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WORK TITLE: Wicca
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: London, England
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COUNTRY: United Kingdom
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http://ucl.academia.edu/EthanDoyleWhite * http://www.religiousstudiesproject.com/persons/ethan-doyle-white/ * http://www.patheos.com/blogs/sermonsfromthemound/2015/09/wicca-history-belief-and-community/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
not found in database
PERSONAL
Born in London, England.
EDUCATION:University College London, B.A., 2012, M.A. 2013, MPhil/Ph.D. candidate.
ADDRESS
CAREER
University College London, London, England, pagan scholar and archeologist.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Born and raised in London, Ethan Doyle White is a scholar in pagan studies and a MPhil/PhD candidate in early Medieval studies at the University College London, where he also earned bachelor and master’s degrees from the Institute of Archaeology. He is a supporter of interdisciplinary perspectives and studies the intersection of religion, history, and folklore. White studies cult, ritual, and magic pertaining to pre-Christian religion in Europe, as well as modern re-interpretations and re-use of pagan religions. As a trained archaeologist, he has experience in field excavation at Paleolithic, Bronze/Iron Age, late medieval, and modern sites in Britain. He has also published academic articles on the topics of pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon deities, the occult films of Kenneth Anger, and the modern pagan use of Britain’s archaeological monuments.
In 2016, White published Wicca: History, Belief, and Community in Modern Pagan Witchcraft, in which he examines the resurgence in interest in the belief systems of ancient Europe. While many pagan groups claim to have revived the old religions, the largest and best known is Wicca, now practiced by hundreds of thousands of people around the world. Paying attention to both theology and praxis, White explains how Wicca began in Europe as a recreation of a pre-Christian witch cult that worshipped the Horned God and Mother Goddess, celebrated the changing of the seasons, cast spells, and venerated the moon. It then spread to North America where it was mixed with environmentalism, feminism, LGBT issues, and 1960s counter-culture. Today it is considered a mature religious movement with its own world view, cultural identity, and sub-divisions.
Taking an academic tract that blends anthropology, history, theology, and sociology, White explains how modern Wicca developed and offers an overview of the religion, tenants of the craft, ritual practices, the Wiccan community, participation, and misconceptions. He also discusses notable authors and practitioners such as Gerald Gardner and Alex Sanders. In an interview with Yvonne Aburrow online at Patheos, White commented on Wicca’s marginalization: “Just like other esoteric and Pagan movements—it exists within the ‘cultic milieu’ at the cultural margins of Western society, which is part of what makes it so interesting for me and probably for many of its own participants.”
Commenting that White could have spent more time presenting first-hand experiences of Wiccan practitioners from the early days, a reviewer online at Wiccan Rede also found that White erroneously contends that Wicca is fundamentally an Anglo-American movement, while discounting contributions of continental Europeans. The reviewer said: “Wicca as a philosophy has the ability to absorb many different cultural aspects which perhaps makes it difficult to define. … Despite this shortcoming … this is a valiant attempt.”
BIOCRIT
ONLINE
Ethan Doyle White Home Page, http://ethandoylewhite.blogspot.com (June 1, 2017), author profile.
Patheos, http://www.patheos.com (September 1, 2015) Yvonne Aburrow, author interview.
University College London, http://ucl.academia.edu/ (June 1, 2017), author profile.
Wiccan Rede, http://wiccanrede.org (January 31, 2016), review of Wicca: History, Belief, and Community in Modern Pagan Witchcraft.*
Ethan Doyle White
2.0 | University College London, Institute of Archaeology, Graduate Student | Archaeology of Religion +24
I am a postgraduate student at the UCL Institute of Archaeology working on an MPhil/PhD project that is titled "Popular Religiosity and Water Places in Anglo-Saxon England: An Interdisciplinary Examination". I hold both a BA (first class, 2012) and an MA (distinction, 2013) from that same institution.
I am a scholar of religion with an interest in interdisciplinary approaches. Thus far, I have had two primary research interests. The first is the religious beliefs and practices of early medieval England, both in its pre-Christian and early Christian forms. The second is the study of modern Pagan and occult new religious movements, including the way in which these contemporary groups interpret, appropriate, and utilise archaeological and historical material in a modern context.
Thus, on the one hand I am an academically trained archaeologist, with a particular interest both in the archaeology of cult, ritual, magic, religion, and spirituality and in the archaeology of early medieval Northwestern Europe. As part of this, I have experience in field excavation at Palaeolithic, Bronze/Iron Age, late medieval, and modern sites in Britain. On the other, I have independently researched the history and present-day practice of such contemporary Pagan movements as Wicca, Thelema, and Odinism, involving myself in the academic study of modern Paganism and (to a lesser extent) the academic study of Western esotericism and 'alternative religion'.
Furthering my interest in these subjects, I run the Albion Calling blog (http://ethandoylewhite.blogspot.co.uk/), through which I interview various academics - whether archaeologists, historians, folklorists, anthropologists, or religious studies scholars - who are involved in those fields that fascinate me. On the more practical and localised side of things, I am also a field officer with Bexley Archaeological Group (BAG).
Supervisors: Andrew Reynolds, Mike Parker Pearson, and Richard North
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Ethan Doyle White has two primary research interests, on the one hand looking at the religious beliefs and practices of early medieval England and on the other examining contemporary Paganism and related forms of occultism. His first book, Wicca: History, Belief, and Community in Modern Pagan Witchcraft, has recently been brought out with Sussex Academic Press, while other publications have dealt with pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon deities, the occult films of Kenneth Anger, and the modern Pagan use of Britain’s archaeological monuments, among other topics. He is currently engaged in an interdisciplinary doctoral research project at University College London, examining the archaeological and historical evidence for material expressions of religiosity in Anglo-Saxon England.
Wicca: History, Belief, and Community
September 1, 2015 by Yvonne Aburrow 2 Comments
Ethan Doyle White has recently published an important new book: Wicca: History, Belief, and Community in Modern Pagan Witchcraft, available on Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com, and due for release on 1 November 2015. So I approached him for an interview.
Wicca - by Ethan Doyle White [Cover image supplied by Ethan Doyle White]
Wicca, by Ethan Doyle White
DfD: Tell us about yourself, Ethan…
I am a trained archaeologist with a particular interest in the pre-Christian belief systems of Europe and the manner in which they have been reinterpreted and utilised in modern contexts, particularly within the contemporary Pagan movement. I am currently engaged in MPhil/PhD studies in Early Medieval archaeology at University College London (UCL), and run the Albion Calling blog on which I have interviewed such scholars as Ronald Hutton, Sabina Magliocco, and Graham Harvey.
DfD: What prompted you to start researching Wicca?
It was just down to personal interest, quite frankly. Growing up in suburban London, I was born and raised in what Professor Robert Mathiesen called an “esoteric family”, in that my parents were involved in various esoteric movements. In the case of my own household, that esotericism expressed itself as a syncretic blend of Spiritualism, the New Age movement, and (to a lesser extent) Christianity. I’m thus in a fairly unusual position of being an individual who was raised to believe in the fundamental normalness of esoteric ideas; I would come home from school to find séances, Tarot card reading, or reiki healing taking place in the living room, for instance. Quite a few friends and acquaintances have expressed jealousy of that fact.
As a tweenager and teenager I was very interested in religious studies. On a personal level, I experimented with the likes of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Sufism, and developed a great fascination with ritual and the materiality of religion ((of course, at the time I’d never heard of such jargon as the “materiality of religion”, which describes the way in which religiosity is expressed in “material culture”, or to put it more bluntly, it’s all about religious paraphernalia and other “stuff”!). I was also very much interested in mythology, folklore, and the pre-Christian societies of the European continent, in particular those of the North. As I would later find out, these are all common elements reported by those who subsequently convert to forms of contemporary Paganism, thus helping to generate the sensation of conversion being a “homecoming.”
Ethan Doyle White (photo supplied by EDW)
Ethan Doyle White
Pretty soon I came upon Wicca through an eclectic ‘Wicca 101’ book, and I found it absolutely fascinating. I certainly flirted with the ‘Teen Witchcraft’ movement, as so many others did at the time. However, within a few years my involvement with the Craft had moved from being that of a teenage spiritual seeker to quite firmly being an “outsider” with no particular desire for practical participation. As I grew into my late teens and early twenties I had lost my faith in many of the esoteric and religious ideas that I was raised with, becoming a great deal more sceptical about the existence of preternatural entities, magic, and all such ‘paranormal’ things which have not had their existence confirmed by scientific enquiry. These days I self-define as a secular humanist, although my strong fascination for religions like Wicca has remained and for that reason I have continued to research the subject and write on it in an academic capacity. I think that I’m quite well placed to do so, being an “outsider” to the religion who at the same time has an awful lot of respect for esoteric and Pagan schools of thought as a result of my own personal background. My work on the subject is therefore not un-critical, but is generally quite sympathetic and is certainly not hostile; I hope therefore that it will satisfy both devout practitioners and ardent critics of the Craft.
DfD: How long did the book take to write?
If I remember correctly, I started to write a book on the subject of Wicca – specifically the history of Wicca – when I was seventeen (so seven years ago now). At the time I had never read an article in a peer-reviewed journal and had absolutely no idea how to write academically. After entering the university system, as well as independently researching and publishing a variety of articles in peer-reviewed journals, I gained a much better grasp of how academic writing is done. For that reason, I largely scrapped my original manuscript and started again when I was nineteen, this time deciding to create a work that would cover all areas of Wicca – history, belief and practice, and sociological and cultural issues – which I felt was probably a lot more useful for people than a book purely dealing with the faith’s history.
By this point, I had realised that while some excellent research on Wicca had been conducted – work by Ronald Hutton, Sabina Magliocco, and Helen Berger jumps to mind – there still wasn’t a single academic book that actually offered an introduction to this new religious movement. There were introductory works on contemporary Paganism as a whole by the likes of Graham Harvey and Margot Adler, and of course there were various ‘Wicca 101’ books authored by practitioners, but these weren’t ideal for the needs of a religious studies student or just a general interested reader who really wanted a good, scholarly, yet in-depth summary of Wicca. I’m not terribly business-minded, but quite simply I saw a gap in the market.
Thus, I would say that the book as it currently exists probably took me five years to write; of course, I had to juggle its production with my university studies, research articles, the Albion Calling blog, paid employment, and of course an all-important social life! So it has been a lengthy process, and a labour of love, but I do hope that it was worth it.
DfD: What was your research methodology?
In this case there wasn’t a research methodology per se. I wasn’t in the position to conduct in-depth ethnographic research – and even if I did it would have been regionally constrained – but rather I wanted to produce a textbook that brought together other scholars’ work and synthesised it all in one place. Most of those with a scholarly interest in Wicca will be aware of the best known book-length academic studies of the subject, but in producing this volume I discovered that there was an awful lot more research on the subject than I had ever realised, with hundreds of academic articles having been published, often in comparatively obscure academic outlets like the World Leisure Journal and Cornish Studies. That’s why my book’s bibliography is 29 pages long!
However, as I was writing the work there were questions that really intrigued me, in particular regarding such issues as the etymology and changing usage of the word “Wicca” within the Pagan community, the origins of the Wiccan Rede, and the life and theology of the British Witch Robert Cochrane, so I undertook historical studies on those particular issues, resulting in articles for peer-reviewed academic journals like The Pomegranate, Correspondences, Folklore, and Magic, Ritual and Witchcraft. These were spin-offs from the book as it were, and helped to give me – as someone too young to possess either a doctorate or professional academic post – the scholarly credibility that I needed to ultimately gain an academic publisher for the volume.
Can you share any of your more surprising findings?
I think that my most surprising findings all arose from my research into the word “Wicca”, which resulted in my very first academic publication, ‘The Meaning of “Wicca”: A Study in Etymology, History and Pagan Politics’, in a 2010 issue of The Pomegranate. It seemed that most people with an interest in the Craft – including myself, initially – were under the impression that Gerald Gardner had either developed the term “Wicca” (based on the Old English wicca) or gained it from the New Forest coven. According to this story, Gardner used the term explicitly to describe his Gardnerian tradition, but in the 1970s and 1980s “eclectic” practitioners adopted it for themselves and stretched it into a far more inclusive term for all forms of contemporary Pagan Witchcraft.
Simply put, a methodical examination of the early texts of the movement showed that that wasn’t the case. Gardner never used the term “Wicca”. What he did use was the term “the Wica”, which contains only one c, not two. However, “the Wica” was not a name for this religion, or even his tradition specifically. Instead it referred to the community of Pagan Witches – a community that he of course believed (or at least, publicly appeared to believe) – represented isolated survivals of a pre-Christian Murrayite witch-cult with its origins in prehistory. Thus, in Gardner’s understanding of the term, “the Wica” comprised not only his own Gardnerians, but also members of the traditions propagated by other Witches like Charles Cardell and Victor Anderson, both of whom he was in contact with.
The historical data shows that the term “Wicca” – as a name for the religion itself – appears in Britain in the early 1960s, where it is use among the early Alexandrians. They don’t use it in an exclusive manner to refer solely to the Gardnerians and Alexandrians, but rather in a far wider, inclusive manner, to refer to all Pagan Witchcraft groups claiming to be the survivals of Murray’s witch-cult. If you read Stewart Farrar’s What Witches Do, an early Alexandrian work, you’ll see him talking of Gardnerian, Alexandrian, Traditional, and Hereditary “Wiccans”, not “Witches”.
Basically, what we see here is that the common conception of the etymology of “Wicca” – that it was originally very exclusive and only later transformed into a wide-ranging inclusive term – is completely wrong. The term was in fact very inclusive from the start, and instead it was practitioners of the Gardnerian-Alexandrian tradition operating in the U.S. who then tried to restrict its usage during the 1970s and 1980s, perhaps as a part of boundary policing at a time when they wished to distance themselves from the growth of the Dianic Wiccans, Feri Wiccans, and self-dedicants who had built their tradition on the published work of Lady Sheba, Paul Huson, Raymond Buckland and the like.
For those Wiccans, and scholars interested in Wicca, who have not necessarily been following all of the latest developments in the study of the subject over the past few years, or even decades, I think that my work will be a bit of an eye opener.
DfD: How do you think Wicca, which was born in the repressive 1950s, and grew up in the “permissive” 60s and 70s, fits in with contemporary culture?
Well, in many ways I think that Wicca is intrinsically counter-cultural – it’s hardly a widely accepted part of mainstream culture to call oneself a “Witch”, venerate a deity other than the Judaeo-Christian God, and proclaim the ability to work magic! It is also marginal in that it holds the adherence of only a very tiny proportion of the overall population in any given country. Thus, I think that – just like other esoteric and Pagan movements – it exists within the “cultic milieu” at the cultural margins of Western society, which is part of what makes it so interesting for me and probably for many of its own participants, but at the same time it is that which makes it vulnerable to prejudice and persecution. I’m personally sceptical regarding the idea that Wicca will ever truly break out of this marginal position and enter the cultural mainstream; to do so I think that you would need to see not only the “western rationalist” scientific establishment embrace the objective validity of magic but also Wicca become a dominant religion with a large minority or even majority of the population professing allegiance to it. I appreciate that there are Wiccans who do believe – or at least hope – that this might eventually happen, but if I’m honest I have to say that I’d very surprised if such a scenario ever came to fruition. Then again, stranger things have happened – how many people living in the Roman Empire during the first-century CE thought that Christianity would come to dominate not only Rome itself but the entirety of Europe ?
DfD: What do you think might be the future for Wicca – both the eclectic varieties and the initiatory traditions?
I think that the short term future – the next fifty years or so – looks quite bright. The established, initiatory traditions are in a fairly stable place right now, at least in the Anglophone Western nations. Even if they aren’t growing at the rapid pace that they once experienced, their membership isn’t in significant decline, they’ve shown their capability to develop good relations with their neighbours, and they’ve established legally-recognised organisations that have helped to provide Wicca with greater visibility and legal protection. While this process of routinization definitely brings benefits for some Wiccan groups, at the same time other practitioners have resisted all of this and retained a fairly anarchic, secretive structure that they are far more comfortable with. To me, this says that Wicca is remarkably flexible and adaptable, able to fit both its participants’ desires and society’s demands, and that will no doubt stand it in good stead, at least over the coming decades.
When it comes to the “eclectic” Wiccans, I think that we will also see things remaining fairly stable in the near future too, with no dramatic surges and no dramatic declines. I have little doubt that while the books of Scott Cunningham and Silver RavenWolf remain readily available, you will still see a trickle of practitioners brought into the fold through them. I’ve noticed that in the past year or so there appears to have been something of a miniature revival of pop culture interest in Wiccan(esque) witchcraft and magic: we have a remake of The Craft coming out, talk of a revival of Charmed, and the girl band Little Mix recently launched a music video that revolved around the idea of four schoolgirls discovering a magic book and using it to advance their own interests. Sound familiar? Furthermore, I’ve noticed a fascinating but rather unexpected interest in Wicca within the queer hip hop scene coming out from the States; an artist called Zebra Katz released a song called “Blk Wiccan”, while one of the most innovative rappers of recent years, Azealia Banks, has talked about Wicca in some widely publicised tweets. I suspect that all of this reflects an embodiment of 90s nostalgia – like myself, these are all individuals who were exposed to Sabrina, The Craft, Buffy, Charmed and the ‘Teen Witchcraft’ movement as they were growing up, and now that they are bursting onto the musical scene they are bringing those formative influences with them. However, it would not surprise me if these factors resulted in a second ‘Teen Witchcraft’ movement, emerging among those consuming this new media, even if this one is not as large or as significant as its late 90s/early 00s predecessor.
As for the longer term, by which I mean the next five hundred to a thousand years (and as an archaeologist I often find myself thinking in those terms), I’m really not sure what will happen to Wicca. I believe that the impulse that many Westerns have – to “revive” in one way or another pre-Christian spiritual systems – will undoubtedly survive and thus I think that modern Pagan religiosity will undoubtedly surface again and again, in either explicitly spiritual or simply artistic and aesthetic forms, just as it has done ever since the Renaissance. Wicca itself, however, has the potential to die out at some point in the far future. Both history and archaeology tell us that most religious groups do eventually succumb to extinction, either by being wiped out or by evolving into something else entirely. Since the 1950s, Wicca has been propelled in part by its counter-cultural chic and its rejection of dominant modes of monotheistic religiosity, but there could come a point where Wicca just feels like an out-of-date irrelevancy for people, and is unable to attract young blood to its cause. It could become an old folks’ religion on the brink of extinction, which is the fate that many (formerly powerful and influential) Christian groups in the West are facing right now. Equally, it could fall victim to serious persecution, or fall by the wayside as humanity is wracked by totalitarianism, epidemics, or war. I appreciate that that might not be a message that many Wiccans want to hear, but I don’t believe that practitioners of the faith should ever think that their religion is somehow immune to the forces of history that have wiped out many belief systems in the past, including those “paganisms” of the ancient world that inspire Wicca’s modern spiritual endeavours. However, even if this pessimistic outlook should be the case, I hope that texts such as my book will have helped to document the existence of this truly fascinating religious movement for posterity.
Thank you very much, Ethan!
You can find out more about Ethan Doyle White by following his blog, Albion Calling, or his work on Academia.edu.
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About me
Location London, South East England
Introduction Born, raised, and still residing in the urban sprawl of Greater London, I am a PhD candidate at University College London with a particular interest in the development of cult, ritual, and magic. My published research focuses around two key-themes: pre-Christian religion in Europe, and the reception, re-interpretation and re-use of pre-Christian Europe in a modern context (i.e. contemporary Paganism). Although I have been academically trained in the discipline of archaeology, I am a staunch supporter of interdisciplinary perspectives, and my research has closely intersected with religious studies, history, and folkloristics. I have a forthcoming academic book, have published nine articles in peer-reviewed academic journals, and have also published twenty-four book and exhibit reviews in six different journals. I am happy to be contacted at ethan-doyle-white@hotmail.co.uk
Seven questions with... Ethan Doyle White
30 October 2014
This week we put seven questions to Ethan Doyle White, PhD student, Archaeology.
Why did you choose UCL?
Ethan Doyle White
It's a combination of three factors. First, UCL is a world-renowned institution, and as part of England's ‘golden triangle’, it is certainly one of the UK's best universities. That reputation counts for something!
Second, I received both my undergraduate and master's degrees from the Institute of Archaeology, which is easily one of the world's foremost archaeology departments, so it was no surprise that I wanted to continue my doctoral research there.
And third, it's in the great metropolis of London - granted, big cities aren't for everyone - but I love it.
What is the most interesting thing you've done, seen, or got involved with whilst at UCL?
It's a bit of an academic cliché, but I've taken part in a lot of fascinating conferences during my time here. Last October, we had a pioneering event on ‘Archaeology and the Uncanny’, which was really good.
Off the back of that, the Petrie Museum have invited me to give a lecture on archaeology and occultism in Kenneth Anger's cult film Lucifer Rising, which is scheduled to take place in early November.
Where is your favourite place on campus?
It has to be the Institute of Archaeology – it might not be the prettiest part of the university but after five years knocking about the place it has really come to feel like home.
Give us your top three things to do/see/go to in London?
A lot of students will only really know about things in central and inner London, but I'd really recommend getting out there and seeing the outer boroughs. Green spaces like Epping Forest are well worth a visit and can provide a welcome respite from the concrete jungle.
If you head to south east London, where I'm from, you have the Horniman Museum – easily one of the best museums in London; it has a fascinating ethnographic collection and, given that entry is free, I couldn't recommend it enough.
Heading a little further out in that direction, you have the Red House, where I volunteer now and again – if you're interested in Victorian Britain, William Morris or the arts and crafts movement, then it's a must-see.
If you were to switch departments or courses at UCL, what would you study and why?
Well, archaeology intersects with history and anthropology in a multitude of different ways, so I'd probably wind up in one of those two departments. My primary thematic interest is in ritual, religion, magic and beliefs pertaining to the preternatural, so I'd likely be doing something based on that.
Who would be your dream dinner guests?
They say, “don't meet your idols as you'll only be disappointed”... although I think that Dolly Parton would be the exception.
What would it surprise people to know about you?
During my first year of undergraduate studies, I created and directed a short experimental film which was screened at the London Underground Film Festival. I don't really have any time for film-making anymore though!
5/15/17, 10(19 AM
Print Marked Items
Wicca: History, Belief, and Community in Modern Pagan Witchcraft
ProtoView.
(Mar. 2016): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2016 Ringgold, Inc. http://www.protoview.com/protoview
Full Text:
9781845197544
Wicca: History, Belief, and Community in Modern Pagan Witchcraft Ethan Doyle White
Sussex Academic Press
2016
275 pages
$74.95
Hardcover
BP605
White, an archaeologist and scholar of contemporary Pagan studies, introduces the history, beliefs, and culture of Wicca, emphasizing the diversity within the religion. He describes its origins and sociocultural context; the role of the oFather of Wicca,o Gerald Gardner, and his disciples and rivals in Britain; the adoption of the craft in the US, the growth in the trend of self-initiation, and the intersection with the gay and women's liberation movements; and developments in recent decades, such as Wicca's influence on shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Charmed and on the growth of the Teen Witch movement. The second section addresses how Wiccans relate to the idea of witchcraft and their connections to the history of witchcraft and pre-Christian past, including the place of covens and solitary practitioners within the religion, the belief in magic and moral codes used to determine how it should be used, and the use of ritual and ceremony, seasonal-based festivals, and rites of passage, ending with a section on Wiccan life, covering how and why people convert to Wicca; its denominations; its sociological demographics; its political beliefs, particularly in terms of environmentalist issues; the impact of anti-Wiccan persecution; the transmission of Wiccan and Pagan culture; and the history of academic analysis of Wicca. Distributed in the US by IPG. ([umlaut] Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR)
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Review: Wicca – History, Belief, and Community in Modern Pagan Witchcraft
By Morgana on 31 januari, 2016
Wicca – History, Belief, and Community in Modern Pagan Witchcraft
Ethan Doyle White
Sussex Academic Press
Paperback: 275 p. ISBN 9781845197551 £ 25; hardback £ 65
Order from all good booksellers, or direct from Gazelle, email.
Also, for an interview with Ethan Doyle White see Patheos.
Ethan Doyle White Wicca
On the back cover, we read “The past century has borne witness to a growing interest in the belief systems of ancient Europe, with an array of contemporary Pagan groups claiming to revive these old ways for the needs of the modern world. By far the largest and best known of these Paganisms has been Wicca, a new religious movement that can now count hundreds of thousands of adherents worldwide. Emerging from the occult milieu of mid twentieth-century Britain, Wicca was first presented as the survival of an ancient pre-Christian Witch-Cult, whose participants assembled in covens to venerate their Horned God and Mother Goddess, to celebrate seasonal festivities, and to cast spells by the light of the full moon. Spreading to North America, where it diversified under the impact of environmentalism, feminism, and the 1960s counter-culture, Wicca came to be presented as a Goddess-centred nature religion, in which form it was popularised by a number of best-selling authors and fictional television shows. Today, Wicca is a maturing religious movement replete with its own distinct world-view, unique culture, and internal divisions. This book represents the first published academic introduction to be exclusively devoted to this fascinating faith, exploring how this Witches Craft developed, what its participants believe and practice, and what the Wiccan community actually looks like. In doing so it sweeps away widely-held misconceptions and offers a comprehensive overview of this religion in all of its varied forms. Drawing upon the work of historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and scholars of religious studies, as well as the writings of Wiccans themselves, it provides an original synthesis that will be invaluable for anyone seeking to learn about the blossoming religion of modern Pagan Witchcraft.”
Divided into three parts Doyle White briefly covers Wiccan History from the origins to the present day. Notable authors and practitioners such as Gerald Gardner and Alex Sanders are discussed as well as the impact of the social movements such as the Gay and Women’s Liberation movements. In part 2 Beliefs and Praxes looks at Wiccan theology, ritual practice and Rites of Passage and so on. In the final part Wiccan Life, the Wiccan community and culture is discussed. Particular attention is given to the Study of Wicca within academia and the problems recently raised concerning the subject of Pagan Studies. All in all, a good primer for scholars who are not familiar with the phenomenon “Wicca”.
It occurred to me however whilst reading the book, that this it is rather like analyzing Christianity 70 years on… The majority of early Wiccans have now passed on and the new “Old Guard” – like me – are frantically trying to note down first-hand experiences and our own Craft history. And that is perhaps where I think Doyle White could have spent more time. On field research in his own back garden. I was more than surprised to see Wicca “in Europe” dealt with in less than a page. And unfortunately not accurately either:
“In the Netherlands, Gardnerian Wicca gained a foothold in the 1970’s when Merlin Sythone (sic) and his wife Morgana founded the Silver Circle coven in Zeist, followed by the arrival of the Alexandrian tradition in the following decade.” **
That he then claims that Wicca “fundamentally remains an Anglo-American movement” is to completely negate the influence of “the continent”, as our British friends call us, and underlies the still prevalent American/British cultural imperialist attitudes. That many neo-pagan rituals are influenced by Wicca practice and structure is certainly the case. So much so that it has given rise to the words Wiccanesque, Wiccanish, Wiccanate and would seem to indicate that it has a much more universal impact than one would imagine. Wicca as a philosophy has the ability to absorb many different cultural aspects which perhaps makes it difficult to define.
Despite this shortcoming – how about part 2? – this is a valiant attempt at covering “Wicca – a modern religion in an old robe” which was the title I gave to a paper I read at a recent conference. I do realise how difficult it is to give an accurate picture since the diversity of opinions amongst Wiccans is enormous. In 1979 when Margot Adler wrote “Drawing down the Moon” it was already clear that neo-paganism, Wicca, and so on was going to be something quite different than the Abrahamic religions.
All Hail Goddess Eclectica 🙂
** Note; The name is Sythove; Silver Circle is the name of a centre, not a coven… and I don’t think the Alexandrians would like to be known as “following” the Gardnerians.
Ethan Doyle White:
He has written a number of interesting papers. Follow him here on Academia.
He writes on his blog: “Born, raised, and still residing in the urban sprawl of Greater London, I am a PhD candidate at University College London with a particular interest in the development of cult, ritual, and magic. My published research focuses around two key-themes: pre-Christian religion in Europe, and the reception, re-interpretation and re-use of pre-Christian Europe in a modern context (i.e. contemporary Paganism). Although I have been academically trained in the discipline of archaeology, I am a staunch supporter of interdisciplinary perspectives, and my research has closely intersected with religious studies, history, and folkloristics. I have a forthcoming academic book, have published nine articles in peer-reviewed academic journals, and have also published twenty-four book and exhibit reviews in six different journals. I am happy to be contacted at ethan-doyle-white@hotmail.co.uk”.
Posted in Boeken, English articles, Recensies | Tagged history, modern witchcraft, paganism, Wicca | 1 Response
Morgana
"Morgana is Anglo/Dutch and lives in the Netherlands. She is a practising Gardnerian HPS. Over the years, she has facilitated a variety of Wiccan groups. She is co-editor of the international and bilingual "Wiccan Rede" magazine, which was launched in 1980 and is coordinator of Silver Circle, a Wiccan network in the Netherlands. As International Coordinator for PFI she travels extensively giving talks and workshops about Wicca and Paganism."