This presentation is going to be about the past—so we gain more understanding of the history we’re working with and what we mean when we say ‘magic’ and ‘witchcraft’. Also some of the dangers and problems in the history.
First a note: I’m going to use the words ‘spirituality’ and ‘religion’ interchangeably. Many people are averse to the word ‘religion’ because they associate with any number of oppressive institutions. But I feel spirituality is unnecessarily vague and also focuses on a spirit vs matter dualism.By religion I mean reverence for some kind of power beyond everyday human experience.
Not going to focus on witch-burnings or WITCH, but 19th and 20th c intellectual history leading up to modern witchcraft.
Also I'm going to focus mostly on England because that's where we are + what I know the most about.
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I'm structuring this talk around the definition of three terms and examining them in more detail: modern paganism, magic, and witchcraft.
Witchcraft and magic today are generally practiced by people who identify one way or another as 'pagan'.
Modern Paganism – a difficult and complex term to define. Margot Adler, one of the most prominent scholars of modern paganism, describes them as ‘anarchistic religions’ and says it’s probably wrong to say all pagans believe this or that, except:
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The world is holy. Nature is holy. The body is holy. Sexuality is holy. The mind is holy. The imagination is holy. You are holy. A spiritual path that is not stagnant ultimately leads one to the understanding of one’s own divine nature. […] Divinity is imminent in all Nature. It is as much within you as without.
Pagan is a huge umbrella term describing a wide range of religious and spiritual practices and movements today, including Wicca, Druidry, various forms of reconstructionism, eclectic polytheism, pop culture paganism, atheistic nature worship. Not all pagans practice magic/witchcraft, but many do. Most modern-day witches consider themselves pagans, but not all.
Origin of the idea ‘paganism’.
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Latin Paganus means country-dweller, hick, hillbilly, rustic, unlearned. In late antiquity, after the conversion of the Roman Emperor Constantine to Christianity, ‘paganus’ starts to be used in ecclesiastical Latin as a derogatory term to refer to a worshipper of the old Greek and Roman gods, and, more broadly, to polytheists and people who don’t accept the Christian model of a one true god.
(There’s Constantine looking glum - he made a series of colossal mistakes. )
One of the earliest prominent uses of the modern sense of pagan in Latin literature is in a couple of passages of the Theodosian Code of the late 300s AD, making illegal the ‘Ritus cultusque paganorum’, the rites and cults of the pagans.
So right from the beginning the term has to do with marginalization and defiance.
Neo-Paganism or Modern Paganism as a movement only became big in the 1960s, but its origins were in the late-18th 19th century.
Theology is generally defined by being non-monotheistic and going back to 'dead' religions for inspiration in constructing ones own personal religion. Can be polytheistic, pantheistic (particularly common), atheistic,
Central desire is RE-ENCHANTMENT of the world that surrounds us every day.
One way or another there's something we've lost in modernity that we need to reclaim.
Briefly, the intellectual history of Modern Paganism – I’ll just highlight a few things.
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Much of it originates from around the time of the French Revolution and Romanticism.
There were a few religious phenomena, sort of radical paganisms, that emerged during the French Revolution. The most well-known, though ethically and politically dubious, was the ‘Cult of the Supreme Being’ that Robespierre established in 1794. Banned Christianity and worshiped Man and Reason instead. Drew on what they understood to be Greek religion.
Robespierre and his religion didn’t last long, but this helped fuel the idea that revolutionary change might draw on revolutionary religious impulses.
A key figure in MP in English-speaking world is Wm Blake.
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Blake identified as a Christian, but his Christianity was extremely complex and heterodox. He had prophetic visions, spoke to angels, and constructed a complex theology populated with many demigods he invented which he illustrated in his illuminated books. (Urizen – reason and Orc – embodiment of the spirit of revolution.)
He was largely unknown in his lifetime and forgotten after death, but Algernon Swinburne, a poet who identified in complicated ways as a pagan, revived interest in him with his Study of Blake in 1867, and then interest exploded in the 1960s.
Blake’s politics were proto-anarchistic, similar to his contemporary William Godwin: anti-imperialist, conscious of the abuse of class power, anti-slavery, sex-positive, and proto-environmentalist. Again, we find this idea of the radical freedom in constructing one’s own personal religion. Blake viewed the human imagination as divine – for true freedom we construct our own personal new religions.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Enormously important in the development of modern pagan aesthetics.
The Birth of Tragedy – contrasted the Apollonian and the Dionysian, claimed their fusion produced the dramatic arts, particularly tragedy. And their balance in ancient greek culture was what made it so great. The Apollonian – reason, science, light, clarity Dionysian – chaos, passion, obscurity, the irrational, ecstatic states, death drive, the body
Dionysian needs to be revived.
Nietzsche against Plato and metaphysical dualism. He hated the idea that the material world and the body was corrupt and evil – instead embrace life on earth. Much like Marx he thought belief in an afterlife suppressed people’s potential in this life.
During his mid-life he identified increasingly with the god Dionysus and professed to be his ‘last disciple and initiate’. These statements became less and less ironic during his mental breakdown late in life, when he signed his letters as Dionysus and believed he was, or was possessed by, the ancient god.
Nietzsche’s politics are dubious to say the least, but he's evasive and ambiguous - he's beloved of many anarchists like Emma Goldman but also of many fascists - Hitler, by the way, profound misreading of Nietzsche, who loathed nationalism and racism.
His aesthetics are, I think, absolutely insurmountable and that's what we're doing here: using the aesthetics of witchcraft and magic for political activism.
Paganism practiced by people who are radical, defiant, and marinalised one way or another. Norse and Slavic reconstructionism – some fascists. Difficult to count but a very tiny minority of modern pagans are fascists. Rest in general very left-leaning.
Now we move onto magic.
Magic(k): 'the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with the Will' - AC
- I like this definition best and I’d like to propose we work with it. -Obvious powerful radical potential – in fact, we can interpret activism as magic -Doesn't bring the supernatural into play: good for everyone -I'm a philosophical materialist, I believe nature is all there is and the supernatural doesn't exist, but there's a tremendous amount of the world we can't yet understand through reason. But if you do believe in the supernatural Crowley’s definition works too.
Aleister Crowley added the k to distinguish from stage magic and Magic tricks - many people use the k today.
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Aleister Crowley is the catalyst of much 20th century occult and magical practices.
Emphasise: he’s not a good guy - complex figure - on the one hand radical queer and sex-positive during the time of Oscar Wilde, on the other hand had borderline fascist politics, extremely misogynistic. Authoritarian – loved USSR and fascism. He’s a complicated, interesting figure and I’d encourage anyone to read about him.
He established a number of different religions of his own invention, the most famous of which is Thelema (greek word meaning Will). Developed magical system based on Hermeticism (western alchemy), Islamic and Buddhist mysticism, Qabala, etc. Foundation of 20th c magic practice.
A great many prominent figures in late 19th early 20th c were friends with Crowley and involved in ritual magic – W B Yeats.
He had his finger in every pie, literally and figuratively.
Like Algernon Swinburne in the 1860s, who was another queer erotic blasphemer, and Lord Byron before him, AC got away with what he did I think because he was an aristocrat.
You don't really see public performances of witchcraft and magic until the twentieth century because it was illegal, or at least highly socially unacceptable and dangerous for anyone who’s not extremely privileged.
And now we finally come to the proper witchcraft revival in the 20th century.
WITCHCRAFT The practice of magic A label applied to those accused of influencing the mind and body of others against their will, or undermining social or religious order
Particularly associated with women.
Under these definitions of magic and witchcraft, we ALL are already witches!
Historically much of magical practice ‘white witchcraft’ folk medicine practiced esp. by older women. (Encompassed abortions and midwifery)
During the witch hunts in Europe of the 15th-18th C, the people accused of witchcraft were overwhelmingly women, but a huge range of people who weren’t women and were non-conforming in some way were also burned at the stake.
16th C artistic depiction of some witches having fun
I like Decca’s definition – ‘If you would be burned at the stake, you’re a witch’.
Now we come to the modern ‘witchcraft revival’ which started in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s.
The most famous aspect is Wicca.
Wicca is not a synonym for witchcraft. It’s a religion created by a group of British people in the mid-twentieth century. One of them, Gerald Gardener, claimed the religion had been practiced in secret in England for centuries , but later scholarship has thoroughly disproven that.
In short (this is a huge oversimplification): two gods, a Goddess and a God. All deities are manifestations of these two, whose life cycle follows the cycle of the year. Particularly strong emphasis on Goddess worship.
Wiccan rede ‘an it harm none, do what ye will’. White magic practice as a form of personal spiritual development. Wiccans encouraged to keep a Book of Shadows, which is a grimoire detailing spells and rituals they’ve written. Creative, nondogmatic, personal religion.
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The Wheel of the Year is a cycle of eight festivals at regular astronomical points of the year, often corresponding with western and English holidays (holy days). The festivals celebrate the symbolic power of the seasons and changes in the earth. Their names are in the Gaelic language, taken from pagan Celtic holidays. The Wheel of the Year has been tremendously influential, and many if not most modern pagans and witches who aren’t wiccans respect the wheel of the year in some way. We’re celebrating Samhain now!
I personally feel the gender essentialism and binarism of traditional Wicca is outdated, but there’s much to learn that’s wonderful about the tradition, esp structure of revering nature.
This is Doreen Valiente, absolutely badass woman, in Brighton in 1962. She was a central figure in the establishment of Wicca, although she’s underrecognised compared to the straight blokes Gerald Gardener and Alex Sanders – typical. She wrote a tremendous number of books on the history and practice of witchcraft and magic, and a great deal of the standard Wiccan liturgy, including the famous ‘Drawing Down the Moon’ ceremony.
The point at which witchcraft as activism really starts to explode is in second-wave feminism. I’m going to cover a couple of examples briefly.
Dianic Wicca – founded by Zsusanna Budapest in US in the 1970s. Worships a single Goddess, all world goddesses manifestations of her.
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Often understood as the ‘triple goddess’ Maiden ,Mother, Crone, symbolized by three phases of the moon. Matriarchal and feminist. Historically included many lesbian and bisexual members. Covens only admit what they define to be women.
Very problematic – history of trans exclusion, only admitting people ‘assigned female at birth’, although younger covens have changed.
Magical practice focused on politics. Rituals developed to confront gendered personal trauma, such as battery, rape, incest, and partner abuse. Women shifting understanding of power from the hands of their abusers to themselves.
Radical Faeries
a movement and loose network founded in the US in the late 70s by anti-assimilationist gay male activists.
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Redefining queer consciousness through spirituality. Anti-establishment, anarchist and environmentalist. Still predominantly queer men, but accepting huge range of people.
Scholar Peter Hennan describes the radical faerie ideology as a blend of
"Marxism, feminism, paganism, New Age spirituality, anarchism, radical individualism, the therapeutic culture of self-fulfillment and self-actualization, earth-based movements in support of sustainable communities, spiritual solemnity coupled with a camp sensibility, gay liberation and drag.’
Much more to say about modern witchcraft but must conclude!
My conclusion
Paganism, witchcraft and magic appeal to me because they provide radical freedom to construct meaning in your own life. Essentially building your own religion from first principles. The key idea behind all of these things is that THIS WORLD is sacred, EVERY HUMAN BEING are sacred, the body is sacred, the earth is sacred, art is sacred, and even if there isn’t any life or world beyond this one that doesn’t matter because the universe itself is worthy of reverence.
It fits well with anarchist and socialist ideology because if we only have this life and this world, we have the responsibility to strive to change society so everyone is able to flourish to their full potential. Activism re-enchants the world because it fills us with hope that a better world for everyone is possible.