''Enchanted Feminism: The Reclaiming Witches of San Francisco'' is an anthropological study of the
Reclaiming Wiccan community of
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...
. It was written by the Scandinavian theologian
Jone Salomonsen Jone may refer to:
*Jone (opera), ''Jone'' (opera), an 1858 opera in four acts by Errico Petrella
*Jonê County, a county in Gansu, People's Republic of China
*Jone Pinto (born 1991), Brazilian footballer
*DJ JoN-E (born 1984), North American South ...
of the
California State University, Northridge and first published in 2002 by the
Routledge
Routledge () is a British multinational publisher. It was founded in 1836 by George Routledge, and specialises in providing academic books, journals and online resources in the fields of the humanities, behavioural science, education, law ...
.
Background
Paganism and Wicca in the United States
Contemporary Paganism, which is also referred to as Neo-Paganism, is an
umbrella term
In linguistics, semantics, general semantics, and ontologies, hyponymy () is a semantic relation between a hyponym denoting a subtype and a hypernym or hyperonym (sometimes called umbrella term or blanket term) denoting a supertype. In other wor ...
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.
[ Carpenter 1996. p. 40.] The religion of Pagan Witchcraft, or
Wicca
Wicca () is a modern Pagan religion. Scholars of religion categorise it as both a new religious movement and as part of the occultist stream of Western esotericism. It was developed in England during the first half of the 20th century and w ...
, 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
Gerald Brosseau Gardner (13 June 1884 – 12 February 1964), also known by the craft name Scire, was an English Wiccan, as well as an author and an amateur anthropology, anthropologist and archaeology, archaeologist. He was instrumental in bri ...
(1884–1964), the author of ''
Witchcraft Today
''Witchcraft Today'' is a non-fiction book written by Gerald Gardner. Published in 1954, ''Witchcraft Today'' recounts Gardner's thoughts on the history and the practices of the witch-cult, and his claim to have met practising witches in 1930s ...
'' (1954) and ''
The Meaning of Witchcraft
''The Meaning of Witchcraft'' is a non-fiction book written by Gerald Gardner. Gardner, known to many in the modern sense as the "Father of Wicca", based the book around his experiences with the religion of Wicca and the New Forest Coven. It was ...
'' (1959) and the founder of a tradition known as
Gardnerian Wicca. Gardnerian Wicca revolved around the veneration of both a
Horned God
The Horned God is one of the two primary deities found in Wicca and some related forms of Neopaganism.
The term ''Horned God'' itself predates Wicca, and is an early 20th-century syncretic term for a horned or antlered anthropomorphic god partl ...
and a
Mother Goddess, the celebration of eight seasonally-based festivals in a
Wheel of the Year
The Wheel of the Year is an annual cycle of seasonal festivals, observed by many modern pagans, consisting of the year's chief solar events (solstices and equinoxes) and the midpoints between them. While names for each festival vary among dive ...
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
Raymond Buckland (31 August 1934 – 27 September 2017), whose craft name was Robat, was an English writer on the subject of Wicca and the occult, and a significant figure in the history of Wicca, of which he was a high priest in both the Gardne ...
(1934–), and his then-wife Rosemary, who together founded a coven in
Long Island.
In the U.S., new variants of Wicca developed, including
Dianic Wicca
Dianic Wicca, also known as Dianic Witchcraft, and, to some also as "Dianism," "Dianic Feminist Witchcraft," or simply "Feminist Witchcraft"' is a modern pagan, goddess tradition, focused on female experience and empowerment. Leadership is by w ...
, 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
Starhawk (born Miriam Simos on June 17, 1951) is an American feminist and author. She is known as a theorist of feminist Neopaganism and ecofeminism.
In 2013, she was listed in Watkins' ''Mind Body Spirit'' magazine as one of the 100 Most Spir ...
(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.
Prior to Magiocco's work, three American researchers working in the field of
Pagan studies Pagan studies is the multidisciplinary academic field devoted to the study of modern paganism, a broad assortment of modern religious movements, which are typically influenced by or claiming to be derived from the various pagan beliefs of premodern ...
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
Margot Susanna Adler (April 16, 1946 – July 28, 2014) was an American author, journalist, lecturer, Wiccan priestess, and New York correspondent for National Public Radio (NPR).
Early life
Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, Adler grew up mostly ...
in her ''
Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America Today'', which was first published by
Viking Press
Viking Press (formally Viking Penguin, also listed as Viking Books) is an American publishing company owned by Penguin Random House. It was founded in New York City on March 1, 1925, by Harold K. Guinzburg and George S. Oppenheim and then acquir ...
in 1979. 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. 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.
[ Orion 1995.]
References
Footnotes
Bibliography
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{{Pagan studies
2002 non-fiction books
Anthropology books
Feminism in California
Religious studies books
Pagan studies books
Modern paganism in the United States
Reclaiming (Neopaganism)
Books about the San Francisco Bay Area
Culture of San Francisco
Religion in the San Francisco Bay Area
Wicca in the United States
2000s in modern paganism