A Community of Witches: Contemporary Neo-Paganism and Witchcraft in the United States (Studies in Comparative Religion) [Hardcover]

Helen A. Berger (Author)

Book Description

Series: Studies in Comparative Religion | Publication Date: November 1998

A Community of Witches explores the beliefs and practices of Neo-Paganism and Witchcraft - generally known to scholars and practitioners as Wicca. While the words "magic," "witchcraft," and "paganism" evoke images of the distant past and remote cultures, this book shows that Wicca has emerged as part of a new religious movement that reflects the era in which it developed. Imported to the United States in the late 1960s from the United Kingdom, the religion absorbed into its basic fabric the social concerns of the time: feminism, environmentalism, self-development, alternative spirituality, and mistrust of authority. Helen A. Berger's ten-year participant observation study of Neo-Pagans and Witches on the eastern seaboard of the United States and her collaboration on a national survey of Neo-Pagans form the basis for exploring the practices, structures, and transformation of this nascent religion. Responding to scholars who suggest that Neo-Paganism is merely a pseudoreligion or a cultural movement because it lacks central authority and clear boundaries, Berger contends that Neo-Paganism has many of the characteristics that one would expect of a religion born in late modernity: the appropriation of rituals from other cultures, a view of the universe as a cosmic whole, an emphasis on creating and re-creating the self, an intertwining of the personal and the political, and a certain playfulness.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Berger (sociology, West Chester Univ.) has spent ten years doing participant-observation research among several inclusive groups (those that include both men and women) of witchcraft and neopagan practitioners in the Northeastern United States. Her fascinating study explores the beliefs and rituals of contemporary neopagans while examining the dynamics of change in this modern religious tradition as many of its early adherents reach middle age. Tracing the development of neopaganism in the United States over the last 30 years, Berger identifies both the wide diversity among witchcraft practitioners and the ideas that most of them share?reverence for nature, a feminist orientation, and a sense of community based on common beliefs. Clear and thorough references and an extensive bibliography round out this well-structured, scholarly work. Valuable for academic collections on new religious movements.?Elizabeth Anne Salt, Courtright Memorial Lib., Westerville, OH
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

In the course of her conversion, Curott spent many hours reading about goddess religion in early cultures. In this way, Wiccans reject modernity, which is resolutely patriarchal, for something that is not so much postmodern as pre-postmodern or late modern. Like many postmodern theorists, they are comfortable with multiple realities. Intuition is as valid as rational argument; science works, but so does magic. -- The Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review, Mary Lefkowitz

Product Details

• Hardcover: 148 pages
• Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Pr (November 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1570032467
• ISBN-13: 978-1570032462
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #666,573 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An interesting perspective., October 18, 1999

By 

Logan Bauer (Beaverton, Oregon) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Community of Witches: Contemporary Neo-Paganism and Witchcraft in the United States (Studies in Comparative Religion) (Hardcover)

A Community of Witches helped me to see how Witchcraft/Neo-Paganism/etc. has evolved and is growing through the eyes of a researcher - one who has not completely become a part the religion, yet has experienced it and watched people grow from the inside. I really enjoyed Helen's observations and connections to the concerns of parents bringing children into Wicca, and pointing out the ideas of a fluid community based on common interests. This book helped me to realize some of the many elements that are changing within this growing religion, and to think about where it fits together in my life. Thank YOU Helen for the wonderful thoughts!

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the finest studies of American Wicca ever published, May 25, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: A Community of Witches: Contemporary Neo-Paganism and Witchcraft in the United States (Studies in Comparative Religion) (Hardcover)

"One of the finest sociological studies of American Wicca ever published. It is unlikely to be superseded. Its author is to be commended for maintaining a high degree of theoretical sophistication while remaining accessible to the average reader." Stephen D. Glazier (University of Nebraska) in Review of Religious Research, volume 40, number 4 (June 1999), p. 380.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Ideal for discussions of children and "routinization", March 18, 2005

By 

Christopher W. Chase "Christopher W. Chase" (East Lansing, MI) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Community of Witches: Contemporary Neo-Paganism and Witchcraft in the United States (Studies in Comparative Religion) (Hardcover)

Helen Berger is probably one of the leading investigators in trying to get a sense of the numbers and ideological places Pagans and Witches in the U.S. are going. While her book "Voices From The Pagan Census" is designed to display mostly raw survey data with little interpretation, this work handles most of her interpretive analysis of this movement. A note of warning--although the title includes "Neo-Paganism," there is very little here not of Witchen or Wiccan tradtion. Those looking for cross-tradition discussion will be disappointed.

Her book, thankfully, is centered around questions of family and tradition continuity through children, and how the influence of multi-generational change will affect the communities at hand. Her own major influence is Anthony Giddens, who holds that "postmodern fracturing" is the logical outgrowth of modernity, rather than a new era. Likewise, the subject or self has in no way evaporated, but rather remains symbolically negotiated and mediated between public and private experiences. As globalization lifts and floats institutions above their historically grounded practices and origins, so Wicca, as a religion of its time, asserts a similar possible universality, and this accounts for the way it draws both on individual experience and large, competing traditions of formerly indigenous knowledge as valid ways of practice.

Offering a background in census numbers, the concept of magic, Gerald Gardner, and other common Witchcraft parameters, Berger first focuses on the concept of the "magical self," a Promethean space attuned to the mysticism both of specific theurgical rituals and the mysticism of everyday life. Gods/Goddesses are viewed multivalently, and personal transformations, (often in terms of gender roles and expectations) are a predominant concern in ritual.

Berger then moves outward, to examine "The Coven," and the space of (post)modern friendships and fluid relations that develop. Secrecy, the Learning of Witch practices, and the similarity to family and kinship structures is discussed. Again moving outward, Berger examines covens and groups in relations to the larger concept of community. Drawing on Shane Phelan's concepts of lesbian community, Berger argues a similar process takes place--insulation from hostility, visibility, persona construction, and political launching pad for interacting with the wider world. While large conflicts exist, Berger posits the commonality of a magical "shared life world" and a collective memory that helps to construct a usable past and promising future, one that is envisioned especially at festivals.

Perhaps most fascinating and unique is Berger's attention to children and the routininzation that accompanies multigenerational development. While some families affiliate themselves with institutions such as Unitarian Universalism for social cover, others question bringing in children at all. As most parents were raised a different religion, many do not want to inflict that same conflict on their children. Another conflict is involving children in rituals normally meant for adults, with archaic language and intense group concentration. Other families and groups write rituals in which children can specifically particpate in some limited role, or certainly in their own rites of passage. The controversial topic of how children learn and relate to sexuality in a Wiccan context is well covered. But even that controversy fades somewhat as the prophetic voices of Witchcraft turn to priestly voices (to use Max Weber's language.) Practices, according to Berger, are becoming more standardized, and isomorphic. Two communities, EarthSpirit and Circle Sanctuary, are examined as creative responses to routinization.

The early parts of Berger's volume have much in common with other investigations. This makes them no less valuable, but there is a degree of redundancy in her discussions and "thick descriptions" of invocations and rituals. Where her work really shines is in her discussion of the role of children and routinzation of practice within magical communities. For these topics in particular, Berger's work is definitely required reading.