Search Results

By the middle of the twentieth century, there was already a core of beliefs and attitudes widely held among America's unchurched spiritual seekers. Although many of these seekers turned to exotic new sources of religious thought, they tended to filter these exotic philosophies through a familiar set of beliefs that grew out of the American metaphysical tradition. Many Americans have,e.g., become fascinated with Asian spiritual teachings (e.g., Hindu meditation systems, Zen Buddhism, and Daosim). Others have embraced feminist spiritualities, ecological spiritualities, Wicca, and many versions of Neo‐Paganism. Together these exotic sources of religious thought constitute what is commonly known as the New Age movement, a cluster of interests that informs the personal spirituality of millions of churched and unchurched Americans.

For many Americans, the insights of general systems theory implied a validation of traditional Native American ideas, which posited a spirit immanent in material nature, unlike the scientific discourses of Western modernity. Referred to in environmentalist, ecofeminist, and neo-pagan discourse as a “reverence” toward nature, the traditional Native American viewpoint was equated with an empathetic wisdom that Western civilization had sacrificed in its pursuit of a scientific knowledge that promised to predict, manipulate, and otherwise transcend nature. This chapter explores how such perceptions of Native American spirituality were promulgated through popular culture, and what their implications were, both for non–Native Americans who saw themselves as adopting traditional Native American beliefs, and for American Indians themselves. The chapter includes close readings of texts by the Keep America Beautiful campaign, filmmaker Carroll Ballard, nature writer Farley Mowat, professional tracker Tom Brown, the Mohawk newspaper Akwesasne Notes, and American Indian activist Vine Deloria, Jr.

This chapter examines the revival of modern magic and neo-paganism that began in England in the mid-twentieth century, focusing on Gerald Gardner, who was the most important figure in the Wiccan revival. It explains that much of Gardner's witch practice centered around the power of sex and its liberation, and that one of the most important aspects of the neo-pagan revival has been its ties, not just to sexual liberation, but also to feminism and women's liberation. The chapter argues that the role of feminism in neo-paganism has, from its origins, been profoundly am-bivalent and problematic, because while neo-paganism offered new roles of authority, power, and status for women as ritual experts, it also reinscribed women into highly stereotyped gender roles.

The chapter describes ethnographic and interview research among contemporary Canadian Pagans, examining their beliefs about the nature of nature and the “naturalness” of technology. Contemporary Paganisms understand humans to be part of, rather than separate from, the natural world. By looking at how Pagans understand that world, what it means to see nature as sacred—to be a nature religion—the chapter leads to better understanding of the multiple ways that flourishing can be articulated and engendered. Pagan beliefs and practices are evaluated with reference to a standard of “ecosocial flourishing,” a concept rooted in synergy between the human and the ecological.

This chapter turns to the infamous British magician Aleister Crowley, who overlapped with Frazer at Trinity College, Cambridge. This chapter shows that Crowley drew on the very text in which Frazer worked out disenchantment to stage his revival of modern “magick” [sic]. Hence, the narrative of disenchantment was self-refuting insofar as it reinvigorated the very thing it described as endangered.

“Dialectic of Darkness: The Magical Foundations of Critical Theory,” focuses on the German neo-pagan poet and philosopher Ludwig Klages, who formulated much of the terminology and critique of modernity as the “domination of nature” that would later become associated with the Frankfurt School. It then looks at Klages’s influence on German-Jewish philosopher and literary theorist Walter Benjamin, demonstrating that much of the terminology that seems so peculiar to Benjamin—the aura, constellations, correspondences, angels, and Ur-images—all were current in German esoteric circles while Benjamin was coming to his most important ideas.

The final chapter, “The World of Enchantment; or, Max Weber at the End of History,” focuses on Max Weber’s preoccupation with “disenchantment” (Entzauberung) in the same period that Freud was formulating his own version of that myth. It complexies conventional readings of disenchantment by showing how the term fit into Weber’s theory of rationalization. Examining a set of Weber’s letters that have only recently been made available to scholars, the chapter argues that despite Weber’s reputation for being deaf to religion, “mysticism” was not wholly negative, but perhaps a positive reaction to the “iron cage” of modernity. It demonstrates that Weber came to theorize “the disenchantment of the world” (die Entzauberung der Welt) not out of frustration with Prussian bureaucracy, but rather in response to lodging at a Swiss neo-pagan commune.

Pointing out that even countercultural religious movements like modern neo-Paganism have their fringe elements, this chapter analyzes and describes the rise of racist Asatrú and other Norse-flavored Paganisms in the context of American white-power culture. Its rapid rise in popularity in the 1990s and their own identity construction processes provide a very different perspective on assumptions made by more mainstream Pagans regarding identity and affinity with past cultures. The chapter focuses on the Odinist Fellowship and Wotansvolk.