Customer Reviews

Persuasions of the Witch's Craft: Ritual Magic in Contemporary England

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Reading this made it clear that while the author definitely did some research and came to understand some aspects of magic, there was a lot she was woefully ignorant of. Perhaps what was most telling was the attitude she had toward the subject and toward the people she observed, a subtle attitude that demonstrated a lack of respect. For her magic, seemed liked an opportunity to find a subject study it, write about it, and then promptly leave without continuing further work or further engaging the subject and testing her analysis. She apparently only did this study for a year.

On the other hand, this was a good read precisely because in that year she did get very involved in the communities and in magical practice. What I wonder is whether she critically questioned her own values and beliefs and what those brought to the experience and subject she was studying. I'm not convinced in reading this book that she engaged her own attitudes about magic or was willing to suspend disbelief enough to determine if it was a reality or just an approach to life that people bought into.

First point: the title of the book is inappropriate, since Luhrmann does not focus specifically on Witches: in fact, in reading the book, the sense one gets is that Witches and Witchcraft are peripheral to her study, since she is "researching" and constantly references magic and "magicians," a realm which includes but is certainly not limited to Witches. Much of what she investigates is what she calls the "Western Mysteries", a realm more aligned with hermeticism and ceremonial magic than Witchcraft.

Second point: Luhrmann's very approach to magic itself disqualifies her from being able to learn anything significant about it. One cannot hope to learn anything significant about magic, witchcraft, or the occult arts with a purely intellectual, coldly logical, computer-like "rational" approach. One might as well try to apply pure cold, disembodied computer logic to understand how a work of art is made. One might further say that approaching witchcraft, magic and the occult arts with a resolutely unimaginative, dully unintuitive, unfeeling "logic" is a highly irrational and futile approach, bound to keep the investigator blind, dumb and deaf to his or her subject. A mature intellect is a holistic, embodied intellect, one that is integrated with feminine ways of knowing, and it enables us to know when and how to apply intuition and feeling and other forms of knowing to our subject. Disembodied, cold, excessively masculine intellect is a disease of modern humankind, and it fails utterly to illuminate matters that are appropriately termed "Feminine Mysteries." Many of these things are termed mysteries precisely because they elude "mere" intellectual knowing and explanation: they require a deeper, more profound level of knowing. As Isis said at the temple of Sais, "No human lifts my veil."

Those who would discount the realms of magic and witchcraft by dismissing it all as irrational (besides which, can ANY spiritual/religious practice or belief oriented to divine reality thus be termed "rational"?) , must necessarily be confronted by the paradox that many people involved in these practices are very happy, bright, vital, embodied, energetic people who one senses are on a path to developing greater psychological wholeness and integration, while those pursuing a path of pure cold reason often end up depressed, dry, barren, morose, rigid, constricted, psychologically unconscious, and shriveled. Why is that? It's because truth is not a matter of cold, disembodied intellect, nor can it be found in that way.

This is the only book I've read in the past five years that I haven't finished. I stopped reading in disgust. Luhrmann is extremely patronizing to the population she's writing about, neopagans, and it drove me crazy.

I also felt like she missed the point of what it is that we do. Most neopagans don't consider themselves as magicians primarily, and much of the ritual we do is not to create material results. Her point is that magic does not create material results but we act as though it does. I don't think either of those are necessarily true, and even if they were true, they're beside the point of a spiritual path.

In Luhrmann's defense, the anthropology tradition has a long and venerated history of holding itself loftily above the people it studies. So perhaps it's not entirely her fault. But I don't think that redeems the book.

I wouldn't recommend it.

The ethnographic detail (and it is quite rich) of English covens is just the beginning -- the book is fundamentally about belief and the justification of belief. Is there any real difference between marginal practices like drawing pentagrams and casting spells and mainstream practices like taking communion and praying? Are there perhaps commonalities among "altered states" of meditation, prayer, and the like? No definitive answers, but a fascinating exploration.