Such traditions include Ifá, Vodou, Santería, conjure, and brujería, the last term, tellingly, a literal translation of the English word “witchcraft” into Spanish. Wicca, one of the most well-known forms of contemporary Paganism, was founded by retired civil servant Gerald Gardner in 1950s Great Britain. While both Murray’s witch-cult theory and Gardner’s ancient claims have since been disproven, Wicca nonetheless represents an impressive case of religious inspiration based in anthropology. When people are resisting systemic injustice, they question traditional systems, including religion.

Historical precedent, continuity, and legitimation are ongoing cosmological negotiations within Pagan communities.These witch bells are wonderfully crafted, a little bit smaller than I thought they might be, but are exactly as pictured. To enable personalised advertising (like interest-based ads), we may share your data with our marketing and advertising partners using cookies and other technologies. 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. Their folk religion combined reverence for nature with spell work to improve individual lives and the agricultural welfare of whole communities. Victorian interest in occult science and magic coincided with political upheavals around historical axes of power.

It has defined and used a distinction between religion and magic in the service of colonial assumptions, but it has also served as a repository of practical examples for contemporary magic-using communities in the West, from the nineteenth century through the present. I do, however, capitalize Witch and Pagan when referring to current practitioners, in recognition of the legitimacy of their religious movements, just as I would with terms like Buddhist, Muslim, or Christian. com, the Sell on Etsy app, and the Etsy app, as well as the electricity that powers Etsy’s global offices and employees working remotely from home in the US.Witch hunting continues around the world today, local fears exacerbated by particular forms of exclusivist Christianity—products of colonially inflected missionizing. In this text, the author talks a lot about "binary gendering" - men who take on female witchlike characteristics and women who take on those of men. Wicca promoted itself as the true heritage religion of Britain, in contrast to the Church of England, which Gardner and his followers denounced as sexually repressive, sexist, and controlling. 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. It is engagingly written, even when dealing with difficult concepts, and the linking of medieval with modern representations of magic is fascinating, especially because many students are first attracted to studying magic because of modern TV shows or novels .