The Pomegranate, Nova Religio, and Material Religion: My recent publications on the study of modern Paganism

The past few weeks have witnessed the publication of a number of my research articles (and a book review) in several peer-reviewed journals, all of which I hope will be of interest to those active within the field currently known as “Pagan studies.” They reflect my increasing diversification away from the study of modern Pagan Witchcraft and toward the study of other expressions of modern Pagan religiosity.

The first, and perhaps the most important, of these articles is titled “Theoretical, Terminological, and Taxonomic Trouble in the Academic Study of Contemporary Paganism: A Case for Reform,” and appears in the latest issue (volume 18, no 1) of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies. It outlines my concerns about the state of the field as it currently exists, and then provides some suggestions for how these problems might be dealt with; one of my major suggestions is that we should cease talking about “Pagan studies” and instead embrace “the academic study of modern Paganism.” The article caught the eye of the scholar of esotericism Egil Asprem, who kindly posted about it in a very positive manner over at his blog, Heterodoxology (here). This post subsequently resulted in an interesting debate in the blog’s comment section which contained contributions from the prominent scholar of esotericism Wouter Hanegraaff and from the scholars of Paganism Chas S. Clifton and Amy Hale.

The second article of mine to have been recently published is titled “The New Cultus of Antinous: Hadrian’s Deified Lover and Contemporary Queer Paganism.” Appearing in Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions volume 20, issue 1, this article outlines some research that I carried out into the Pagan new religious movement that has grown up in veneration of Antinous, the male lover of the Roman Emperor Hadrian who was deified upon drowning in the Nile. Far less theoretically oriented than my Pomegranate paper, this article instead seeks to document a new religious community that has largely sprung up only in the last fifteen years and which thus far has evaded any sustained academic attention. Particularly interesting is that the modern veneration of Antinous represents a form of ‘Queer Paganism,’ with the majority of its practitioners being gay men who revere Antinous as “the gay god.”

My third article is on the topic of “Old Stones, New Rites: Contemporary Pagan Interactions with the Medway Megaliths,” published in Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief volume 12, issue 3. Those familiar with my work will be aware of my longstanding interest in the ways that modern Pagan and other religious communities interpret and make use of archaeological material (see for instance here and here), and this article takes that approach further by examining how the Medway Megaliths of Kent have been utilised by the area’s Pagan community. In particular I have examined how different Pagan groups approach these prominent landscape features; for certain Heathens, these are places that symbolically cement a connection to their ancestors of the blood, whereas for Druids, they cement a connection to their ancestors of the land.

For those perhaps more interested in my work on modern witchcraft and Wicca (on the subject of which I wrote my recent book, Wicca: History, Belief, and Community in Modern Pagan Witchcraft), I have also published a book review of Philip Heselton’s recent biography, Doreen Valiente: Witch, again in the latest issue of The Pomegranate. Unlike the other works cited here, this one is available to read and download for free, either from the Pomegranate website (here) or my own academia.edu account (here).

My first book, Wicca: History, Belief, and Community in Modern Pagan Witchcraft, is out now
from Sussex Academic Press. It represents the first (and so far only) academically-oriented
introduction to this modern Pagan religion.

Pagan Studies, Medieval Magic, and Satanic Ritual Abuse: A Summary of Some Recent London Conferences on the Study of Esotericism and Paganism

The past month has borne witness to a number of academic workshops and conferences here in London which I suspect would be of interest to a great many of those involved in the academic study of contemporary Paganism and esotericism. Given that for most of my colleagues in these fields, particularly those living in North America and Australia, a quick trip over to Britain just isn’t feasible, here I’ll provide a brief overview of these events coupled with some of my own personal reflections on them, with the hope that doing so will help to ensure that scholars of these fields will be able to gain a better appreciation of some of the work currently being undertaken in my own little corner of the world.

Social anthropologist Jonathan Woolley talked about
methodological approaches to the study of Paganism

The first of these events was “Researching Pagans and Paganism”, held in the basement of Treadwell’s bookshop in Bloomsbury on Monday 20^th June. This evening workshop consisted of two talks on the subject of how best to conduct research into contemporary Paganism(s), the first from social anthropologist Jonathan Woolley, a doctoral student at Cambridge University, and the latter from Douglas Ezzy, a sociologist from the University of Tasmania currently visiting Europe. While I cannot recall all of the details of their respective arguments, their talks dealt with such issues as how to define Paganism, the insider/outsider debate, and how to respond to the concerns raised in Markus Altena Davidsen’s 2012 critique of Pagan studies (many of these issues will be dealt with in an article of mine in the forthcoming issue of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies, an unpublished draft of which Woolley was kind enough to cite in his talk). The two talks were followed by a panel discussion between Woolley, Ezzy, and the audience of approximately twenty attendees, most of whom were members of the Pagan community – among them a number of prominent names – but also a few of those active in the academic study of contemporary Paganism too, such as myself and Kavita Maya, a doctoral candidate at the School of Oriental and African Studies. This was the first British event devoted to the academic study of Paganism since last summer’s “Generation Hex: The Politics of Contemporary Paganism” conference at Cambridge (which was co-organised by Woolley and Maya alongside Elizabeth Cruse), and hopefully reflects growing activity among the coterie of scholars of Paganism presently active within the United Kingdom. Certainly, it has been good to have a public academic discussion of the methodological and theoretical issues facing this field take place here in the UK, given that in recent years such discussions have been largely restrained to the Pagan Studies Session of the American Academy of Religion’s annual conference.

The upturned pentagram is the most common symbol of Satanism

Treadwell’s was subsequently involved in co-organising “UK Satanic Abuse Scare, 25 Years On”, an evening conference on the Satanic ritual abuse (SRA) hysteria that hit Britain in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Held at the London School of Economics (LSE) on Tuesday 5^th July, the event was produced in conjunction with INFORM, a charity based at the LSE that is dedicated to promoting accurate knowledge about new religious movements and other alternative and/or controversial spiritual groups. The conference was divided into two halves, the first comprising academic and scholarly approaches to the subject, the second devoted to the voices of Pagan practitioners who were negatively impacted by the moral panic. Kicking off the event was a talk by the anthropologist Jean La Fontaine, whose influential (yet at times controversial) research in the early 1990s demonstrated that there was no evidence for a widespread conspiracy of Satanists involved in the ritualised abuse and murder of children (as a number of evangelical Christian groups and media outlets were then claiming). This was followed by INFORM’s Sarah Harvey and Amanda Van Eck, who delved into the charity’s archives to look at how the British public’s response to contemporary Paganism and occultism has shifted since the group’s founding in 1988, paying particular attention to the concerns generated by the SRA panic. Next up was the journalist Rosie Waterhouse of City University London, whose own research during the early 1990s helped to demonstrate and publicise the lack of hard evidence behind most accusations of SRA. She outlined her own experiences and work on the subject, also drawing parallels between the SRA panic of the late 80s/early 90s and the way in which some journalists have reported on the allegations of sexual abuse directed at various celebrities in recent years. After a brief break, the conference continued with an interesting talk from Prudence Jones, the former President of the Pagan Federation, and then Phil Hine, the former editor of Pagan News, who each described their own experiences as prominent figures within the British Pagan community during the time of the hysteria.

The event was obviously dealing with a very sensitive and contentious subject matter, and one on which many people have strong and vocal opinions. However, one thing that I thought notable about the event was that the speakers invited all fell very much on one side of the debate (i.e. they were those who strongly believe that accounts of SRA are all, or virtually all, unsubstantiated and untrue, the product of a moral panic). There are of course others who have contested this approach and argued that – while an international conspiracy of child molesting and murdering Satanists is unlikely – some of those claiming to have been the victims of ritualised abuse are accurately relating events that they have experienced. Moreover, since the late 1990s, a number of Pagans and/or occultists have been arrested and convicted of sexually abusing minors: prominent examples include Robin Angus Fletcher in Australia, Colin Batley in Wales, Redvers Barnard in Greater Manchester, and Peter Petrauske in Cornwall. Clearly, sexual abuse affects the Pagan and occult communities in much the same way that it affects many other religious and indeed secular communities. Moreover, in certain instances (in particular that of Fletcher) that abuse is carried out in a manner that religious studies scholars could perhaps categorise as being “ritualised”, with perpetrators seeking to legitimise their actions by reference to their religious beliefs. This is clearly a different phenomenon from the idea of a massive Satanic conspiracy involving mass molestations and murders, but it muddies the waters and makes the entire issue more difficult to explore, particularly in a dispassionate manner.

The Warburg Institute. Photograph by Philafrenzy, Wikimedia

Two days later, on Thursday 7^th July, the Warburg Institute played host to “Magical Traditions and Medieval Religions of the Book”, a one-day workshop organised by UCL’s Sophie Page on behalf of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE). The event was designed primarily for MA and PhD students, and included a session on doctoral and early career advice (special thanks must go out to Egil Asprem and Liana Saif for their recommendations on how to secure post-doctoral funding, something of particular concern to me). However, the event also contained lectures from a number of guest speakers, including Siam Bhayro from Exeter University on his research into the Jewish Aramaic inscriptions on the so-called ‘magic bowls’ of late antique Mesopotamia, Saif on the place of magic in Medieval Islam, and Adelina Angusheva-Tihanov from the University of Manchester on Slavic amulet books from the Balkans. This was then followed by a keynote from Jean-Patrice Boudet of the University of Orleans, in which he spoke on the different ways in which magical traditions were approached in Medieval Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It was great to see how well attended the event was, particularly given that this was ESSWE’s first event to be held in London. The first of many, perhaps?

Despite being a major global hub and home to some of the world’s foremost universities, London has arguably lagged behind many other parts of the Western world when it comes to the academic study of contemporary Paganism and esotericism. Over the past few decades, the study of Western esotericism has begun to blossom in much of continental Europe while the study of Paganism has advanced in the United States, but Britain – perhaps because of its weaker institutional framework for the study of religion than many other Western nations – hasn’t quite kept up. I’m really hoping that the events which we have seen in London this summer, alongside the Cambridge conference last year, reflect that that is changing. Britain, and indeed London itself, has played a crucial role in the development of many Pagan and occult traditions, from Wicca and Druidry to Thelema and the New Age movement, and so it is only apt that this nation and this city also comes to be seen as an important centre for the study of these fascinating phenomena.

My Guest Post on Margaret Murray

This is just a quick note to point readers in the direction of  Dr. Kathleen Sheppard’s blog, “Adventures in History and Archaeology”, where I have been kindly invited to provide a guest post on the subject of “Margaret Murray: The Godmother of Wicca”. The post comes off the back of my own researches into Wicca and its thematic intersection with Sheppard’s research into Murray’s life, the latter of which resulted in the first full-length posthumous biography of this fascinating woman, available online. It is a book that I would definitely recommend for anyone interested in Murray’s career in Egyptology and archaeology -- those of you with institutional access or subscriptions can read my full review of it over at Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism here.

Some Thoughts on the ASSAP conference, "Seriously Bewitched"

Yesterday I attended (and spoke at) a one-day public conference titled “Seriously Bewitched”, organised by the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomenon (ASSAP) and held on the premises of Goldsmiths, University of London, an academic institution based in southeast London’s New Cross. As its title suggested, the conference was devoted to the subject of witchcraft, both in its historical and contemporary manifestations. Given ASSAP’s remit, the conference was not strictly academic (although there were many academics present), and instead it aimed to reach a much wider audience including quite a number of people who were personally involved in forms of modern religious Witchcraft. This broad church approach undoubtedly had its benefits in bringing together divergent opinions and perspectives in a spirit of dialogue, although at times it also resulted in some vocal disagreement, particularly from attendees who weren’t particularly familiar with the nature of academic scholarship or the realities of what historically constituted “witchcraft”.

The event kicked off with some opening remarks from Professor Chris French, a psychologist based at Goldsmiths who has a particular interest in the critical study of paranormal phenomenon; for me, it was particularly intriguing to finally meet Professor French in the flesh as I remember him being a talking head on television shows about the paranormal when I was a child. He was followed by Deborah Hyde, his successor as editor of The Skeptic magazine, who used her talk to delve into the Roman Catholic Church’s response to Medieval heresy, discussing how that phenomenon impacted on the later witch trials of the Early Modern period. Sticking with those trials, we then had Christian Jensen Romer, a self-professed evangelical Christian, offer a discussion of the witch trials that took place both in Eastern England at the urging of Matthew Hopkins and those that took place in Salem, Massachusetts. Seeking to turn commonly held notions upon their head, he pointed out that many of those most active in carrying out these persecutions were highly educated men working on a rationalist basis – he even compared them, perhaps a little tongue-in-cheek, to ASSAP members – while also noting that it was Puritan preachers who were among the most vocal critics of the trials.

It was my turn after lunch, as I focused on “The New Witches of the West”, looking at the development of Wicca – in both its British Traditional and later Dianic variants – as well as modern Satanism, before exploring quite why many modern day people choose to identify as “witches” when that term is so loaded with historical baggage. Given that I was feeling a little under-the-weather, I chose to read from a script rather than speak without one, however I got a fair bit of positive feedback nevertheless (although I was somewhat lost for words when one audience member started insisting that a secret cabal of Satanists rule the world…). I was followed by Dr. Helen Cornish of Goldsmiths, who discussed the fascinating case of Joan Wytte, “the Fighting Fairy Woman of Bodmin”, whose alleged physical remains had been displayed at Cecil Williamson’s Museum of Witchcraft in Boscastle, Cornwall for many years. Returning to the subject of modern Pagan Witchcraft, PhD candidate Charmaine Sonnex then discussed some of her ongoing work on how modern British Pagans (into which she includes British Traditional Wiccans, eclectic solitary Wiccans, and Druids) conduct magic spells and how they believe that such spells work.

Moving into the evening session, the Wiccan High Priestess Bekie Bird provided a biographical overview of her own life, discussing key events in her childhood and adolescence that led her onto the Pagan path, and talking about her beliefs pertaining to magic and spirituality. Finally, independent folklorist Mark Norman ended the day with a talk on what he termed “Traditional Witchcraft” – meaning both historical folk magic and those contemporary esotericists who self-designate as “Traditional Witches” – focusing in particular on how “Traditional Witchcraft” has been presented by Gemma Gary of the Cornish-based coven Ros an Bucca. All in all, it was an interesting day that brought together many interesting people and interesting talks, and my thanks must be extended to its organisers. For those interested, the next themed ASSAP conference, “Seriously Enchanted”, will be devoted to fairy lore and will take place at The Academy, Holiday Inn, in Bristol on 12 March 2016.

An Interview with Dr. Ceri Houlbrook

Today here at Albion Calling we have the archaeologist and folklorist Dr. Ceri Houlbrook with us (if you're not familiar with her work, check out her academia.edu account here). Having completed her PhD on the subject of coin trees at the University of Manchester back in 2014, she is currently involved in a post-doctoral project examining concealed apotropaic devices in the British Isles and the ways in which they have been dealt with by those who have discovered them. We talk about her research, her new co-edited book, and her views on the intersections between folkloristics and archaeology.

Dr Houlbrook at a love-lock bridge in Prague, Czech Republic

[EDW]: Under the supervision of the archaeologist Professor Tim Insoll (who was interviewed here back in August 2014), you completed your PhD at the University of Manchester in 2014 on the topic of “Coining the Coin-Tree: Contextualising a Contemporary British custom”. Subsequently, you have published a number of research articles on the coin tree phenomenon in such peer-reviewed journals as Folklore, Journal of Contemporary Archaeology, and Post-Medieval Archaeology. What was it that led you to coin trees as an object of enquiry? Could you possibly also provide this blog’s readers with a summary of your research on this subject?

[CH]: Since doing my MA in ‘Constructions of the Sacred, the Holy and the Supernatural’ at Manchester, I’ve been interested in British folk customs – particularly how they survive, and sometimes flourish, in contemporary society. The coin-tree is just one such example of this. Although the custom of inserting coins into trees stretches back to the 1800s (maybe even the 1700s), where it was originally associated with healing rituals, it’s really only been over the last two decades that the practice has spread across the British Isles, with coin-trees popping up in all corners of the country. I was interested in asking why the 1990s and 2000s had seen such a rapid increase in the custom, and in finding out what it means to its modern-day participants. My conclusion: it means whatever its participants want it to mean, and I use coin-trees to demonstrate the malleability of folklore and the mutability of meaning. These allow customs, legends, and lore to survive their transitions into different times and places, by enabling them to adapt.

[EDW]: You are currently a Postdoctoral Research Assistant working as part of a Leverhulme-funded project titled “Inner Lives: Emotions, Identity, and the Supernatural, 1300–1900”, which is based at both the University of East Anglia and the University of Hertfordshire. Could you tell us a little bit more about this exciting new project and what your role entails?

[CH]: As you might have guessed from its title, this project, run by Prof. Malcolm Gaskill, Prof. Owen Davies, and Dr Sophie Page, is broad – both chronologically and thematically. To summarise briefly, we’re interested in examining how people historically have dealt with the cross-overs of emotions (fear, hatred, love), selfhood, and aspects of the supernatural. My strand of the project is entitled ‘The Concealed Revealed’, and I’m looking at the sorts of devices and customs people used to protect their homes from preternatural threats, from concealed shoes and mummified cats to timber markings. As well as cataloguing examples of this from across the British Isles, I’m also interested in considering what happens to them after they’re found; once the concealed has been revealed, so to speak. Are they disposed of, re-concealed, or displayed? And what does that tell us about people today and their own relationships with emotions, identity, and the supernatural?

Coin-tree in Ingleton, Yorkshire.
Image copyright Dr. Houlbrook

[EDW]: Like myself, you’ve been in attendance at the Folklore Society’s Newer Researchers conferences over the past two years and have conducted research that has crossed into the two respective fields of archaeology and folkloristics. Where do you tend to view yourself in relation to these two disciplines, and how well do you think that they work together?

[CH]: Although I’m not a huge fan of labels and pigeonholing myself, if people ask I tend to call myself a ‘folklore archaeologist’. This basically means that I use methodologies from both folklore and archaeology to gain insights into ritual practices and popular beliefs, both historical and contemporary. Take concealed shoes for example. We have no (surviving) written evidence describing the practice and therefore no explanation for why people in the 18th and 19th centuries concealed shoes within the walls, roof spaces, and fireplaces of their homes. Cue folklore archaeology: by considering oral lore surrounding shoes and the materiality of the shoes themselves, together with their liminal locations, we can at least come up with some working theories on this enigmatic practice.

[EDW]: Oxbow Books have recently brought out The Materiality of Magic: An Artifactual Investigation into Ritual Practices and Popular Beliefs, an edited volume that you co-produced with Natalie Armitage. In this volume, you also have a chapter titled “The Wishing-Tree of Isle Maree: The Evolution of a Scottish Folkloric Practice”. Could you elaborate for us on how this particular book came about?

[CH]: In 2012, Natalie Armitage and I organised a panel at the Theoretical Archaeology Group (TAG) conference entitled ‘The Materiality of Magic’. We were eager to get both the subject and word of ‘magic’ – seen as something of an academic taboo – back onto the archaeological agenda, and to illustrate how research into ritual practices and popular beliefs benefit from a material culture perspective. We were also eager to demonstrate how prevalent such practices and beliefs are across time and place, and so we invited speakers with a wide range of interest areas, ranging from Bronze Age Europe to modern-day Africa. The session was a great success and in saying that I’m not blowing my own trumpet, but that of the speakers. The fact that the session attracted such a large audience that we needed to move to a larger room is no doubt due to the fantastic papers presented and the interesting debates they sparked. Publishing the session was the logical next step; the themes we discuss and the methodologies we employ are important, so we naturally wanted to reach as large an audience as possible.

[EDW]: Are there any other projects in the pipeline that we should be keeping our eyes out for?

[CH]: My personal interest at the moment is the archaeology and heritage of love-locks. For anyone who doesn’t know what love-locks are, they’re exactly what their names suggest: padlocks employed globally in declarations of love, usually inscribed with a couple’s names and attached to a bridge. I find them fascinating for a number of reasons. Firstly, for what they reveal about the malleability of folk customs; love-rituals boast a very long history but they have to adapt in order to survive, and love-locks are the most recent – and arguably the most widespread – manifestation. Secondly, they’re incredibly useful from an archaeological perspective: studying a contemporary custom can inform how we interpret past practices. And thirdly, they reveal a lot about notions (and the subjectivity) of heritage; some cities (e.g. Paris) see love-locks as a nuisance to be discouraged and disposed of, while others (e.g. Cardiff) embrace them as part of their heritage. I’m currently applying for funding to conduct both broader and more in-depth research into this custom, but for now I’m keeping a blog (lovelockdiaries.wordpress.com) and asking anyone with information on, pictures of, and opinions about love-locks to contact me on ceri.houlbrook@gmail.com.

[EDW]: Thank you very much Ceri, I wish you all the best with the rest of your Concealed Revealed project!

Thoughts on the Petrie Museum's "Margaret Murray: Witchcraft Theory and the 'Lunatic' Fringe?

Last night, the UCL Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology hosted an event titled “Margaret Murray: Witchcraft Theory and the ‘Lunatic’ Fringe”, which – as its name suggests – was devoted to the famous Egyptologist and folklorist who was herself well connected to the Petrie Museum and the man after whom it was named, the archaeologist Flinders Petrie. Although well-respected among scholars of Ancient Egypt, today Murray is perhaps better known as the foremost proponent of the discredited witch-cult theory which proved to be such a significant influence on the burgeoning Pagan religion of Wicca, and it was to this aspect of her life that this event was devoted. Scheduled to take place two weeks after Halloween – and thus within the season of all things witchy – it also fell upon 13^th November, thereby marking the 52^nd anniversary of Murray’s death.

Accompanied by a specially selected playlist and a palm reader operating amid the cases of Egyptological artefacts, the event was structured around two talks by established London academics. The first talk was provided by Titus Hjelm, a sociologist who teaches at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies. Having a particular interest in the sociology of religion, he has previously published both a Finnish-language book on Wicca and an English-language paper on Paganism in Finland within the pages of the Journal of Contemporary Religion (I cite the latter in my new book, Wicca: History, Belief, and Community in Modern Pagan Witchcraft, now available for purchase in Europe). Hjelm provided the audience with a basic outline of Murray’s witch-cult theory and the impact that it had on the burgeoning Wiccan faith; it was the basic stuff for those of us who are already involved in the study of early Wicca, but enlightening for others nonetheless.

Hjelm was followed by Roger Luckhurst, a scholar of English literature at Birkbeck, University of London. Rather than talk about Murray per se, Luckhurst delved into the work of William Seabrook, an American surrealist and author whose prime claim to fame was through introducing the word “zombie” into the English language. Luckhurst dealt in particular with Seabrook’s 1942 book, Witchcraft: Its Power in the World Today, and while it wasn’t made completely clear that Murray exerted a strong influence over Seabrook’s understanding of witchcraft – which was more diabolist than pre-Christian – it nevertheless helped to set Murray’s ideas within their wider cultural setting.

The event was incredibly busy – many of us had to sit on the floor in order to hear the speakers – and I overheard a number of Petrie regulars commenting on how they had never seen the museum so crowded. Surely, this stands as a testament to how Murray continues to fascinate people and how she has continuing relevance for many of us today. Not a huge number of her contemporaries could say the same.