Witching Culture Book Review: Triangulation Of Ritual Trance And Worldview
Western cultures emphasize the individual, who is responsible for giving meaning to their life. The new, and rapidly growing movement of Neo-Paganism offers an explanatory framework for human existence. In Europe, Tanya Luhrman explores the question “why would ‘rational’ people develop an interest in practicing magic and witchcraft”? In North America, Sabina Magliocco furthers this vein of inquiry through her own interest in twenty-first century identity politics.
Witching Culture is accessible to a wide audience, but is directed towards those of an English speaking intellectual class. This is a similar group to those Magliocco documents in the ethnography. A common academic language with common terminology makes this piece of writing accessible to amateur anthropologists or those wanting an introduction to Neo-Paganism. Magliocco caters to this audience by explaining the basic principles of the Neo-Pagan traditions using a list-based approach. She also details the influences of mythology, folklore, the reformation, enlightenment, academics, and anthropology on the contemporary worldview of Neo-Pagans in America. She fluctuates between fieldwork accounts, interpretations of her observations and citations of notable anthropologists. Furthermore, she supports her cultural ethnographic process with the complimentary skill of Lyrical literary analysis.
Academically trained as a folklorist and anthropologist, Magliocco cultivates qualities that aid her insight into the expanding culture of Neo-Paganism in California. Witching Culture documents her longterm fieldwork and participant observation in San Francisco Bay area’s Neo-Pagan community. Even Magliocco’s personal identity as a “white Euro-American with a middleclass upbringing” places her in an ideal position to gain an insider’s perspective because it is similar to that of the majority of Neo-Pagan community members. Likewise, this book review is situated in the lens of a white North-American, with a middle-class upbringing, heavily influenced by intellectual academics (including the study of visual arts, mythology and anthropology).
The book provides an overview of the historic origins of neo-paganism, including biographical material of prominent members in that history, particularly amateur anthropologist Gerald Gardner. Gardner’s importance is explicit in his attribution as the founder of the Gardnerian tradition to which coven Trismegiston subscribes. Magliocco becomes a member of coven Trismegiston, actively participating in their rituals and rituals held by different distinct traditions of Neo-Paganism. Immersed in the movement, she operates from an emic perspective, oscillating between total involvement and objectivity.
Western mysticism, esoteric symbols and occult knowledge can be traced backward through secret societies in the nineteenth and twentieth century, to Saints cults and year cycle-rites before the protestant reformation, and through Renaissance magicians, to classical roots in Ancient Greece and Rome. The rituals of Marsilio Ficiono, ”his disciple Pico della Mirandola” and “apostate monk” Giordano Bruno elevate the practice of magic to an early form of performance art in the sixteenth century. Historically, the roots of Neo-Paganism are intertwined with Christian movements, iconography and characters still apparent in the art forms of the Neo-Pagan movement.
Today, Witchen and Neo-Pagan groups collaborate to produce rituals of various scales, the largest of which aim to reclaim eight “year-cycle celebrations”. “Gerald Gardner first articulated” these sabbats. Magic is an intrinsic aspect of these seasonal celebratory occasions. The movement of magic energy and the harnessing of magic via correspondences culminates in religious experiences of trance. Common ecstatic encounters are central to the formation of Witchen and Pagan groups whose sole similarity is experiential. They also share a general understanding of the “Organizational Principles” of magic including animism. Neo-Pagans imaginatively apply the languages of the occult in order to create counter-culture identities. These identities are acted out in their public magical practice of the sabbats. Oppositional culture also creates room for expression of the individuals’ sensory experiences; most notably, ecstasy.
Magliocco focuses on the relationship between identity and community formation in regards to the construction of elaborate ritual practices. Her interest centres on how identity, community and ritual enable the progression of the new religious movement. Informed by identity politics, Magliocco situates this phenomenon in the context of globalization and increasing contact between cultures. In North America, there has always been numerous ethnic, racial, religious and language groups inhabiting the same geographical region, leading to a constant syncretism of various cultures. Relationships, obligation and reciprocity between multicultural neighbours, blur the lines between cultural borrowing and appropriation in Neo-Pagan communities. Neo-Pagans integrate diverse cultural belief systems with ease, due to their overarching generalizing definitions of magic; notably, the idea of animism developed by Sir Edward Tylor.
People are constantly in the process of choosing and integrating traditions into their contemporary lives. This process is not a new phenomenon, but occurs with each successive generation. In the case of the Aztecs, the Spanish conquerors introduced a new set of Christian beliefs. The Aztecs integrated their own traditions with Christian iconography. This is apparent in the Mexican master symbol The Virgin of Guadalupe “the syncretism is still alive”. Neo-Paganism, emerging in post-colonial dominant culture deeply founded in the Christian religion, also draws on Christian content. “In these cases, modern Witches and Pagans simply remove the Christian content of charms, sometimes substituting the names of their own deities. In other cases they reinterpret and recontextualize”. In both cases, individuals and communities integrate their personal and cultural worldview with that of the ‘other’, the dominant society.
Marginal people in Western society form their own social-religious groups united through symbolic actions and worldview. Both Thomas J. Csordas and Magliocco use very similar language to describe ritual practices of the religious fringe groups of Christian Charismatics and Neo-Pagans. In his ethnomedical comparison, Csordas describes an instance of “embodied imaginal performance”; while Magliocco determines that “embodied spiritual or imaginative experience is the core of Pagan identity” (Magliocco 2004, 200). In both occurrences, the innate human quality of imagination is framed in the context of religious ritual. Members of each of the religious groups employ their imaginations uniting individuals already disposed to the respective religious beliefs. The juxtaposition of the highly logical, rational North American culture with the imaginative, experiential Neo-Pagan community creates a source of contrast on which this religious movement’s oppositional identity thrives.
The protestant reformation, with its emphasis on theology, further highlights the separation of the Sacred (relegated to the realm of the abstract mind) from the Profane (everyday embodied experience). Sociologist Emile Durkheim theorizes in regards to the sacred profane dichotomy from a Eurocentric Christian perspective. The Neo-Pagan movement arising in the Modern era can be seen as a response to the increasing division of the secular from the religious in North America. The emphasis on ecstasy, reinvigorated by its suppression during the enlightenment, is shared between “Pentecostal Christianity” and Neo-Pagans, demonstrating that the historical influence of Christianity is still relevant in Paganism today (Magliocco 2004, 163). For Pagans, their religious identity is predicated on the “ecstatic union with nature” – “the interconnectedness of the universe is a lived experience”. Neo-Pagans reunite the every-day environment and the sacred by placing their religious identity in nature. The reconnection of the sacred in the profane reflects the Neo-Pagan worldview of interconnections.
The language regarding trance Neo-Pagans use also imitates a religious experience, considering the value they place on ecstatic states. Neo-Pagans embody their understanding of altered states of consciousness when they perform spells, rituals and role-playing in order to create situations conducive to group ecstasy. The art of performance and narrative is integral to the Neo-Pagan culture of altered states of consciousness. During Magliocco’s fieldwork with her coven Trismegiston, she “describes… an imaginary experience based on traditional descriptions of a witches’ sabbat that the entire coven could share”. In this example, Don, the High Priest of the coven skillfully and intentionally leads the group into trance through “storytelling in a trance voice” (Magliocco 2004, 167). In the Neo-Pagan community, a religious specialist is capable of creating conditions conducive to trance through their ritual art skills “both artists and magicians use imagination … to manipulate objects and symbols. The art of performance is integral to the heart of Pagan ritual and identity, religious ecstasy.
Ritual, trance and worldview are all interrelated in Neo-Pagan communities. Rituals facilitate trance which in turn helps to form worldview. This is paralleled by the triangulation of imagination, ecstasy and identity. Rituals often rely on performance and narrative art that in turn produces trance. Furthermore Neo-Pagan communities use story-telling to share a common language of symbols from which they can craft their collective worldview. Trance states and ecstasy are central to the group cohesion of Neo-Pagans, the “movement’s aesthetics” and “skilled ritualists” demonstrate the way the group and its members display identity. For instance, “interpretation of a trance event is constructed anew by each observer,” bringing their individual “past experiences, present concerns, and critical awareness”.
Magliocco states multiple perspectives especially in regards to identity and cultural appropriation. She outlines universalist and relativist arguments in regards to the discussion of appropriation in the context of globalization and increasing contact between cultures; along with the commodification of culture in relationship to ownership, identity and conceptualization as property. Cross cultural influence shows up in cultural borrowing and hybridization that manifests in the aesthetics and ritual art form of the neo-pagan movement. From a visual arts perspective, the Neo-Pagan community’s inclination towards creative expression is alluring. Magliocco demonstrates the viewpoints and categorical definitions of older anthropologists, and alludes to the biomedical approach to trance and ecstasy which she intentionally omits from her ethnographic research. The brief clarifying statements made by Magliocco hint toward homogenizing and generalizing the diversity of opinions that can only be discovered though ethnographies from multiple viewpoints, and geographies, including both emic and etic perspectives. The angle of this book review closely relates to that of Magliocco. With this in mind, Magliocco’s worldview is naturalized, consequently, pinpointing diverging opinions is difficult.
References
- Csordas, Thomas J. 2002. “A Handmaid’s Tale.” In Body/Meaning/Healing, 88-99. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
- Magliocco, Sabina. 2004. Witching Culture. Stanford, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press.
- Wolf, Eric R. 1958. “The Virgin of Guadalupe: A Mexican National Symbol.” The Journal of American Folklore 71: 34–39.
