Taking the reader into the heart of one of the fastest-growing religious movements in North America, Sabina Magliocco reveals how the disciplines of anthropology and folklore were fundamental to the early development of Neo-Paganism and the revival of witchcraft. Magliocco examines the roots that this religious movement has in a Western spiritual tradition of mysticism disavowed by the Enlightenment. She explores, too, how modern Pagans and Witches are imaginatively reclaiming discarded practices and beliefs to create religions more in keeping with their personal experience of the world as sacred and filled with meaning. Neo-Pagan religions focus on experience, rather than belief, and many contemporary practitioners have had mystical experiences. They seek a context that normalizes them and creates in them new spiritual dimensions that involve change in ordinary consciousness.
Magliocco analyzes magical practices and rituals of Neo-Paganism as art forms that reanimate the cosmos and stimulate the imagination of its practitioners. She discusses rituals that are put together using materials from a variety of cultural and historical sources, and examines the cultural politics surrounding the movement--how the Neo-Pagan movement creates identity by contrasting itself against the dominant culture and how it can be understood in the context of early twenty-first-century identity politics. Witching Culture is the first ethnography of this religious movement to focus specifically on the role of anthropology and folklore in its formation, on experiences that are central to its practice, and on what it reveals about identity and belief in twenty-first-century North America.Though this book was written for academic purposes and shows corresponding literary telltales, it is quite accessible and has several outstanding features. The best thing about the book is that the author did not just do an academic survey--she immersed herself in the Bay Area Wiccan culture, and presents first-hand descriptions of what she discovered. Her description of public rituals in the New Reformed Order of the Golden...
0Report
This is an excellent examination and introduction to the study of the Wicccan culture. Combining personal tales with more traditional folklore techniques and commentary she crafts a compelling exploration of many of the questions that those who are not primarily interested in belief systems per se are interested in. If you want to have insight into what Wiccans are interested in and how they relate this is the book. If I...
0Report
Sabina Magliocco's "Witching Culture" is quite possibly the most significant volume on Contemporary Pagan Culture to have been written in several years. Magliocco, author of an earlier volume on Neo-Pagan Art and Altars, has filled in several gaps left by Ronald Hutton and Sarah Pike, authors of important recent works in their own right. The real strength of Magliocco's approach lies in her combined historical and folkloric...
0Report
*Must Have, Double Bag!* is old school comic fandom's term for things that a fan _cannot_ live without--and have any fanboy or fangirl cred in the eyes of her or his fan peers. And a perfect, to-the-point description of this book. Written by a Gardnerian and Reclaiming practitioner who also happens to be a skillful folklorist and anthropologist, Magliocco is presently an assistant professor at California State University,...
0Report