Earthly Bodies, Magical Selves: Contemporary Pagans and the Search for Community [Paperback]

Sarah M. Pike (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0520220862 | ISBN-13: 978-0520220867 | Publication Date: January 1, 2001 | Edition: 1

Recent decades have seen a revival of paganism, and every summer people gather across the United States to celebrate this increasingly popular religion. Sarah Pike's engrossing ethnography is the outcome of five years attending neo-pagan festivals, interviewing participants, and sometimes taking part in their ceremonies. Earthly Bodies, Magical Selves incorporates her personal experience and insightful scholarly work concerning ritual, sacred space, self-identity, and narrative. The result is a compelling portrait of this frequently misunderstood religious movement.
Neo-paganism began emerging as a new religious movement in the late 1960s. In addition to bringing together followers for self-exploration and participation in group rituals, festivals might offer workshops on subjects such as astrology, tarot, mythology, herbal lore, and African drumming. But while they provide a sense of community for followers, Neo-Pagan festivals often provoke criticism from a variety of sources--among them conservative Christians, Native Americans, New Age spokespersons, and media representatives covering stories of rumored "Satanism" or "witchcraft."
Earthly Bodies, Magical Selves explores larger issues in the United States regarding the postmodern self, utopian communities, cultural improvisation, and contemporary spirituality. Pike's accessible writing style and her nonsensationalistic approach do much to demystify neo-paganism and its followers.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

"Earthly Bodies is a thoroughly and ceaselessly informative exposé. This is an original, important, no-punches-held, illucidating, approachable and entertaining work for both the specialist and general public alike. The venue of summer camp gatherings has become an important expression of contemporary western paganism. The author gives us an inside view of the thrills, difficulties and conflicting nuances of these ad hoc communities and their significance toward the possible establishment of more permanent institutions."--Michael York, author of The Emerging Network: A Sociology of the New Age and Neo-Pagan Movements

From the Back Cover

"Earthly Bodies is a thoroughly and ceaselessly informative expos. This is an original, important, no-punches-held, illucidating, approachable and entertaining work for both the specialist and general public alike. The venue of summer camp gatherings has become an important expression of contemporary western paganism. The author gives us an inside view of the thrills, difficulties and conflicting nuances of these ad hoc communities and their significance toward the possible establishment of more permanent institutions." (Michael York, author of The Emerging Network: A Sociology of the New Age and Neo-Pagan Movements)

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 315 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (January 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520220862
• ISBN-13: 978-0520220867
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #528,842 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An intimate look at contemporary paganism in the US, July 16, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Earthly Bodies, Magical Selves: Contemporary Pagans and the Search for Community (Paperback)

This is a great book. Pike spent years attending pagan festivals around the country, and she brings to her analysis the skills of a compassionate and sympathetic ethnographer and a critical scholar of religion. Her descriptions of pagan festivals are detailed, vivid and compelling; she opens this world up to readers who may not be familiar with it--and I am certain that pagans will recognize their culture in her careful account. Pike takes readers deep into the heart of pagan festivals, showing how participants create and inhabit their religious world using varied imaginative idioms, rituals, body work, and so on. Pike is also sensitive to the historical roots of this religious world, and offers helpful discussions of the traditions of alternative religions in American religious history. This is an exciting and engaging book, recommended for scholars and general readers, for anyone who wants to learn something about this important religious culture in the US beyond the distortions and hysteria with which it is too often treated.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars an academic that actually does her job, May 9, 2006

By 

Taylor Ellwood "http://www.imagineyourreality... - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

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This review is from: Earthly Bodies, Magical Selves: Contemporary Pagans and the Search for Community (Paperback)

This is the first academic ethnography on magic that has actually been objective in it's portrayal of Paganism. In other words, the author doesn't get caught up in letting her experiences overshadow the importance of actually describing and observing the pagan culture (unlike Magliocco and Greenwood).

Her assessment of pagan culture is fairly balanced. She notes both the positive and negatives aspects of the culture and does so in a positive manner, avoiding any hint of cennsure or judgement. She's simply presenting the facts. Granted this doesn't mean there isn't some subjectivity on her part. Obviously she chose the pagan community because there was a gap in research there and she wants to get tenure, but even with that bias she does a credible job of presenting the pagan community and specifically the festival environment.

5.0 out of 5 stars A FASCINATING "PARTICIPATORY" EXPLORATION OF MODERN PAGANISM, July 27, 2011

By 

Steven H. Propp (Sacramento, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Earthly Bodies, Magical Selves: Contemporary Pagans and the Search for Community (Paperback)

At the time this book was published in 2001, Sarah M. Pike was Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at CSU Chico. She has also written New Age and Neopagan Religions in America (Columbia Contemporary American Religion Series).

She wrote in the Preface to this book, "This is a study of a new religious movement defining and creating itself in the second half of the twentieth century. It is about the festivals that Neopagans hold to celebrate their communities and to experiment with personal religious identities... In this work I explore the ways in which festival space both expresses and shapes the religious yearnings of participants who are searching for spiritual intensity and utopian community."

Here are some additional quotations from the book:

"Some Pagans also claim Spiritualism as part of their ritual lineage to legitimate their own medium-like practices." (Pg. 15)
"'Pagan Standard Time' takes over at festivals, indicating that events will take place eventually, but often not at the hour when they are scheduled." (Pg. 26)
"For most Neopagans, death is not the end of life but the beginning of another life in the cycle of reincarnation." (Pg. 60-62)
"Around the campfire others agreed that their festival friends are more of a family than the blood relatives with whom they cannot share their Neo-pagan identities." (Pg. 83)
"Neopagans ... are often polytheists. The Neopagan world is inclusive of many spirits, ancestors, and gods and goddesses who live side by side." (Pg. 97)
"By keeping their religious identities to themselves and holding their festivals at isolated sites, Neopagans make their religious practices even more fascinating to outsiders. By the very act of hiding what they are doing, they draw attention to themselves." (Pg. 100)
"New Agers are superficial and pursue worry-free knowledge, say Neopagans. They profess to follow Native American paths, but unlike Neopagans who attend festivals to get closer to nature, New Agers hypocritically avoid any real contact with the natural world." (Pg. 145)