Abstract
Based on ethnographic research conducted among the Irish Pagan community, this chapter explores Wicca and other forms of modern Pagan witchcraft in the Irish context. The Wiccan community in Ireland is diverse but connects in many ways with Ireland and Irish culture, whether through its landscape, mythology, folklore, or the Irish language. The discussion includes an examination of the ways in which folk magic, charms, cures, and other practices have influenced practitioners of contemporary Pagan witchcraft and the means by which these two cultural forms—traditional Irish culture and modern Irish Pagan culture—intersect. It explores how the notion of the Celtic has influenced Irish Pagan witchcraft, discusses why the culture of the historical Celtic peoples is so important to many practitioners, and details the ways in which modern witches incorporate these cultural aspects into their contemporary identities.
“The nearest kin of the moon” references a poem by William Butler Yeats, “The Cat and the Moon”, in which another line—“the sacred moon overhead”—has always been reminiscent to me of the significance of the moon in witchcraft practices both historical and contemporary.
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- 1.
The field research on which this chapter is based was conducted in the Republic of Ireland, initially for a PhD project funded by a Government of Ireland Scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences awarded by the Irish Research Council, and subsequent research on contemporary Paganism in Ireland.
- 2.
Janet and Stewart Farrar relocated within Ireland a number of times, originally settling in Ferns, County Wexford, and moving in 1979 to Ballycroy, County Mayo, then on to Swords in County Dublin, then Drogheda, and finally to Kells in 1985, where Janet and Gavin Bone still reside today.
- 3.
Information here is based on interviews with Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone on 9 January 2002 at their home and conversations during 2018.
- 4.
Elizabeth Guerra with Janet Farrar, Stewart Farrar: Writer on a Broomstick. The Biography of Stewart Farrar (Cheltenham, Gloucestershire: Skylight Press, 2013 [2008]), 125.
- 5.
Shelley TSivia Rabinovitch, “Spells of Transformation: Categorizing Modern Neo-Pagan Witches,” in Magical Religion and Modern Witchcraft, ed. James R. Lewis (State University of New York Press, 1996), 78.
- 6.
Egil Asprem, “Contemporary Ritual Magic,” in The Occult World, ed. Christopher Partridge (Abingdon, Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2015), 391.
- 7.
Graham Harvey, “Contemporary Paganism and the Occult,” in The Occult World, ed. Christopher Partridge (Abingdon, Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2015), 361.
- 8.
Ronald Hutton, “Witch-Hunting in Celtic Societies,” Past & Present 212 (2011): 48.
- 9.
Andrew Sneddon, Witchcraft and Magic in Ireland (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 9.
- 10.
Hutton, “Witch-Hunting,” 63.
- 11.
Joanne Pearson, “Witches and Wicca,” in Belief Beyond Boundaries: Wicca, Celtic Spirituality and the New Age, ed. Joanne Pearson (Milton Keynes and Hants: The Open University in association with Ashgate Publishing, 2002), 168.
- 12.
Sabina Magliocco, Witching Culture: Folklore and Neo-Paganism in America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 62.
- 13.
For an analysis of the “Satanic Ritual Abuse Panic”, see David Frankfurter, “The Satanic Ritual Abuse Panic as Religious-Studies Data,” Numen 50, no. 1 (2003): 108–117; for an analysis of the English context in particular, see Jean La Fontaine, Witches and Demons: A Comparative Perspective on Witchcraft and Satanism (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2016).
- 14.
Ann-Marie Gallagher, “Weaving a Tangled Web? Pagan Ethics and Issues of History, ‘Race’ and Ethnicity in Pagan Identity,” in Handbook of Contemporary Paganism, ed. James R. Lewis and Murphy Pizza (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 587–588.
- 15.
Joseph Laycock, “Carnal Knowledge: The Epistemology of Sexual Trauma in Witches’ Sabbaths, Satanic Ritual Abuse, and Alien Abduction Narratives,” Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural 1, no. 1 (2012): 103.
- 16.
The phrase “witches’ sabbath” appears in witch-trial records to describe an outdoor gathering of witches with the Devil during the night. It has been suggested that the term as used during witch-hunts was derived from Hebrew and is possibly an imagined diabolical version of the Jewish “Sabbath”.
- 17.
Niall Coll, “Irish Identity and the Future of Catholicism,” in Irish Catholic Identities, ed. Oliver P. Rafferty (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), 362.
- 18.
Gladys Ganiel, Transforming Post-Catholic Ireland: Religious Practice in Late Modernity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 1.
- 19.
Kathryn Rountree, Crafting Contemporary Pagan Identities in a Catholic Society (Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2010), 80.
- 20.
Rountree, Pagan Identities, 4–5.
- 21.
Tom Inglis, Moral Monopoly: The Rise and Fall of the Catholic Church in Modern Ireland (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 1998), 17.
- 22.
“Protestant” in Irish popular discourse normally refers to the denominations of Anglican and Presbyterian, rather than the evangelical denominations like Pentecostalism or Baptist that were introduced to Irish society in later times; the particularised understanding of “Protestantism” is connected to the political and cultural situation that arose due to colonisation and conflict in Ireland’s history.
- 23.
Ethan Doyle White, Wicca: History, Belief, and Community in Modern Pagan Witchcraft (Brighton, Chicago and Toronto: Sussex Academic Press, 2016), 14.
- 24.
James R. Lewis, “Celts, Druids and the Invention of Tradition,” in Handbook of Contemporary Paganism, ed. James R. Lewis and Murphy Pizza (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 481.
- 25.
A song called “Burning Times” written by Charlie Murphy and sung by popular Irish folk singer, Christy Moore, is well liked among the Irish Pagan community. The chorus of this song is often sung as a refrain during rituals: “Hear them chanting healing incantations/Calling for the wise ones, celebrating in dance and song/Isis, Astarte, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Kali, Inanna”.
- 26.
Helen Cornish, “Cunning Histories: Privileging Narratives in the Present,” History and Anthropology 16, no. 3 (2002): 365.
- 27.
Ronald Hutton, The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy (Malden, MA; Oxford and Victoria: Blackwell Publishing, 2003 [1991]), 300.
- 28.
Sabina Magliocco, “Reclamation, Appropriation and the Ecstatic Imagination in Modern Pagan Ritual,” in Handbook of Contemporary Paganism, ed. James R. Lewis and Murphy Pizza (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 229.
- 29.
Regina Bendix, In Search of Authenticity: The Formation of Folklore Studies (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997), 216.
- 30.
For additional information, see my article on the Irish Pagan community’s engagement with the traditional celebration of seasonal festivals, “The Neo-Pagan Ritual Year,” Cosmos 18 (2002): 121–142.
- 31.
Magliocco, “Reclamation,” 239.
- 32.
Gearóid Ó Crualaoich, The Book of the Cailleach: Stories of the Wise-Woman Healer (Cork: Cork University Press, 2003), 73.
- 33.
Diane Purkiss, Troublesome Things: A History of Fairies and Fairy Stories (London: Allen Lane, 2000), 126.
- 34.
Eric Hobsbawm, “Introduction,” in The Invention of Tradition, ed. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 12.
- 35.
Alan Gailey, Gailey, “Tradition and Identity,” in The Use of Tradition: Essays Presented to G. B. Thompson, ed. Alan Gailey (Co. Down: Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, 1988), 65.
- 36.
Jonas Frykman and Orvar Löfgren, “Introduction,” in Force of Habit: Exploring Everyday Culture, ed. Jonas Frykman and Orvar Löfgren (Lund: Lund University Press, 1996), 17.
- 37.
Brandon J. Harwood, “Beyond Poetry and Magick: The Core Elements of Wiccan Morality,” Journal of Contemporary Religion 22, no. 3 (2007): 379.
- 38.
Nancy Schmitz, “An Irish Wise Woman: Fact and Legend,” Journal of the Folklore Institute 14, no. 3 (1977): 172.
- 39.
Ó Crualaoich, Book of the Cailleach, 94.
- 40.
Sneddon, Witchcraft and Magic, 15.
- 41.
Carole G. Silver, Strange and Secret Peoples: Fairies and Victorian Consciousness (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 4.
- 42.
Diarmuid Ó Giolláin, Locating Irish Folklore: Tradition, Modernity, Identity (Cork: Cork University Press, 2000), 25.
- 43.
Stiofán Ó Cadhla, The Holy Well Tradition: The Pattern of St. Declan, Ardmore, County Waterford, 1800–2000 (Maynooth Studies in Local History, No. 45, Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2002), 11.
- 44.
M. M. Banks, “Widdershins; Irish Tuaithbheal, Tuathal,” Folklore 38 (1927): 86–88.
- 45.
Lewis, “Celts, Druids,” 480.
- 46.
Marion Bowman, “Cardiac Celts: Images of the Celts in Paganism,” in Pagan Pathways: A Complete Guide to the Ancient Earth Traditions, ed. Charlotte Hardman and Graham Harvey (London: Thorsons, 2000), 242.
- 47.
Donald Meek, The Quest for Celtic Christianity (Edinburgh: Handsel Press, 2000), 23.
- 48.
For a discussion of how such distinctions are made, in Pagan discourse and use of symbol, between light-hearted references to the witch figure and sincere indication of cultural elements significant to practitioners’ identities and practices, see my chapter, “Neo-Pagan Celebrations of Samhain,” in Treat or Trick? Halloween in a Globalising World, ed. Malcolm Foley and Hugh O’Donnell (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009), 67–82.
- 49.
Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), vii.
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Butler, J. (2019). The Nearest Kin of the Moon: Irish Pagan Witchcraft, Magic(k), and the Celtic Twilight. In: Feraro, S., Doyle White, E. (eds) Magic and Witchery in the Modern West. Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15549-0_5
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