Witching Culture

Magliocco, Sabina. Witching Culture: Folklore and Neo-paganism in America. Contemporary Ethnography series. Philadelphia, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004.

9780812218794;

In Witching Culture, Sabina Magliocco reveals how anthropology and folklore were fundamental to the early development of neopaganism and the revival of witchcraft.  Magliocco shows how this religious movement was born out of 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 religious practice more in keeping with their personal experience of the world as sacred and filled with meaning. 

Neo Pagan religions focus on practice, rather than belief, and many contemporary adherents have had mystical experiences. They seek a context that normalizes them and creates in them new spiritual dimensions that enrich ordinary consciousness. Magliocco analyzes magical practices and rituals of neopaganism 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 neopaganism creates identity by contrasting itself against the dominant culture, Better understood in the context of early 21st 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 my belief in 21st century North America.

Sabina Magliocco is a professor of anthropology at California State University, Northridge, recipient of many awards, and has written on religion, folklore, foodways, festival, and witchcraft in Europe and the United States. She is an honorary fellow of the American Folklore Society. 

• Author--Sabina Magliocco More books by Sabina Magliocco
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