''Persuasions of the Witches' Craft: Ritual Magic in Contemporary England'' is a study of several

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 was ...

n and

ceremonial magic Ceremonial magic (ritual magic, high magic or learned magic) encompasses a wide variety of rituals of magic. The works included are characterized by ceremony and numerous requisite accessories to aid the practitioner. It can be seen as an ex ...

groups that assembled in southern England during the 1980s. It was written by the American anthropologist Tanya M. Luhrmann of the

University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Insti ...

, and first published in 1989. The work would be criticized by later academics 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 ...

and

western esotericism Western esotericism, also known as esotericism, esoterism, and sometimes the Western mystery tradition, is a term scholars use to categorise a wide range of loosely related ideas and movements that developed within Western society. These ideas a ...

, who charged it with dealing with those it was studying in a derogatory manner.

Influence

Writing in her paper within James R. Lewis' edited ''Magical Religion and Modern Witchcraft'' anthology, Siân Reid described Luhrmann's work as "a solid ethnography". Nevertheless, she felt that the study "occasionally rings hollow" because Luhrmann failed to take into account the "subjective motivations for magical practice". In her anthropological study of the U.S. Pagan community, ''

Witching Culture ''Witching Culture: Folklore and Neo-Paganism in America'' is a folkloristics, folkloric and anthropology, anthropological study of the Wiccan and wider Paganism (contemporary), Pagan community in the United States. It was written by the American ...

'' (2004), the American academic

Sabina Magliocco Sabina Magliocco (born December 30, 1959), is a professor of anthropology and religion at the University of British Columbia and formerly at California State University, Northridge (CSUN). She is an author of non-fiction books and journal article ...

noted that her work both built upon and departed from Luhrmann's. Magliocco 2004. p. 100.

Interpretive Drift

One of the key concepts developed by Luhrmann is that of "Interpretive Drift, the gradual shift in a person's interpretation of events and experiences so that, over time, the person comes to understand these experiences in terms of a new belief system or framework. Although it is rare for people to change their deeply held beliefs overnight, as they have new experiences their beliefs shift incrementally, leading them to adopt beliefs and practices that they might have previously considered strange. Although Luhrmann studied interpretive drift in the setting of modern witchcraft, it is a very general concept, and probably plays a role in almost every setting, most especially where someone is joining a new community, like that of religions, sciences, or any other kind of community or culture. The concept of shifting beliefs and interpretations is similar to concepts described in other settings, such as

Thomas Kuhn Thomas Samuel Kuhn (; July 18, 1922 – June 17, 1996) was an American philosopher of science whose 1962 book ''The Structure of Scientific Revolutions'' was influential in both academic and popular circles, introducing the term '' paradigm ...

's "Paradigm Shifts",

Peter L. Berger Peter Ludwig Berger (17 March 1929 – 27 June 2017) was an Austrian-born American sociologist and Protestant theologian. Berger became known for his work in the sociology of knowledge, the sociology of religion, study of modernization, and theor ...

and

Thomas Luckmann Thomas Luckmann (; October 14, 1927 – May 10, 2016) was an American-Austrian sociologist of German and Slovene origin who taught mainly in Germany. Born in Jesenice, Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Luckmann studied philosophy and linguistics at the Uni ...

's "Social Construction of Reality",

Leon Festinger Leon Festinger (8 May 1919 – 11 February 1989) was an American social psychologist who originated the theory of cognitive dissonance and social comparison theory. The rejection of the previously dominant behaviorist view of social psychology ...

's "Cognitive Dissonance Theory", "Symbolic Interactionism", and non-stage-based developmental theories, such as the "Overlapping Wave Theory", due to

Robert S. Siegler Robert S. Siegler (born 12 May 1949) is an American psychologist and professor of psychology at Columbia University. He is a recipient of the American Psychological Association's 2005 Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award. He specializes in ...

. Although the interpretive drift was intended to describe a feature of human cognition, it has parallels in

Artificial Intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

, especially regarding how machine learning (ML) models adapt slowly with experience, and specifically "Concept Drift" which shares with interpretive drift the core idea of gradual change over time, and the processes by which a starting point or understanding evolves due to new influences. ML models are trained on a specific set of data, and if the real-world data (on which predictions are made) begins to drift from the training data's distribution, the model's performance can degrade.

References

Footnotes

Bibliography

* * * * * * * * {{Pagan studies 1989 non-fiction books Anthropology books Religious studies books Pagan studies books 1980s in modern paganism English-language books Harvard University Press books