Witchcraft, Divination & Familiar Spirits
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Constructing the Witch in Contemporary American Popular Culture
"SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES": CONSTRUCTING THE WITCH IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN POPULAR CULTURE Catherine Armetta Shufelt A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY December 2007 Committee: Dr. Angela Nelson, Advisor Dr. Andrew M. Schocket Graduate Faculty Representative Dr. Donald McQuarie Dr. Esther Clinton © 2007 Catherine A. Shufelt All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT Dr. Angela Nelson, Advisor What is a Witch? Traditional mainstream media images of Witches tell us they are evil “devil worshipping baby killers,” green-skinned hags who fly on brooms, or flaky tree huggers who dance naked in the woods. A variety of mainstream media has worked to support these notions as well as develop new ones. Contemporary American popular culture shows us images of Witches on television shows and in films vanquishing demons, traveling back and forth in time and from one reality to another, speaking with dead relatives, and attending private schools, among other things. None of these mainstream images acknowledge the very real beliefs and traditions of modern Witches and Pagans, or speak to the depth and variety of social, cultural, political, and environmental work being undertaken by Pagan and Wiccan groups and individuals around the world. Utilizing social construction theory, this study examines the “historical process” of the construction of stereotypes surrounding Witches in mainstream American society as well as how groups and individuals who call themselves Pagan and/or Wiccan have utilized the only media technology available to them, the internet, to resist and re- construct these images in order to present more positive images of themselves as well as build community between and among Pagans and nonPagans. -
Magic, Witchcraft, and Faërie: Evolution of Magical Ideas in Ursula K
Volume 39 Number 2 Article 2 4-23-2021 Magic, Witchcraft, and Faërie: Evolution of Magical Ideas in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea Cycle Oleksandra Filonenko Petro Mohyla Black Sea National University Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore Recommended Citation Filonenko, Oleksandra (2021) "Magic, Witchcraft, and Faërie: Evolution of Magical Ideas in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea Cycle," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 39 : No. 2 , Article 2. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol39/iss2/2 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Mythopoeic Society at SWOSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature by an authorized editor of SWOSU Digital Commons. An ADA compliant document is available upon request. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To join the Mythopoeic Society go to: http://www.mythsoc.org/join.htm Mythcon 51: A VIRTUAL “HALFLING” MYTHCON July 31 - August 1, 2021 (Saturday and Sunday) http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-51.htm Mythcon 52: The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien Albuquerque, New Mexico; July 29 - August 1, 2022 http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-52.htm Abstract In my article, I discuss a peculiar connection between the persisting ideas about magic in the Western world and Ursula Le Guin's magical world in the Earthsea universe and its evolution over the decades. -
DIVINATION SYSTEMS Written by Nicole Yalsovac Additional Sections Contributed by Sean Michael Smith and Christine Breese, D.D
DIVINATION SYSTEMS Written by Nicole Yalsovac Additional sections contributed by Sean Michael Smith and Christine Breese, D.D. Ph.D. Introduction Nichole Yalsovac Prophetic revelation, or Divination, dates back to the earliest known times of human existence. The oldest of all Chinese texts, the I Ching, is a divination system older than recorded history. James Legge says in his translation of I Ching: Book Of Changes (1996), “The desire to seek answers and to predict the future is as old as civilization itself.” Mankind has always had a desire to know what the future holds. Evidence shows that methods of divination, also known as fortune telling, were used by the ancient Egyptians, Chinese, Babylonians and the Sumerians (who resided in what is now Iraq) as early as six‐thousand years ago. Divination was originally a device of royalty and has often been an essential part of religion and medicine. Significant leaders and royalty often employed priests, doctors, soothsayers and astrologers as advisers and consultants on what the future held. Every civilization has held a belief in at least some type of divination. The point of divination in the ancient world was to ascertain the will of the gods. In fact, divination is so called because it is assumed to be a gift of the divine, a gift from the gods. This gift of obtaining knowledge of the unknown uses a wide range of tools and an enormous variety of techniques, as we will see in this course. No matter which method is used, the most imperative aspect is the interpretation and presentation of what is seen. -
Divination, According to the Routledge Encyclopaedia
INTRODUCTION1 n Divination, according to the Routledge Encyclopaedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology, comprises ‘culturally sanctioned methods of arriving at a judge- ment of the unknown through a consideration of incomplete evidence’ (Willis 2012: 201). In Chinese, it is often referred to as ‘calculating fate’ (suanming 算命). In this ethnography, divination mainly refers to the multiple forms of Chinese divination using traditional techniques without involving communication with gods and other beings. Its text-based knowledge with a coherent system of symbols and a naturalist ontology are a result of centuries of development. Two reactions were common during my fieldwork on divination. Often, people would laugh when they heard the topic of my research; several people would gather around, and the whole circle would burst into laughter. However, when it was a private chat with two or three people, their response was, ‘Ha-ha! You study fate calculation?!’ But they usually showed great interest after their initial chuckle and would ask me, ‘Do you think it is accurate?’ Another commonplace event was that whenever I met a diviner for the first time, he or she always talked eloquently for hours to convey the positive meaning of their vocation, such as the grand role divination has played in Chinese culture, and the accuracy of their predictions. Anthropologists studying Chinese popular religion often have to deal with ‘people’s insouciant attitude toward explicit interpretation’ (Weller 1994: 7); my informants, on the contrary, had a strong motivation to offer me the meaning of their practice and did it eloquently with an ‘interpretative noise’ through their constant bragging and legitimation efforts. -
The Cultural Evolution of Epistemic Practices: the Case of Divination Author: Ze Hong A1, Joseph Henricha
Title: The cultural evolution of epistemic practices: the case of divination Author: Ze Hong a1, Joseph Henricha Author Affiliations: a Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, 11 Divinity Avenue, 02138, Cambridge, MA, United States Keywords: cultural Evolution; divination; information transmission; Bayesian reasoning 1 To whom correspondence should be addressed: [email protected] 1 ABSTRACT While a substantial literature in anthropology and comparative religion explores divination across diverse societies and back into history, little research has integrated the older ethnographic and historical work with recent insights on human learning, cultural transmission and cognitive science. Here we present evidence showing that divination practices are often best viewed as an epistemic technology, and formally model the scenarios under which individuals may over-estimate the efficacy of divination that contribute to its cultural omnipresence and historical persistence. We found that strong prior belief, under-reporting of negative evidence, and mis-inferring belief from behavior can all contribute to biased and inaccurate beliefs about the effectiveness of epistemic technologies. We finally suggest how scientific epistemology, as it emerged in the Western societies over the last few centuries, has influenced the importance and cultural centrality of divination practices. 2 1. INTRODUCTION The ethnographic and historical record suggests that most, and potentially all, human societies have developed techniques, processes or technologies that reveal otherwise hidden or obscure information, often about unknown causes or future events. In historical and contemporary small-scale societies around the globe, divination—"the foretelling of future events or discovery of what is hidden or obscure by supernatural or magical means” –has been extremely common, possibly even universal (Flad 2008; Boyer 2020). -
The Evolution of Variability in Magic, Divination and Religion
THE EVOLUTION OF VARIABILITY IN MAGIC, DIVINATION AND RELIGION: A MULTI-LEVEL SELECTION ANALYSIS A Dissertation by CATHARINA LAPORTE Submitted to the Office of Graduate and Professional Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Chair of Committee, Michael S. Alvard Committee Members, Jeffrey Winking D. Bruce Dickson Jane Sell Head of Department, Cynthia A. Werner December 2013 Major Subject: Anthropology Copyright 2013 Catharina Laporte ABSTRACT Religious behavior varies greatly both with-in cultures and cross-culturally. Throughout history, scientific scholars of religion have debated the definition, function, or lack of function for religious behavior. The question remains: why doesn’t one set of beliefs suit everybody and every culture? Using mixed methods, the theoretical logic of Multi-Level Selection hypothesis (MLS) which has foundations in neo-evolutionary theory, and data collected during nearly two years of field work in Macaé Brazil, this study asserts that religious variability exists because of the historic and dynamic relationship between the individual, the family, the (religious) group and other groups. By re-representing a nuanced version of Elman Service’s sociopolitical typologies together with theorized categories of religion proposed by J.G. Frazer, Anthony C. Wallace and Max Weber, in a multi-level nested hierarchy, I argue that variability in religious behavior sustains because it provides adaptive advantages and solutions to group living on multiple levels. These adaptive strategies may be more important or less important depending on the time, place, individual or group. MLS potentially serves to unify the various functional theories of religion and can be used to analyze why some religions, at different points in history, may attract and retain more adherents by reacting to the environment and providing a dynamic balance between what the individual needs and what the group needs. -
And Corpse-Divination in the Paris Magical Papyri (Pgm Iv 1928-2144)
necromancy goes underground 255 NECROMANCY GOES UNDERGROUND: THE DISGUISE OF SKULL- AND CORPSE-DIVINATION IN THE PARIS MAGICAL PAPYRI (PGM IV 1928-2144) Christopher A. Faraone The practice of consulting the dead for divinatory purposes is widely practiced cross-culturally and firmly attested in the Greek world.1 Poets, for example, speak of the underworld journeys of heroes, like Odys- seus and Aeneas, to learn crucial information about the past, present or future, and elsewhere we hear about rituals of psychagogia designed to lead souls or ghosts up from the underworld for similar purposes. These are usually performed at the tomb of the dead person, as in the famous scene in Aeschylus’ Persians, or at other places where the Greeks believed there was an entrance to the underworld. Herodotus tells us, for instance, that the Corinthian tyrant Periander visited an “oracle of the dead” (nekromanteion) in Ephyra to consult his dead wife (5.92) and that Croesus, when he performed his famous comparative testing of Greek oracles, sent questions to the tombs of Amphiaraus at Oropus and Trophonius at Lebedeia (1.46.2-3). Since Herodotus is heavily dependent on Delphic informants for most of Croesus’ story, modern readers are apt to forget that there were, in fact, two oracles that correctly answered the Lydian king’s riddle: the oracle of Apollo at Delphi and that of the dead hero Amphiaraus. The popularity of such oracular hero-shrines increased steadily in Hel- lenistic and Roman times, although divination by dreams gradually seems to take center stage.2 It is clear, however, that the more personal and private forms of necromancy—especially consultations at the grave—fell into disfavor, especially with the Romans, whose poets repeatedly depict horrible 1 For a general overview of the Greek practices and discussions of the specific sites mentioned in this paragraph, see A. -
Religion and the Return of Magic: Wicca As Esoteric Spirituality
RELIGION AND THE RETURN OF MAGIC: WICCA AS ESOTERIC SPIRITUALITY A thesis submitted for the degree of PhD March 2000 Joanne Elizabeth Pearson, B.A. (Hons.) ProQuest Number: 11003543 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 11003543 Published by ProQuest LLC(2018). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 AUTHOR’S DECLARATION The thesis presented is entirely my own work, and has not been previously presented for the award of a higher degree elsewhere. The views expressed here are those of the author and not of Lancaster University. Joanne Elizabeth Pearson. RELIGION AND THE RETURN OF MAGIC: WICCA AS ESOTERIC SPIRITUALITY CONTENTS DIAGRAMS AND ILLUSTRATIONS viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ix ABSTRACT xi INTRODUCTION: RELIGION AND THE RETURN OF MAGIC 1 CATEGORISING WICCA 1 The Sociology of the Occult 3 The New Age Movement 5 New Religious Movements and ‘Revived’ Religion 6 Nature Religion 8 MAGIC AND RELIGION 9 A Brief Outline of the Debate 9 Religion and the Decline o f Magic? 12 ESOTERICISM 16 Academic Understandings of -
The Punishment of Clerical Necromancers During the Period 1100-1500 CE
Christendom v. Clericus: The Punishment of Clerical Necromancers During the Period 1100-1500 CE A Thesis Presented to the Academic Faculty by Kayla Marie McManus-Viana In Partial Fulfillment of the Degree Requirements for the Bachelor of Science in History, Technology, and Society with the Research Option Georgia Institute of Technology December 2020 1 Table of Contents Section 1: Abstract Section 2: Introduction Section 3: Literature Review Section 4: Historical Background Magic in the Middle Ages What is Necromancy? Clerics as Sorcerers The Catholic Church in the Middle Ages The Law and Magic Section 5: Case Studies Prologue: Magic and Rhetoric The Cases Section 6: Conclusion Section 7: Bibliography 3 Abstract “The power of Christ compels you!” is probably the most infamous line from the 1973 film The Exorcist. The movie, as the title suggests, follows the journey of a priest as he attempts to excise a demon from within the body of a young girl. These types of sensational pop culture depictions are what inform the majority of people’s conceptions of demons and demonic magic nowadays. Historically, however, human conceptions of demons and magic were more nuanced than those depicted in The Exorcist and similar works. Demons were not only beings to be feared but sources of power to be exploited. Necromancy, a form of demonic magic, was one avenue in which individuals could attempt to gain control over a demon. During the period this thesis explores, 1100-1500 CE, only highly educated men, like clerics, could complete the complicated rituals associated with necromancy. Thus, this study examines the rise of the learned art of clerical necromancy in conjunction with the re-emergence of higher learning in western Europe that developed during the period from 1100-1500 CE. -
The Occult History, Beliefs and Practices
The Occult An Evaluation from the Theological Perspective of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod April 2005 (updated May 2014) History, Beliefs and Practices Identity: The term “occult” derives from a Latin word that means “hidden” or “secret.” In a general sense, “the Occult” refers to real or imagined “supernatural” happenings that go beyond the realm of the human senses [“paranormal”]. More specifically, “Occult” can denote magical practices, very often secret, and the individuals who perform them. Occultic phenomena assume the presence and assistance of supernatural or spiritual forces or beings. The practices and practitioners of the Occult are highly diverse and are present in many organizations and movements (e.g., Satanism, New Age, Wicca [neopaganism]). Founders: Occultic practices and phenomena—both ancient and modern—have no single origin or founder. In the contemporary situation, certain individuals and groups receive public attention through the promotion of their literature and in some cases through media exposure. History: The Encyclopedia Britannica begins its comprehensive article on “occultism” by stating that occultic “beliefs and practices—principally magical and divinatory—have occurred in all human societies throughout recorded history….”1 Common to all human societies, it further notes, are divination, magic, witchcraft, alchemy,2 and astrology. The Bible singles out and condemns occultic practices such as child sacrifice, divination or sorcery, the use of mediums, casting of spells, spiritism and necromancy present in ancient Canaanite cultures (Deut. 18:9-13).3 In the late 20th century and at the beginning of the 21st century, occultic beliefs and practices have become increasingly common, present for instance in the so-called “Neo-Pagan” movement, in which participants seek to use rites, chants, and charms, etc., to predict the future, improve the human condition and ward off evils (see evaluation on Wicca). -
PT 06-10 Tax Type: Property Tax Issue: Religious Ownership/Use
PT 06-10 Tax Type: Property Tax Issue: Religious Ownership/Use STATE OF ILLINOIS DEPARTMENT OF REVENUE OFFICE OF ADMINISTRATIVE HEARINGS SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS ROSE MINISTRIES Applicant A.H. Docket # 05-PT-0009 Docket # 04-57-26 v. Parcel Index # 15-30-129-013 THE DEPARTMENT OF REVENUE OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS RECOMMENDATION FOR DISPOSITION Appearances: Mr. Kent Steinkamp, Special Assistant Attorney General for the Illinois Department of Revenue Synopsis: The hearing in this matter was held to determine whether McLean County Parcel Index No. 15-30-129-130 qualified for exemption during the 2004 assessment year. Jaymes Williams, Bishop of the Blessed Church of Brigid a subdivision of Rose Ministries (hereinafter referred to as the "Applicant") was present and testified on behalf of Applicant. The issues in this matter include, first, whether Applicant was the owner of the parcel during the 2004 assessment year; secondly, whether Applicant is a religious organization; and lastly, whether the parcel was used by Applicant for religious purposes during the 2004 assessment year. After a thorough review of the facts and law presented, it is my recommendation that the requested exemption be denied. In support thereof, I make the following findings of fact and conclusions of law in accordance with the requirements of Section 100/10-50 of the Administrative Procedure Act (5 ILCS 100/10-50). FINDINGS OF FACT: 1. The jurisdiction and position of the Illinois Department of Revenue (hereinafter referred to as the “Department”) that McLean County Parcel Index No. 15-30-129-013 did not qualify for a property tax exemption for the 2004 assessment year were established by the admission into evidence of Dept. -
On Death and Magic: Law, Necromancy and the Great Beyond Eric J
Western New England University School of Law Digital Commons @ Western New England University School of Law Faculty Scholarship Faculty Publications 2010 On Death and Magic: Law, Necromancy and the Great Beyond Eric J. Gouvin Western New England University School of Law, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.law.wne.edu/facschol Part of the Other Law Commons Recommended Citation On Death and Magic: Law, Necromancy, and the Great Beyond, in Law and Magic: A Collection of Essays (Christine A. Corcos, ed., Carolina Academic Press 2010) This Book Chapter is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Publications at Digital Commons @ Western New England University School of Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Western New England University School of Law. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 14 On Death and Magic: Law, Necromancy, and the Great Beyond Eric J. Gouvin* Throughout history humans have been fascinated by the ultimate mystery of life and death. Beliefs about what lies beyond the grave are at the core of many religious prac tices and some magical practices as well. Magicians have long been involved with spirits, ghosts, and the dead, sometimes as trusted intermediaries between the world of the liv ing and the spirit realm and sometimes as mere entertainers.' The branch of magic that seeks communion with the dead is known as necromancy.2 This essay examines instances where the legal system encounters necromancy itself and other necromantic situations (i.e., interactions involving ghosts, the dead, or the spirit world).