Contemporary Paganism Research Articles

Instead of Introduction: How Old Is Sacredness?

It is customary that references to history are used to legitimise one’s ideological and religious statements. This method is particularly visible in contemporary pagan and spiritual movements, in which history has a crucial position not only in justifications of religious claims but also in searching inspiration for contemporary beliefs and for providing a structural framework for (re)constructing past religions. The commonest explanation for using history in arguments and rhetoric in religion is to add credibility to one’s claims. Examples can be found in traditional institutional religious organisations, in contemporary spiritual movements, but also in the rhetoric of individual charismatic leaders. Such rhetorical manner is not common to contemporary religions only but can also be followed in historical folk religion (see, e.g., Johanson 2018). For instance, in a record of a heavily worn eighteenth-century copper coin, used for healing magic in the early twentieth century, the old age of the coin is specifically valued.

Contemporary Paganism in Portugal

This research discusses contemporary Paganism in Portugal by the analysis of the trajectory and actual practices of the Associação Pagã (Pagan association), a local affiliate of the Pagan Federation International. The methodology was ethnographic fieldwork and interviews conducted with the leaders and members of this association. This association is engaged in public debates about laicity and religious freedom, ecological issues, gender diversity, and feminism. They also engage and promote religious rituals at archaeological sites. As a conclusion, the research discusses the role of pagan practices on creating a plural public space in a catholic country.

The sacred is in the whole: experiences from practitioners of (Neo)paganism as possibilities of the being's holistic encounter

This paper aims to understand the experiences of practitioners of Contemporary Paganism and the relationships they have with their spiritual practices, as well as to investigate how they understand and interact with nature and how they perceive themselves as practitioners of a holistic belief. From in-depth interviews with four practitioners of (Neo) Paganism, it is possible to analyze the discourses on spiritual experiences through two categories of analysis: 1. Contemporary Paganism: Worldview and Holistic Practices, and 2. Understanding Totality: Nature, Self and Community. The research made it possible to understand that the relationship between the sacred, nature and the person in (Neo) Paganism is defined by the notion of totality as a reality in which the living beings, the world and the gods are interconnected, and therefore it is understood that the person-world-sacred does not separate. Palavras-chave : Pagan; Religion; Spirituality.

Magic and Witchery in the Modern West: Celebrating the Twentieth Anniversary of 'The Triumph of the Moon' ed. by Shai Feraro and Ethan Doyle White

Reviewed by: Magic and Witchery in the Modern West: Celebrating the Twentieth Anniversary of 'The Triumph of the Moon' ed. by Shai Feraro and Ethan Doyle White Michael Ostling Ronald Hutton, magic, witchcraft, Paganism, Wicca, Thelema, Reclaiming, the Sabbatic Craft, the Typhonian Tradition, Museum of Witchcraft in Cornwall shai feraro and ethan doyle white, eds. Magic and Witchery in the Modern West: Celebrating the Twentieth Anniversary of 'The Triumph of the Moon.' New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. Pp. xiv + 259. Before the publication of Ronald Hutton's The Triumph of the Moon in 1999, the study of modern magical traditions was a marginal and marginalized affair. White and Feraro's introduction to this festschrift emphasizes the high price Hutton initially paid for "paving the way" (v) for the scholarly treatment of Witchcraft today. Although he was already an established historian when he turned his attention to contemporary Paganism, Hutton's "career stalled" for almost a decade: he was passed over for grants and promotions, and some colleagues wrote him off as a crank (8). As Hutton reminds [End Page 273] us in his Afterword to the present volume, Witchcraft remains counter-cultural twenty years later (251), but the study of Witchcraft has become respectable, largely through Hutton's own unassailably rigorous erudition and good will. Pagan studies has flourished over the last two decades, and now enjoys its own journal (The Pomegranate), its own international conferences, its own schools and schisms and controversies, all signs of a healthy and growing field of research. Many of the foundational figures of this interdiscipline share the pages of Magic and Witchery, together with several up-and-coming researchers. The result is a rich, occasionally cantankerous, always provocative babble of voices, which collectively indicate the vigor, and the diversity, of Pagan studies today. The contributors to this volume approach their subject from a variety of methodological backgrounds: religious studies, anthropology, history, folklore, even psychology. Yet the ten chapters are perhaps best analyzed into two modes of inquiry. The first, which I will call "genealogical" (with reference less to Foucault than to the American Kennel Club), produces intricate concatenations of interconnected "lineages" or "traditions"—Gardnerian Wicca, Thelema, Reclaiming, and the OTO of course, but also the Sabbatic Craft, the Typhonian Tradition, the Nameless Faith of the Witchblood—often with memberships never larger than a dozen and the lifespan of a mayfly. This mode veers toward fandom, and seldom convinces the outsider reader to care about the genealogical interconnections so minutely delineated. When the discussion turns toward the question of when and by what chain of influence a given Pagan thinker first encountered a particular line of Aleister Crowley's poetry, I tend to drift. A second, comparative mode of inquiry is more promising, and involves connecting modern Paganism to wider issues of social, intellectual, and cultural history. Three themes, in particular, emerge across the chapters: tradition and creativity, gender and sexuality, and Pagan relations with the natural world. In what follows, I will review the chapters according to these themes, rather than according to their ordering in the book. Since modern Paganisms are more obviously invented traditions than is true of more established (but no less invented) traditions such as Judaism or Christianity, every chapter examines the theme of Pagan creativity at least to some extent, but some take this creativity as their focus. Léon A. van Gulik (Chapter 8) finds that Wiccan ritual strikes an unusual balance between routine and contingency, working to "routinize the erratic" in ways that allow for endless inventiveness within stable constraints (169). However, his theoretical account of ritual creativity, complete with a multi-axial diagram worthy of Agrippa, obscures rather than clarifies how this process unfolds. [End Page 274] By contrast, Ethan Doyle White's case study of the Luciferan occultist Andrew D. Chumbley (Chapter 10) shows ritual creativity in action. Chumbley emerges as a ritual performance artist at play with various forms of esoteric drag—now a Vodou priest, now the Peacock Angel of Yezidism, now Jesus Christ crowned with thorns. Despite great efforts in the genealogical mode, Doyle White doesn't manage to disentangle Chumbley's multiple, overlapping, inconsistent self-mythologizations; moreover, such a disentangling would...

Теоретическое язычество

The topic of this article is very important and relevant today due to a rapid process of the revival of neo-paganism not only in Russia but in other countries as well. While in Western countries the problem of neo-paganism worsened sharply in the 50-60s of the twentieth century, in the Soviet Union such organizations started to appear en masse since the end of the 80s of the last century. And in 90s there were people who wrote in the genre of folk history. This study is relevant as it considers the problem of the activity of prolofic writers belonging to neo-paganism of the relatively recent past and present. This article focuses on the people who do not belong to any pagan community, even treating them negatively, but share a pagan worldview and devote many books to it. These books are very popular and can be found in most conventional bookstores. The article analyzes the genre of folk history. The biographies are described briefly with reference to scientific regalia. It is mentioned that the scientists are engaged in research which is not in their field of competence. Pseudoscientific theories about history and language are discussed in detail. In conclusion, it is emphasized that modern pagans are usually busy not reconstructing ancient beliefs and finding the lost heritage of their ancestors, but inventing illiterate hoaxes in order to create a name for themselves.

“The Goddess is Alive. Magic is Afoot.”

This article analyzes the influence of radical and cultural feminist ideas on the writings produced by Zsuzsanna Emese Mokcsay (b. 1940), a seminal Pagan activist who spearheaded the development of the Dianic Witchcraft tradition during the 1970s and 1980s. An examination of Budapest's writings reveals the ideological background of Dianic Wicca, found in the specific aspects in the works of radical and cultural feminist thinkers such Mary Daly, Adrienne Rich, Robin Morgan, Susan Griffin, and Susan Brownmiller, which suited Budapest's lesbian-separatists leanings. The article thus sheds light on the politics of Goddess Spirituality during its formative years that have made modern Paganism what it is today. This is particularly important in light of the challenges to Dianic Wicca (and Goddess Spirituality in general) in recent decades, as third-wave feminism and transgender rights highlight a generational gap between veteran and younger Dianic women.

“I Am the Gracious Goddess”: Wiccan Analytic Theology

To date, the theology and practices of modern pagan religions have not been critically studied using the methods of analytic theology. I discuss some of the challenges presented by these religions for the analytic theologian, and present a possible methodology to address these challenges, based on interview. I then use this methodology to examine the Wiccan practice of “Drawing Down the Moon”, comparing it in particular to the Christian doctrine of incarnation, and considering its philosophical implications.

Making Mythology: The Role of Ancient Faith in Crafting a Unifying Narrative in Teutonic Mythology and Children's and Household Tales

Works by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm, with particular focus on Teutonic Mythology and Children's and Household Tales, were written to establish tangible objects, written histories, and thereby a Germanic identity, which existed outside of any particular geographical location. Recreating a Germanic paganism faith formed an essential cornerstone of both ancient and modern German society. In blending pagan and Christian elements and focusing on the cultural implications of ancient myths, the Grimms vivify ancient myth in order to revive a contemporary pagan religious significance to the tales, and therefore elements of ancient pagan faith itself into the daily lives of Germanic peoples.

Między Platonem a Plotynem. Wątki erotyczne w Dziejach miłości Bożej Teodoreta z Cyru = Between Plato and Plotinus. Erotic motifs in the Religious History of Theodoret of Cyrrhus

In the article, the author examines the importance of erotic terminology for the depiction of the relationship between monk and God in the hagiographical Religious History of Theodoret, bishop of Cyrrhus. He tries to prove that Theodoret made a conscious use of philosophical concepts of Eros in order to make the phenomenon of Syriac monasticism more intelligible for the contemporary pagan intellectuals. In the argument, the author first discusses Theodoret’s knowledge of Plato’s Symposium and Phaedrus, and the Enneads of Plotinus. Secondly, he examines the possible use Theodoret makes of those texts in the six topics where the erotic terminology appears (object and subject of love, contemplation, ascetism, contrition, community).

From The Wicker Man (1973) to Atlantean Kodex: Extreme music, alternative identities and the invention of paganism

Abstract The German epic heavy/doom metal band Atlantean Kodex has written two concept albums based on the folklore and paganism of old Europe and the West: The Golden Bough and The White Goddess. The two albums owe their titles to two books that have influenced the rise of modern paganism, though they remain deeply problematical. In this article, I explore possibly the most important influence on Atlantean Kodex, which is also one of the most important influences on modern paganism: the 1973 horror film The Wicker Man. I discuss the ways in which the film uses the speculative folklore of Frazer and Graves to construct a set of invented traditions about paganism and its alternative, counter-Christian nature, which have made paganism appealing to extreme metal musicians and fans. In this discussion, I use examples from other metal bands and fans who have name-checked the themes and the traditions of the film. In discussing the folklore of the Wicker Man, I also explore the folk music used in the soundtrack, which has also contributed to the invention of modern paganism and extreme folk music. I conclude by suggesting that, although many pagans have adopted this extreme music and myth into their world-views, the myth of the Wicker Man is also used as a playful rejection of Christianity and its authority by those of a secular or humanist persuasion.

Religion of the past or living heritage?

In recent years we have witnessed a growing contemporary use of Sámi offering places by various actors, for example tourists, the local population and contemporary pagans. Hence, sites that the heritage authorities and researchers have seen as belonging to the past have gained new relevance. Nevertheless, Sámi religion is often presented in museums in relation to history and prehistory. Sámi culture has been presented in museums and exhibitions since the nineteenth century. In pointing out that this long history of museum displays affects how Sámi culture is presented in contemporary museums, Nika Potinkara (2015:41) suggests that we can renew, comment on or question the old presentations. This article explores the representations of Sámi religion in four museums and exhibitions in Northern Finland, and will answer the following research question: How is Sámi religion presented and what kind of themes are present? Here museums are studied as arenas for the dissemination of results of knowledge production. What kind of image of Sámi religion do they share?
 

Testing the Pagan Prescription: Using a Randomized Controlled Trial to Investigate Pagan Spell-Casting as a Form of Noncontact Healing.

Objectives: This research investigates the healing practices of modern Paganism using a randomized controlled trial. Paganism is a burgeoning belief system in the United Kingdom, within which healing is a key aspect. However, Pagan spell-casting practices have received little attention from distance healing researchers. This study aims to address this gap in the literature. Design: This study utilized a randomized, double-blind, delayed intervention design. Settings/Location: Research took place at the University of Northampton. Subjects: Forty-four participants (30 females, 14 males) were recruited using snowball sampling (mean age = 24.30; range = 18-55). Procedure: Participants were randomly allocated to either Group A or B. Participants made written requests to the practitioner about changes they would like to see in their lives and provided a photograph and personal item to be used during the intervention. Participants attended meetings once a week during which they would take part in a guided body scan meditation before completing a quality-of-life measure. Healing practices were conducted for Group A between weeks 1 and 2 and for Group B between weeks 2 and 3. Outcome Measure: Well-being was measured using the 26-item WHOQOL-BREF. Results: Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) showed a significant, positive change in general health from weeks 1 to 4 (F = 4.02, p = 0.025, η2 = 0.149). Separate analysis of variances of the four WHOQOL domains showed significant improvements across the study in the physical and psychologic domains only; there was no significant group difference on any of the outcomes. Conclusion: All participants showed an increase in health and well-being domains directly related to their spell requests. However, there are no group differences to suggest that the spell-casting intervention was responsible.

Espiritus de Invierno

In many parts of Europe and especially in the Iberian Peninsula (Spain, Portugal, and the Basque Country), archaic and mysterious figures regularly haunt carnival rites since the Middle Ages (but referring, according to some specialists like A. Darpeix, member of the historical and archaeological society of Perigord, to a distant shamanic and Neolithic antiquity). They are masks adorned with skins of animals, vegetables, and straw, surrounded by bells and bones, often crowned with horns and pieces of wood. Thus arises the wild man within modern paganism to symbolize the rebirth of nature emerging from winter. The figures are essentially ambiguous, at the crossroads of nature and culture. The masks always speak of the mysteries of existence: in traditional societies, they were or still are the figures of ancestors and spirits of the dead, that of protective or evil spirits.

ПОПУЛЯРНАЯ МУЗЫКА И НОВАЯ РЕЛИГИОЗНОСТЬ: ВЗАИМОВЛИЯНИЕ РОК-МУЗЫКИ И НАТИВИСТСКИХ ДВИЖЕНИЙ

The article examines mutual influence of religiosity and popular culture. This problem is considered by the example of interrelation of modern pagan rock, folk rock and new religious movements of nativist ecological orientation often referred to as neo-paganism. The authors reveal such a distinctive feature of new religiosity as religious bricolage, which considers cultural phenomena as sources of religious beliefs and experience. Lyrical pagan and folk-rock compositions applying to the Slavic pre-Christian images are analysed.

Spiritual Pizzica

In this article, the result of an ongoing ethnographic fieldwork among a contemporary Pagan group in the Salento area of Italy, I research the peculiar expression of contemporary Pagan spiritualities centered on the interpretation of a “traditional” local dance called pizzica. I focus on the specific way of understanding and living time and temporality among this group that happens through the performance of this dance. In particular, by presenting the particular historicity—i.e. the way in which time and temporality are understood and experienced—of the Salentine group I studied that I refer to as “expanded present” or “presence,” I argue for a re-articulation of the relationships between contemporary Paganism and “history,” “tradition,” and the “reconstructionist/eclectic” spectrum in understanding contemporary Paganisms.

Attitudes Towards Potential Harmful Magical Practices in Contemporary Paganism - A Survey

In 2016, a group of witches organised a mass online hex against Brock Turner, the “Stanford Rapist,” in disgust toward his crime and unjust punishment. Responses to this event demonstrate the enormous diversity in Pagan’s opinions regarding the use of hexes, curses, or other forms of potentially “harmful” magic. The research outlined in this article consists of a qualitative survey which sought to identify these differences in opinion and the reasoning behind them. Results demonstrated that Pagans’ attitudes towards potentially harmful uses of magic fell into four distinct categories. It appears that fears of misjudgment and discrimination are very present amongst many within the community, which has led to some individuals attempting to conceal any practices that may be deemed harmful, or “evil,” by outsiders. Additionally, some choose to abstain from using harmful magic due to fears of harm returning to them. However, a significant proportion of Pagans today are in fact open to engaging with potentially harmful magical practices, as long as they can in some way be channeled to provide an outcome that can be deemed positive and/or healing.

Entering the Magic Mists

This article explores the ways in which contemporary Pagans in Ireland engage with traditional culture, as well as with notions of the Celtic, in forming identities that are regarded by some practitioners as being indigenous identities. This cultural process at work in the Pagan movement is examined against a backdrop of contested constructions of “Irishness” in different political and sociocultural milieus. Drawing from ethnographic research on the Irish Pagan community, the examination includes examples of mechanisms used by modern Pagans to engage with ancestral and historical cultures. In entering the magic mists to search for symbols and ideas to help connect to the “old religion,” modern Pagans create something new and unique while taking inspiration from the past. This overview of Pagans’ utilization of cultural forms, and their use of tradition, aims to communicate why this creative approach to the past, and resulting formation and maintenance of identities, is culturally significant in the Irish context.

НАЧАЛО ГОДА В НЕОЯЗЫЧЕСКИХ ХРОНОЛОГИЧЕСКИХ КОНСТРУКТАХ

The article deals with the problem of the modern system of pagan chronology, where the issue of the beginning of a new calendar year is the most important one. The analysis of neo-pagan ideologues’ narratives makes it possible to identify several versions of modern pagan associations connected with the time of the beginning of a new year (the main variants of the pagan “New Year” relate to natural astronomical phenomena and author’s versions). The researchers have also attempted to clarify the question of whether there is a universal calendar in native faith environment at the present moment.

Contemporary Deposits at Sacred Places: Reflections on Contemporary Paganism in Estonia and Finland

Contemporary Deposits at Sacred Places: Reflections on Contemporary Paganism in Estonia and Finland

РІДНОВІРИ В УКРАЇНІ ЯК «ДЖЕРЕЛО КОНФЛІКТУ»: ЗА МАТЕРІАЛАМИ ІНТЕРНЕТ-МЕДІЙ

Virtual media like television or other types of media influence the audience from year to year more and more powerful. The role of social networks as a source of information and its interpretation is growing especially rapidly. Modern pagans (neo-pagans) in Ukraine represent a small part of religiously oriented citizens of Ukraine. However, they are also present in the information virtual space. And not only in their social groups and pagan sites. Quite often, representatives of the pagan movement of Ukraine and their worldview and lifestyle became the objects of news related to conflict situations. Typically, in virtual media, information was conveyed through the prism of “pagans and others”. Thus, voluntarily or involuntarily, there is the perception of the pagans in Ukraine and the pagan movement as a whole is somehow exotic, extravagant, sometimes dangerous and even hostile. Although paganism is not widely known in Ukraine, it is also not informationally isolated. For the majority of the population of Ukraine, paganism is more associated with “Ivan Kupala”, jumping over a fire and spectacular historical reconstructions. However, the media covers not only holidays and interesting rituals, but also conflict situations related one way or another with the rejection of the pagans and their worldview. I focused only on the most resonant cases, which received quite noticeable and lengthy coverage in the Internet media. Among them: the destruction (burning, logging, dousing) of the shrines of the pagans. Such cases became especially resonant on Khortytsya island in Zaporizhzhia, where one of the centers of the pagan movement of Ukraine, the Ruske Pravoslavne Kolo, was deployed. The acts of vandalism and religious hatred also took place in the other cities of Ukraine. Among the most high-profile cases is the destruction of a wooden statue of Perun and a stone sculpture of Svitovid (a copy of the Zbruchansky idol) in Kyiv. Also publicized was the case of the taking away by social services of children from pagan parents in Buki willage in the Zhytomyr region and their return through the court. Relations between pagans, Ukrainian Greek Catholics, and the local population of the Gusyatinsky district in the Ternopil region were difficult, too. Stormy discussions on social networks caused the burial of the pagan who died in the war, Marian Nayda.