Book description
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.
"Magliocco impressively corrals the diverse writings and
experiences of U. S. neo-pagans into this highly readable and deeply
researched ethnographic study. . . . Highly recommended."-Choice
Sabina Magliocco teaches anthropology at California State University,
Northridge.
