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Anthropological study of the Reclaiming Wiccan community of San Francisco
Enchanted Feminism: The Reclaiming Witches of San Francisco
is an anthropological study of the
Reclaiming Wiccan
community of
San Francisco
. It was written by the Scandinavian theologian
Jone Salomonsen
of the
California State University, Northridge
and first published in 2002 by the
Routledge
.
Background
[
edit
]
Paganism and Wicca in the United States
[
edit
]
Contemporary Paganism
, which is also referred to as Neo-Paganism, is an
umbrella term
used to identify a wide variety of
modern religious movements
, particularly those influenced by or claiming to be derived from the various
pagan
beliefs of pre-modern Europe.
[1]
[2]
The religion of Pagan Witchcraft, or
Wicca
, was developed in England during the first half of the 20th century and is one of several Pagan religions. The figure at the forefront of Wicca's early development was the English occultist
Gerald Gardner
(1884–1964), the author of
Witchcraft Today
(1954) and
The Meaning of Witchcraft
(1959) and the founder of a tradition known as
Gardnerian Wicca
. Gardnerian Wicca revolved around the veneration of both a
Horned God
and a
Mother Goddess
, the celebration of eight seasonally-based festivals in a
Wheel of the Year
and the practice of magical rituals in groups known as
covens
. Gardnerianism was subsequently brought to the U.S. in the early 1960s by an English initiate,
Raymond Buckland
(1934–), and his then-wife Rosemary, who together founded a coven in
Long Island
.
[3]
[4]
In the U.S., new variants of Wicca developed, including
Dianic Wicca
, a tradition founded in the 1970s which was influenced by
second wave feminism
, emphasized female-only covens, and rejected the veneration of the Horned God. One initiate of both the Dianic and Gardnerian traditions was a woman known as
Starhawk
(1951–) who went on to found her own tradition,
Reclaiming Wicca
, as well as publishing
The Spiral Dance: a Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess
(1979), a book which helped spread Wicca throughout the U.S.
[5]
[6]
Prior to Magiocco's work, three American researchers working in the field of
Pagan studies
had separately published investigations of the Pagan community in both the United States and the United Kingdom. The first of these had been the practicing Wiccan, journalist and political activist
Margot Adler
in her
Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America Today
, which was first published by
Viking Press
in 1979.
[7]
A second study was produced by the anthropologist
Tanya M. Luhrmann
in her
Persuasions of the Witches' Craft: Ritual Magic in Contemporary England
(1989), in which she focused on both a Wiccan coven and several ceremonial magic orders that were then operating in London.
[8]
This was followed by the sociologist Loretta Orion's
Never Again the Burning Times: Paganism Revisited
(1995), which focused on Pagan communities on the American East Coast and Midwest.
[9]
References
[
edit
]
Bibliography
[
edit
]
- Academic books and papers
- Berger, Helen, A. (1999).
A Community of Witches: Contemporary Neo-Paganism and Witchcraft in the United States
. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press.
ISBN
978-1-57003-246-2
.
{{
cite book
}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (
link
)
- Berger, Helen A.; Leach, Evan A.; Shaffer, Leigh S. (2003).
Voices from the Pagan Census: A National Survey of Witches and Neo-Pagans in the United States
. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press.
ISBN
978-1-57003-488-6
.
- Carpenter, Dennis D. (1996). James R. Lewis (ed.). "Emergent Nature Spirituality: An Examination of the Major Spiritual Contours of the Contemporary Pagan Worldview".
Magical Religion and Modern Witchcraft
. Albany: State University of New York Press. pp. 35?72.
ISBN
978-0-7914-2890-0
.
- Clifton, Chas S.
(2006).
Her Hidden Children: The Rise of Wicca and Paganism in America
. Oxford and Lanham: AltaMira.
ISBN
978-0-7591-0202-6
.
- Domotor, Tekla. (1986).
"Andrew Vazsonyi 1906-1986"
(PDF)
.
Folklore Forum
. Vol. 19, no. 2. pp. 125?129.
- Hutton, Ronald
(1999).
The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft
. New York: Oxford University Press.
ISBN
978-0-19-820744-3
.
- Lewis, James R.
(2004).
The Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements
. London and New York: Oxford University Press.
ISBN
978-0-19-514986-9
.
- Luhrmann, Tanya M.
(1989).
Persuasions of the Witch's Craft: Ritual Magic in England
. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press.
ISBN
978-0-674-66324-4
.
- Magliocco, Sabina
(2004).
Witching Culture: Folklore and Neo-paganism in America
. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
ISBN
978-0-8122-3803-7
.
- Orion, Loretta (1995).
Never Again the Burning Times: Paganism Revisited
. Long Grove, Illinois: Waveland Press.
ISBN
978-0-88133-835-5
.
- Salomonsen, Jone (2002).
Enchanted Feminism: The Reclaiming Witches of San Francisco
. London: Routledge.
ISBN
978-0-415-22393-5
.
- Academic book reviews
- Lewis, James R.
(2005). "Review of
Witching Culture
".
The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies
. Vol. 7, no. 2. Equinox. pp. 226?227.
- Pike, Sarah M. (2006). "Review of
Witching Culture
".
The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
. Vol. 12, no. 1. pp. 241?242.
JSTOR
3803946
.
- Simpson, Jacqueline
(2005). "Review of
Witching Culture
".
Folklore
. Vol. 116, no. 2. Folklore Society. pp. 238?239.
JSTOR
30035290
.
- Von Schnurbein, Stefanie (2008). "Review of
Witching Culture
".
History of Religions
. Vol. 47, no. 4. pp. 350?351.
JSTOR
589795
.
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Anthropological and
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Historical approaches
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Religious studies
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Sociological approaches
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Interdisciplinary
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Academic, peer-reviewed
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