kosovo Kosovo, officially the Republic of Kosovo, is a landlocked country in Southeast Europe with International recognition of Kosovo, partial diplomatic recognition. It is bordered by Albania to the southwest, Montenegro to the west, Serbia to the ...
, computer gaming, the drug ecstasy, geek culture, children and technology and
Pokémon is a Japanese media franchise consisting of List of Pokémon video games, video games, Pokémon (TV series), animated series and List of Pokémon films, films, Pokémon Trading Card Game, a trading card game, and other related media. The fran ...
. After 9/11, she focused much of her work on stories exploring the human factors in New York City, from the loss of loved ones, homes and jobs, to work in the relief effort. She was the host of '' Justice Talking'' up until the show ceased production on July 3, 2008. She was a regular voice on ''
Morning Edition ''Morning Edition'' is an American radio news program produced and distributed by NPR. It airs weekday mornings (Monday through Friday) and runs for two hours, and many stations repeat one or both hours. The show feeds live from 5:00 to 9:00 a ...
'' and ''
All Things Considered ''All Things Considered'' (''ATC'') is the flagship news program on the American network National Public Radio (NPR). It was the first news program on NPR, premiering on May 3, 1971. It is broadcast live on NPR affiliated stations in the United ...
''. She was also co-producer of an award-winning radio drama, ''War Day''.


Neopaganism

Adler wrote '' Drawing Down the Moon'',Viking Press 1979; revised ed. Beacon Press 1987, and Penguin Books 1997 a 1979 book about
Neopaganism Modern paganism, also known as contemporary paganism and neopaganism, spans a range of new religious movements variously influenced by the Paganism, beliefs of pre-modern peoples across Europe, North Africa, and the Near East. Despite some comm ...
which was revised in 2006. The book is considered by some a watershed in American Neopagan circles, as it provided the first comprehensive look at modern nature-based religions in the US. For many years it was the only introductory work about American Neopagan communities. She was also drawn to paganism as the spiritual side of her feminism which rejected the hierarchy of monotheism. She agreed with the historian James Breasted's characterization of monotheism as “imperialism in religion.” Her second book, ''Heretic's Heart: A Journey Through Spirit and Revolution'', was published by
Beacon Press Beacon Press is an American left-wing non-profit book publisher. Founded in 1854 by the American Unitarian Association, it is currently a department of the Unitarian Universalist Association. It is known for publishing authors such as Jame ...
in 1997. Adler was a
Wicca Wicca (), also known as "The Craft", is a Modern paganism, modern pagan, syncretic, Earth religion, Earth-centred religion. Considered a new religious movement by Religious studies, scholars of religion, the path evolved from Western esote ...
n priestess, an elder in the Covenant of the Goddess, and she also participated in the Unitarian Universalist faith community.


Personal life

Margot’s partner in life was John Gliedman whom she married in June 1988 when she was 42. Like Margot, he was the child of a psychiatrist, well-educated with a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They held a commitment ceremony in 1976. They were married in a pagan ritual that took place on Martha’s Vineyard where Margot had loved family vacations with her parents as a child. “Their wedding was the first Pagan handfasting to be written up in the society pages of The New York Times.” Margot and John had one child, a son born in 1990.


Death

In early 2011, Adler was diagnosed with
endometrial cancer Endometrial cancer is a cancer that arises from the endometrium (the epithelium, lining of the uterus or womb). It is the result of the abnormal growth of cells (biology), cells that can invade or spread to other parts of the body. The first s ...
, which metastasized over the following three years. Adler died on July 28, 2014, at the age of 68.


Bibliography

* 1979 – '' Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America Today'' * 1997 – ''Heretic's Heart: A Journey Through Spirit and Revolution'' (Beacon Press) * 2000 – ''Our Way to the Stars'' by Margot Adler & John Gliedman  – Motorbooks Intl , * 2013 – ''Out for Blood'' Kindle Single * 2014 – ''Vampires Are Us'' (Weiser Books) ,


Contributed to

* 1989 – ''Healing the Wounds: The Promise of Ecofeminism'' – Judith Plant (editor) (New Society Pub) * 1994 – ''Return of the Great Goddess'' by Burleigh Muten ( Shambhala) * 1995 – ''People of the Earth: The New Pagans Speak Out'' by Ellen Evert Hopman, Lawrence Bond ( Inner Traditions) * 2001 – ''Modern Pagans: an Investigation of Contemporary Ritual'' (Re/Search) * 2002 – ''The Free Speech Movement: Reflections on Berkeley in the 1960s'' – Edited by Robert Cohen and Reginald E. Zelnik (
University of California Press The University of California Press, otherwise known as UC Press, is a publishing house associated with the University of California that engages in academic publishing. It was founded in 1893 to publish scholarly and scientific works by faculty ...
) * 2003 – '' Sisterhood Is Forever: The Women's Anthology for a New Millennium'' (Adler wrote "Inner Space: The Spiritual Frontier") – edited by
Robin Morgan Robin Morgan (born January 29, 1941) is an American poet, writer, activist, journalist, lecturer and former child actor. Since the early 1960s, she has been a key Radical feminism, radical feminist member of the American Feminist movement, Wom ...
( Washington Square Press) * 2005 – ''Cakes and Ale for the Pagan Soul: Spells, Recipes, and Reflections from Neopagan Elders and Teachers'' – Patricia Telesco ( Celestial Arts)


Discography

* 1986 – ''From Witch to Witch-Doctor: Healers, Therapists and Shamans'' ACE – Lecture on cassette * 1986 – ''The Magickal Movement: Present and Future'' (with Isaac Bonewits,
Selena Fox Selena Fox (born 20 October 1949 in Arlington, Virginia) is a Wiccan priestess, interfaith minister, Environmentalism, environmentalist, Paganism (contemporary), pagan elder, author, and lecturer in the fields of pagan studies, ecopsychology, an ...
, and
Robert Anton Wilson Robert Anton Wilson (born Robert Edward Wilson; January 18, 1932 – January 11, 2007) was an American writer, futurist, psychologist, and self-described agnostic mystic. Recognized within Discordianism as an Episkopos, pope and saint, Wilson ...
) ACE – Panel discussion on cassette


See also

*
Maggie Shayne Maggie Shayne (born 1965) is an American author who wrote more than 70 novels. Shayne has won multiple awards, including the Romance Writers of America RITA Award, multiple Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice and Career Achievement Awards, The Reade ...
* Murry Hope


Notes


References

* Vale, V. and John Sulak (2001). ''Modern Pagans''. San Francisco: Re/Search Publications.


External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Adler, Margot 1946 births 2014 deaths 20th-century occultists 21st-century occultists
Margot Margot ( , ) is a feminine given name, a French language, French diminutive of Marguerite (given name), Marguerite that has long been used as an independent name. Variant spellings in use include Margo (given name), Margo and Margaux (name), Margaux ...
American occultists American people of Austrian-Jewish descent American people of Hungarian-Jewish descent American radio journalists American spiritual writers American Wiccans Deaths from cancer in New York (state) Deaths from endometrial cancer Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism alumni The High School of Music & Art alumni Jewish American journalists Jewish American non-fiction writers Jewish women writers Nieman Fellows NPR personalities Pacifica Foundation people Pagan studies scholars UC Berkeley College of Letters and Science alumni Wiccan priestesses Wiccan writers American women religious writers Journalists from New York City Converts from Judaism 20th-century American non-fiction writers 20th-century American women journalists 20th-century American journalists 21st-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American women journalists 21st-century American journalists American women radio journalists Wiccans of Jewish descent 21st-century American Jews American women religious leaders Converts to pagan religions