About this deal
In practical terms, this means that religious leaders and ritual practices from Witchcraft and other Paganisms are often welcome in community spaces in ways that representatives of more officially established religions, especially mainline churches, may not be.
As I was outlining these power dynamics in a lecture for my “Witchcraft, Magic, and the Occult” course, a student furrowed her brow and raised her hand. But in this moment when making real change requires solidarity across identities, it is time for white-dominant spaces like academe and contemporary Pagan communities to conscientiously open it back up. To enable personalised advertising (like interest-based ads), we may share your data with our marketing and advertising partners using cookies and other technologies. This book analyzes the gendered transformation of magical figures occurring in Arthurian romance in England from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries. As movements for women’s suffrage, abolition, colonial independence, and workers’ rights drew attention to ways that traditional structures perpetuated multiple injustices, popular interest in alternatives to traditional religious institutions also grew.For eclectic Pagans who understand themselves as inspired by ancient, nature-oriented practices, but also emphasize creating new rituals that reflect contemporary experiences, ethnography serves as a repository of possible ritual forms, deities, and magical techniques. This continuing overlap requires anthropologists to remain mindful that we are building relationships and conversations with our fieldwork communities, rather than extracting data from passive subjects, and that their perspectives are as important as our own, even, perhaps especially, when they are in conflict. As Western ethnographers spread out across the globe trying to make sense of the practices of other people, they unconsciously carried with them ethnocentric assumptions about magic and religion.
Early anthropologists juxtaposed magic and religion, accidentally suggesting magic to their contemporary audiences as an attractive alternative not only to traditionally oppressive religious institutions but to oppressive social structures in general. Formal ritual magic practitioners, such as members of the Golden Dawn, and channelers, such as Spiritualists, experimented with techniques far outside the realms of mainstream religious practices. This book analyzes the gendered transformation of magical figures occurring in Arthurian romance in England from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries.Some of the technologies we use are necessary for critical functions like security and site integrity, account authentication, security and privacy preferences, internal site usage and maintenance data, and to make the site work correctly for browsing and transactions.