Quick Facts
Biography
Alex Mar is an American documentary filmmaker and writer. Her work centers on contemporary mysticism, spirituality, witchcraft, and religion, and her writing has been featured in The New York Times Book Review, the Believer, the Oxford American, and more.
Films
Her film, American Mystic premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2010. Five years in the making, the film focuses on three "spiritual outsiders": Morpheus, a Pagan priestess building a spiritual sanctuary in rural California; Kublai, a Spiritualist medium working on a farm in Upstate New York; and Chuck, a Lakota Sioux, raising his family in according to his ancestors' way of life.
Writing
Witches of America
Mar's first book, Witches of America, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Sarah Crichton Books in 2015. It was a New York Times Notable Book for 2015.
The book is both a memoir and an exploration of contemporary occult practice in the United States. The book traces a brief history of contemporary occult practice, from Aleister Crowley and the Ordo Templi Orientis to contemporary Gnostic masses being held in New Orleans. She also explores her personal relationship with Morpheus Ravenna, a Feri witch she met during the filming of American Mystic. In the book, Mar also takes on the spiritual training required to be initiated into the Feri tradition and explores her own relationship to mysticism and ritual, as the daughter of a Cuban and Greek immigrants.
Although the book was received favorably by critics, it was controversial within the Pagan community, with some members charging Mar with engaging in spiritual tourism.
Essays
Mar's essays have been featured in a number of publications, including The New York Times Book Review, the Believer, and the Oxford American. She has written about contemporary Catholic nuns in Houston, Texas; the Church of Satan; and the "body farm" at the Forensic Anthropology Center (FACTS), Texas State University in San Marcos. Her article Witchcraft is the perfect religion for liberal millennials was published on Quartz on 2016.