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Witching Culture: Folklore and Neo-Paganism in America (Contemporary Ethnography) ReviewSabina Magliocco's "Witching Culture" is quite possibly the most significant volume on Contemporary Pagan Culture to have been written in several years. Magliocco, author of an earlier volume on Neo-Pagan Art and Altars, has filled in several gaps left by Ronald Hutton and Sarah Pike, authors of important recent works in their own right.
The real strength of Magliocco's approach lies in her combined historical and folkloric approaches to cultural formation. Nods to other theoretical approaches are made, especially in her discussion of Paganism as a culturally oppositional discourse (James Scott, Todorov, Gramsci) but for the most part her own theoretical approaches are interwoven with her content so as to produce a seamless integration.
As I noted, her attention to the categories of the Other, both as conceived from Christian heritage and the Enlightenment's 'God of Reason,' are set up as the early framework of the book, along with valuable summations of early Hermeticism, medieval ritual magic, Renaissance Humanism, and 19th C. Romanticism to show the contributions of each era to contemporary Paganism. In this she avoids Hutton's obsession with the British 19th century and yet misses much of Hutton's focus on cunning-folk and those more vernacular traditions. Magliocco's work is more concerned with those who wrote on those traditions, and how those writings (Leland, Murray, Gardner) were used as a crucible to create contemporary Paganism.
Excellent portions of the book also focus on energy, magic, naming and ritual, as well as the historical and folkloric contributions to the formations of these much-used categories by contemporary Pagans. In addition, this is the first volume I am aware of to treat music and song in such depth. Two main aspects of song are treated--ritual uses (echoing her earlier scholarly articles on the subject with Holly Tannen) and educational uses--that is, teaching modes of thought and interpretation common to Pagans. While these are not the only important functions of Pagan song, these are the most important aspects for her work, for she concentrates on community identity and maintenance. Partly because of her concern with boundary formation and maintenance, her work engages little with New Age religiosity, and instead concentrates on flash points such as cultural appropriation issues with indigenous peoples, especially Amerindians. Again, given the existing literature, this is a plus, rather than a minus.
If there are drawbacks to her work, they are similar to other important works in the field. Most of the book concentrates on Wicca, witchcraft, Feri, Reclaiming and New Reformed Orthodox Order of the Golden Dawn (NROOGD), all closely connected with dominant structures in the Eastern part of the U.S. Other facets of contemporary Paganism, such as Druidry, Pagan Vodoun, Church of All Worlds, and Asatru/Vanatru, draw significantly less attention. But as these are numerically proportionately less of the wider community, their comparative marginalization is understandable in a study like this.
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