Customer Reviews

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

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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!

"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 It is unlikely to be superseded.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.

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.

Though this may be a scholarly work on Wicca, the average reader will be pleasantly surprised. Ms. Berger's prose is accessible, and her view of Wicca and neopaganism is balanced. As a physician and ethnographer interested in biomedical and alternative healing traditions, I found Berger's work fascinating and enlightening.

This is a good book if you are interested in how Wicca is growing in the U.S. and the concerns of modern day wiccans. The first chapter is a quick summary of wiccan beliefs and sabbats, etc. But the rest of the book really has nothing to say about wiccan beliefs. The rest of the book deals with covens, community, and how Wicca is a postmodern religion. Overall, its a good book if you're interested in the theology of Wicca, otherwise (especially if you're looking for a book to use for practicing and learning wicca) it needs a lot more.

Helen Berger is a professor of sociology at West Chester University, and also the author of Witchcraft and Magic: Contemporary North America, Voices from the Pagan Census: A National Survey of Witches and Neo-Pagans in the United States (Studies in Comparative Religion), Teenage Witches: Magical Youth and the Search for the Self, etc.

She wrote in the Preface to this 1999 book, "This book is an exploration of the new religious movement of Neo-Paganism and Witchcraft as practiced in the United States among groups that include both women and men. My purpose is twofold: to examine Witchcraft as a religion of late modernity and to analyze the aging process of this new religion... Magic as practiced by present-day Witches is a 'technology of the self'... (in) the model of community that has developed among Witches ... a global constuct of community has developed based on shared interest in mysticism, magic, and goddess worship."

Here are some additional quotations from the book:

"Most of the adherents of Witchcraft are white, middle class, and well educated." (Pg. 8)
"Witchcraft is a mystery religion, in which rituals take precedence over any particular set of beliefs..." (Pg. 16)
"Not all witches belong to a coven; some individuals practice alone or with a romantic partner." (Pg. 50)
"Festivals are the most visible way that Neo-Pagans build a community." (Pg. 72)
"There was an outcry within the Neo-Pagan community against Gavin and Yvonne Frost, who, in their book Good Witch's Bible recommended the use of sex in initiatory rituals and rites of passage to adulthood for boys and girls." (Pg. 94)

First of all, as a non-Wiccan Pagan, I am SO sick and tired of people automatically equating (Neo-)Pagan or Witch with Wicca that I could just scream.

Second, this reads like someone's graduate-school thesis, heavy on the academic citations and sociological jargon and light on readability. I minored in anthropology at university and still found it pretty chewy at points.

Third, extrapolating the _entire_ Pagan community from a very limited sample (virtually all Wiccan), in my opinion, utterly ridiculous. Certainly it isn't going to tell anyone much about actually _practicing_ the religion, so don't plan on reading it for that purpose. (It will, however, give an all-too-clear view of the backbiting, sniping, and passive-agressive behavior all too common in the Wiccan community. Sigh.)

This book tries, and fails, to pick up where Hutton leaves off. Not a bad work, and certainly valuable and written in acessible langauge, but the scope of the investigation was too narrow to have much external validity.

This is a thorough and helpful book in understanding the development of Wicca in America from its European immigration. But actually therein lies the problem as, once again I discover, it is difficult to find detailed historical documentation on the ancient roots of the Old Religion. Since the late sixties, and in conjunction with the feminist movement, it appears that emphasis continues to be taken away from the equal duality of God representing both sexes through symbolistic ritual instead of the Goddess slant that is continually stressed. I understand the religious persecution of woman over the milleneum and tend to side with them on this issue, but hijacking the Wiccan religion to spearhead a Female Goddess movement is not the way to balance the scale.