Enchanted Feminism

Enchanted Feminism: The Reclaiming Witches of San Francisco

The first edition of Enchanted Feminism.
Author Jone Salomonsen
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Subject Religious studies
Pagan studies
Publisher Routledge
Publication date
 2002
Media type Print (Hardcover & Paperback)

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

Paganism and Wicca in the United States

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]

This pentacle, worn as a pendant, depicts a pentagram, or five-pointed star, used as a symbol of Wicca by many adherents.

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

Footnotes

Bibliography

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. 
  • 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, eds. "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. 
  • Dömötör, Tekla. (1986). "Andrew Vázsonyi 1906-1986" (PDF). Folklore Forum. 19 (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. 7 (2). Equinox. pp. 226–227. 
  • Pike, Sarah M. (2006). "Review of Witching Culture". The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 12 (1). pp. 241–242. JSTOR 3803946. 
  • Simpson, Jacqueline (2005). "Review of Witching Culture". Folklore. 116 (2). Folklore Society. pp. 238–239. JSTOR 30035290. 
  • Von Schnurbein, Stefanie (2008). "Review of Witching Culture". History of Religions. 47 (4). pp. 350–351. JSTOR 589795. 
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