Abstract
Wicca evolves—and so does the scholarship devoted to it. Studies of its history and its myriad manifestations may be complemented by social scientific approaches that explain its inner workings and the impact of the sociocultural context. In this day and age, for instance, rather than merely trying to comprehend their lives in the “grand scheme of things”, many practitioners employ religious myth and symbolism for self-expression and identity construction. A postmodern movement par excellence, Wicca encourages its followers to generate new forms of ritual, cultivate their imagination, and directly experience the divine order. There is, then, something inherently creative about Wicca. Deriving from fieldwork conducted among Wiccans in the Low Countries, this chapter explores how the transactions between individual believers, the collective of peers and gatekeepers, and the cultural repository of Wicca contribute to religious renewal, and how, in turn, the practitioners themselves are changed in the process.
This chapter is an adapted version of the summary of the studies that was featured at the end of my PhD dissertation (see note 5).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Tanya M. Luhrmann, Persuasions of the Witch’s Craft: Ritual Magic in Contemporary England (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989); Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
- 2.
Luhrmann, Persuasions of the Witch’s Craft, 312.
- 3.
Ronald Hutton, “Modern Pagan Witchcraft,” in Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: The Twentieth Century, ed. Bengt Ankarloo and Stuart Clark (London: Athlone, 1999), 74.
- 4.
Ibid.
- 5.
Léon A. van Gulik, “Moongazers & Trailblazers: Creative Dynamics in Low Country Wicca,” PhD diss., Tilburg University (2017).
- 6.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, “Implications of a Systems Perspective for the Study of Creativity,” in Handbook of Creativity, ed. Robert J. Sternberg (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 327–332.
- 7.
Léon A. van Gulik, “Cleanliness is Next to Godliness, but Oaths are for Horses: Antecedents and Consequences of the Institutionalization of Secrecy in Initiatory Wicca,” The Pomegranate 14, no. 2 (2012): 235–236.
- 8.
Léon A. van Gulik, “On the Pagan Parallax: A Sociocultural Exploration of the Tension between Eclecticism and Traditionalism as Observed among Dutch Wiccans,” The Pomegranate 12, no. 1 (2010): 51.
- 9.
Ibid., 55.
- 10.
Cf. the distinction between reconstructionist and eclectic Paganism as discussed in Michael Strmiska, “Modern Paganism in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives,” in Modern Paganism in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives, ed. Michael F. Strmiska (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC CLIO, 2005), 18–22.
- 11.
Van Gulik, “On the Pagan Parallax,” 56.
- 12.
Léon A. van Gulik, “On the Sticks and Stones of the Greencraft Temple in Flanders: A Case-Study of Balancing Global and Local Heritage in Wicca,” in Contemporary Pagan and Native Faith Movements in Europe: Colonialist and Nationalist Impulses, ed. Kathryn Rountree (New York: Berghahn, 2015), 220–225.
- 13.
Léon A. van Gulik, “Domesticating the Imagination: Acquisition, Exposition, and Validation of Otherworldly Experiences in Wicca,” Religion (provisionally accepted).
- 14.
Van Gulik, “On the Pagan Parallax,” 64.
- 15.
Ibid., 54.
- 16.
Léon A. van Gulik, “Coining a Name, Casting the Self: Identity Construction Through Name Adoption by Dutch and Flemish Wiccans,” Nova Religio, 20, no. 2 (2016): 97–110.
- 17.
Ibid., 101–104.
- 18.
Ibid., 104–108.
- 19.
Susan K. Deri, Symbolization and Creativity (New York: International Universities Press, 1984), 75–76.
- 20.
Léon A. van Gulik, “Het Principe Van De Pionierservaring: Mimesis En Symboliek Der Individuele Conceptie,” Prana 25, no. 6 (2000): 77–78.
- 21.
Léon A. van Gulik, “The Scholar Versus the Pagan on Greencraft Tree Walks: Attunement, Imagination, and Interpretation,” Traditiones 41, no. 1 (2012): 58–59.
- 22.
Léon A. van Gulik, “‘To Know, to Will, to Dare, and to … Speak Up!’ Development, Self-Disclosure, and Self-Validation of Belief in Dutch-Speaking Pagans,” Acta Ethnographica Hungarica 56, no. 1 (2011): 136–137.
- 23.
Van Gulik, “Coining a Name, Casting the Self.”
- 24.
Ibid., 101–103.
- 25.
Ibid., 103–104.
- 26.
Ibid., 106–107.
- 27.
Van Gulik, “Domesticating the Imagination.”
- 28.
Van Gulik, “On the Pagan Parallax,” 52; Van Gulik, “‘To Know, to Will, to Dare, and to … Speak Up!’,” 134–135.
- 29.
Van Gulik, “Domesticating the Imagination.”
- 30.
Van Gulik, “Coining a Name, Casting the Self,” 100.
- 31.
Cf., stakes in conformity, as described in Rodney Stark, and William Sims Bainbridge, A Theory of Religion (New York: Peter Lang, 1987).
- 32.
Van Gulik, “On the Pagan Parallax,” 63; Van Gulik, “Cleanliness is Next to Godliness, but Oaths are for Horses,” 238.
- 33.
Van Gulik, “Coining a Name, Casting the Self,” 104–105.
- 34.
Ibid., 101.
- 35.
Van Gulik, “Cleanliness is Next to Godliness, but Oaths are for Horses,” 246–248.
- 36.
Van Gulik, “Domesticating the Imagination.”
- 37.
Ibid.
- 38.
Van Gulik, “On the Sticks and Stones of the Greencraft Temple in Flanders,” 228–229.
- 39.
Van Gulik, “On the Pagan Parallax,” 56.
- 40.
Van Gulik, “On the Pagan Parallax,” 60–61.
- 41.
Van Gulik, “Cleanliness is Next to Godliness, but Oaths are for Horses,” 240–243.
- 42.
Van Gulik, “On the Pagan Parallax,” 65.
- 43.
Éliphas Lévi, Dogme Et Rituel De La Haute Magie (Paris: Germer Baillière, 1856).
- 44.
William G. Gray, Concepts of Qabalah, ed. William G. Gray, Sangreal Sodality Series (York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, 1984).
- 45.
R. J. Stewart, The Merlin Tarot Handbook (London: Aquarian, 1992).
- 46.
René Delaere, Greencraft Tarot (San Antonio, TX: New Gaia Press, 2010).
- 47.
Robert Graves, The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth, Amended and Enlarged ed. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1966).
- 48.
Van Gulik, “On the Sticks and Stones of the Greencraft Temple in Flanders,” 220–222.
- 49.
Van Gulik, “The Scholar Versus the Pagan on Greencraft Tree Walks,” 59.
- 50.
Douglas E. Cowan, Cyberhenge: Modern Pagans on the Internet (New York: Routledge, 2005), 33–50.
- 51.
Janet Farrar, and Gavin Bone, Progressive Witchcraft: Spirituality, Mysteries & Training in Modern Wicca (Franklin Lakes, NJ: New Page, 2004).
- 52.
Van Gulik, “Domesticating the Imagination.”
- 53.
Van Gulik, “The Scholar Versus the Pagan on Greencraft Tree Walks,” 50–52.
- 54.
Van Gulik, “On the Pagan Parallax,” 66, especially note 29.
- 55.
Van Gulik, “Het Principe Van De Pionierservaring: Mimesis En Symboliek Der Individuele Conceptie”; Léon A. van Gulik, “What’s the Stuff Religious Experiences are Made of? A Theory on the Management of Atmosphere in Contexts of the Sacred,” in Religion and Pluralities of Knowledge. Thirteenth Conference of the European Association for the Study of Religions, ed. Kocku von Stuckrad (Groningen: The Netherlands, 2014).
- 56.
Van Gulik, “Cleanliness is Next to Godliness, but Oaths are for Horses,” 250–251.
- 57.
Léon A. van Gulik, “The Goddess Does Play Dice: Creativity and Non-Intentionality in Contemporary Pagan Ritual,” in The Ritual Year 6: The Inner and the Outer, ed. Mare Koiva (Tartu, Estonia: ELM Scholarly Press, 2011).
- 58.
In the interview with Janet Farrar I conducted for my research, she argued that the Charge of the Goddess was only supposed to be used as a last resort, if the high priestess could not enter a proper trance state, and thus was not able to prophesise.
- 59.
Van Gulik, “Coining a Name, Casting the Self.”
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
van Gulik, L.A. (2019). The Blind Moondial Makers: Creativity and Renewal in Wicca. 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_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15549-0_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-15548-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-15549-0
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)