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The Sign of the Witch Waldron 00 Auto1.Qxd 3/12/08 11:50 AM Page Ii waldron 00 auto1.qxd 3/12/08 11:50 AM Page i The Sign of the Witch waldron 00 auto1.qxd 3/12/08 11:50 AM Page ii Carolina Academic Press Ritual Studies Monograph Series Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathern Series Editors ❧ Exchange and Sacrifice Pamela J. Stewart & Andrew Strathern Religion, Anthropology, and Cognitive Science Harvey Whitehouse & James Laidlaw Resisting State Iconoclasm Among the Loma of Guinea Christian Kordt Højbjerg Asian Ritual Systems Syncretisms and Ruptures Pamela J. Stewart & Andrew Strathern The Severed Snake Matrilineages, Making Place, and a Melanesian Christianity in Southeast Solomon Islands Michael W. Scott Embodying Modernity and Post-Modernity Ritual, Praxis, and Social Change in Melanesia Sandra C. Bamford Xhosa Beer Drinking Rituals Power, Practice and Performance in the South African Rural Periphery Patrick A. McAllister Ritual and World Change in a Balinese Princedom Lene Pedersen Contesting Rituals Islam and Practices of Identity-Making Pamela J. Stewart & Andrew Strathern The Third Bagre A Myth Revisited Jack Goody & S.W.D.K. Gandah Fragments from Forests and Libraries Essays by Valerio Valeri Janet Hoskins & Valerio Valeri waldron 00 auto1.qxd 3/12/08 11:50 AM Page iii The Sign of the Witch Modernity and the Pagan Revival David Waldron University of Ballarat Australia Carolina Academic Press Durham, North Carolina waldron 00 auto1.qxd 3/25/08 4:31 PM Page iv Copyright © 2008 David Waldron All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Waldron, David. The sign of the witch : modernity and the pagan revival / by David Waldron. p. cm. -- (Ritual studies monograph series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-59460-505-5 (alk. paper) 1. Witchcraft. 2. Wicca. 3. Neopaganism. I. Title. II. Series. BF1562.5.W35 2008 299'.94--dc22 2008002577 Carolina Academic Press 700 Kent Street Durham, North Carolina 27701 Telephone (919) 489-7486 Fax (919) 493-5668 www.cap-press.com Printed in the United States of America. waldron 00 auto1.qxd 3/12/08 11:50 AM Page v For Jasmine, Talia and Rowan. waldron 00 auto1.qxd 3/12/08 11:50 AM Page vi Witchcraft is a word that frightens many people and confuses many others. In the popular imagination, Witches are ugly, old hags riding broomsticks, or evil Satanists performing obscene rites. Modern Witches are thought to be members of a kooky cult, primarily con- cerned with cursing enemies by jabbing wax images with pins and lacking the depth, dignity and seriousness of a true religion.1 1. Starhawk (Simos, Miriam). The Spiral Dance: 10th Anniversary Edition. San Fran- cisco: Harper Press, 1989. p 16. waldron 00 auto1.qxd 3/12/08 11:50 AM Page vii Contents Acknowledgments ix Series Editors’ Preface Ideas and Their Transformative Permutations in History Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart xi Introduction xv Chapter 1 The Historical Context of Witchcraft: Progenitors and Antecedents 3 Anti-Catholicism and the Reformation 5 The Impact of the English Civil War 13 The End of the Witchcraze 25 New Perceptions of Witchcraft and Magic 33 Chapter 2 The End of Witchcraft? The Enlightenment and the Supernatural 41 Chapter 3 Romanticism and the Pagan Revival 51 What Is Romanticism? 52 The Philosophy of the Transcendent Imagination 53 Romanticism: The Historical Dimension 60 Romanticism and Modernity 67 Romanticism and the Construction of Paganism in Nineteenth Century England 70 Chapter 4 Gerald Gardner and the Origins of Wicca 77 Gerald Gardner and the Wiccan Movement 77 Who Was Gerald Gardner (1884–1964)? 78 The New Forest Coven 80 The Critique of Wiccan History 83 The Folklore Society and Wiccan History 89 Margaret Murray’s Witch Cult 93 vii waldron 00 auto1.qxd 3/12/08 11:50 AM Page viii viii Contents Chapter 5 Witchcraft and the European Occult Milieu 101 Freemasonry and Nineteenth Century Secret Societies 106 Madam Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society 111 The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn 113 Crowley and the Ordo Templi Orientalis 116 Wicca and the English Occult Milieu 119 Wicca and the Invention of Tradition 122 Chapter 6 New Age Witches? Neo-Paganism and the Sixties Counter Culture 133 New Age Antecedents 134 Surviving Witchcraft Folklore in the United States 138 The Counter Culture and the “Age of Aquarius” 142 Defining Neo-Paganism and the New Age 146 Jung and the Neo-Pagan Movement 148 The Integration of Neo-Paganism and the New Age 158 The Ambivalence to Nature in Neo-Pagan Discourse 162 Play Power and Spirituality 165 From Secret Society to Counter Culture Paganism Transformed 167 Chapter 7 Eco-Feminist Neo-Paganism: Marginalization and Romanticism 169 The WITCH Movement 169 The Goddess and the Counter Culture 173 The Goddess and “The Burning Times” 176 The Witch and the Feminine 189 The Goddess and History 191 Feminist Critique of the Burning Times and Goddess Religions 194 Romanticism and the Goddess 196 Chapter 8 Eclectic Paganism: The Old Religion in the Post-Modern Age 201 The Empirical Challenge to Witchcraft Beliefs 202 The Post-Modern Response 204 Post-Modernism or Romantic Anti-Modernism 213 Witchcraft, Commodification and Popular Culture 218 Chapter 9 Commodified Paganism: Where to From Here? 227 Conclusion The Old Religion in a Post-Modern Age? 241 Bibliography 245 Index 259 waldron 00 auto1.qxd 3/12/08 11:50 AM Page ix Acknowledgments I would like to thank my partner Jasmine and my family for much needed support and patience in the course of writing this book. I would also like to thank my parents Bruce and Sharn for their assistance in editing and personal support. I would like to thank my supervisors Jeremy Smith and Janice Newton for much needed theoretical commentary, advice and inspiration in the course of my research. I would like to thank Dr Rod Blackhirst of Latrobe University and Dr Eliz- abeth Kent of the University of Melbourne for assistance in understanding the context of the English experience of Early Modern Witchcraft and general in- spiration and support in my research. Thanks go to the Australian Pagan Information Centre in Woodend Victo- ria for access to source material. Thanks also to Caroline Tully, Linda and Michel Marold, Anne Harper, Andrew and Julie Daws and Sian Reid for ac- cess to much needed, and hard to find, texts, manuscripts, surveys and pa- pers relating to the neo-Pagan movement in Australia and the US. Finally, thanks go to the University of Ballarat for supplying the resources and facilities required to complete my work. ix waldron 00 auto1.qxd 3/12/08 11:50 AM Page x waldron 00 auto1.qxd 3/12/08 11:50 AM Page xi series editors’ preface Ideas and Their Transformative Permutations in History Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart We are happy to include David Waldron’s work, “The Sign of the Witch”, in our Ritual Studies Monograph Series with Carolina Academic Press. Waldron’s study is remarkable in that he traces a history of his topic that runs into the con- temporary sphere, taking us from seventeenth century to twenty first century Europe, showing the twists and turns of ritual practices and reformative ideas that have given shape to the notion of witchcraft through these centuries. Con- temporary ideas and actions attempt to reach back in time, beyond the religious and political conflicts of the seventeenth century, to the much contested realms of pre-Christian practices in the “folk” domain of Europe: practices that are linked to animism, nature worship, goddess figures, and the like, all of which spring into life in the imaginative worlds of the neo-pagan practitioners of Wicca. Carefully, and at times entertainingly, Dr. Waldron guides his readers along the historical pathways and into the labyrinthine worlds of the so-called “post-modern” times, with their emphasis on eclecticism and bricolage, includ- ing the eco-feminist strands of affiliation. We ourselves enthusiastically encour- aged Dr. Waldron to revise his manuscript in relation to a number of topics as he prepared the work for inclusion in our Series with Carolina Academic Press. In some ways these experimental activities represent both a response to contemporary forms of social alienation in people’s lives, to which Charis- matic and Pentecostalist forms of Christianity can also be seen as counterac- tive responses or types of therapeutic renewal. Jone Salomonsen has percep- tively grouped together two studies she has made in the USA, one of the neo-pagan Reclaiming Witchcraft community in San Francisco, the other of the First Church of Christ in Connecticut. Unconnected to each other, and one defined as “pagan” while the other is “Christian”, the two show similar el- xi waldron 00 auto1.qxd 3/12/08 11:50 AM Page xii xii Series Editors’ Preface ements of attempts at creative renewal through initiation rites for young peo- ple. The Reclaiming movement, founded by Starhawk, centers such rituals on girls at the time of their first menstruation. The First Church rituals center on the entrance into sexuality by both boys and girls. Both lay some stress on the theme of “visions” to be attained by initiands. And both movements drew on anthropological writings stemming from the time of Arnold van Gennep in order to create their ritual forms. Gennep’s work, of course, in turn drew on the historical and cross-cultural records of his day. Streams of “tradition” and its reformulations thus feed into these practices (see Salomonsen 2003). Returning to the seventeenth century and to the highly specific locality of Essex County in England, two further things are of note in Dr. Waldron’s treatment of the materials. Building on Alan Macfarlane’s pioneering work on the historical study of witchcraft in this area, Waldron also brings in a brief discussion of our own comparative work on the importance of rumor and gossip in the genesis of witchcraft accusations (Stewart and Strathern 2004)1.
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