As the twentieth century came to a close, a British historian best known for his work on the volatile world of seventeenth-century England brought out a historical examination of Wicca, a new religious movement that had been established only half a century before. This work, The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft, was the first monograph devoted to the history of Wicca to be written by a professional academic. In this, it was a startlingly brave and ambitious work. Prejudices against alternative religions ran high and extended onto those who dared study them. Despite this atmosphere of uncertainty, Triumph had many things going for it. It was a ground-breaking study, produced by a well-established historian, and published by Oxford University Press, one of the worldâs most prestigious publishing houses.
Twenty years later, and the world has moved on. Huttonâs career has broadened and developed. As well as his continuing position at Bristol University, from 2009 to 2013 he worked as a Commissioner for English Heritage and then as the chair of the Blue Plaques Panel. He has produced eight further monographs, on a broad range of topics, from the reception of Siberian shamanism to the image of the witch through history. He is, if not a household name, then at least an oft-recognised face on British television, known as a regular talking head on history documentaries and as presenter of the series Professor Huttonâs Curiosities (2013). The emphasis that he places on communicating directly with a broad, non-academic audience through television, radio, and public talks has earned him something of a cult fan following: there are not many professional historians who can claim to have an appreciation group devoted to them on Facebook, let alone one with over a thousand members. At the same time, he remains a well-respected figure among the scholarly community due to his prodigious output and his friendly and helpful demeanour. The editors of this volume, while hailing from different parts of the world and trained in different disciplinary backgrounds, owe a debt to both Hutton and Triumph in helping to open up the study of Wicca and modern Paganism as a worthy area of academic enquiry. He led the way in a manner that has allowed a range of younger scholars to follow in his footsteps.
It is at this juncture that we feel it important to take stock and pay tribute to this trail-blazing volume. The study of both modern Paganism and modern occultism has grown rapidly, assisted by a number of newly formed journals and scholarly societies. The year 2005 saw the establishment of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE), founded four years after the launch of Aries, an academic journal devoted to the subject. Although Hutton has never been closely associated with this academic movement, perhaps in large part because its institutional links are closer to the study of religion than to history, his scholarly interests clearly echo those of the various scholars operating under its aegis. The years following The Triumph of the Moon also witnessed the growth of the academic study of modern Paganism. The year 2004 saw the launch of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies as a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal devoted to the subject, while 2003 marked the first session on modern Paganism at the American Academy of Religionâs annual meeting. The Triumph of the Moon helped to set the standard for these developments and remains a continuing source of inspiration.
Wicca, Paganism, and Occultism
Wicca is a new religious movement that came to public awareness in England during the 1950s, although it was likely constructed over the course of the previous three decades, using a variety of older sources. Its early practitioners presented it as the survival of an ancient pre-Christian belief system which had persisted throughout the centuries of Christian dominance in the form of a witchesâ cult. In adopting this origin myth, early Wiccans were utilising the historical framework developed by various scholars, most notably Margaret Murray (1863â1963), who argued that the witch trials carried out in early modern Christendom were an attempt to extinguish a surviving pre-Christian religion. Although historians demolished and discarded this framework during the 1960s and 1970s, the âMurray thesisâ remained important for the development of Wicca and is still retained by some practitioners today as a mythic origin story.1
Precise definitions as to who or what constitutes a real âWiccanâ have varied amid emic arguments over that designation; the term emerged in Britain during the early 1960s to describe the religious movement in its broad sense, although some denominations subsequently sought to restrict the term solely to themselves, thereby denying others the legitimate usage of it. While both definitions remain in use, the broader and more inclusive variant is likely more widespread.2 In examining Wicca in the broader sense of the word, we find a religion that is theologically diverse, containing duotheists, monotheists, polytheists, agnostics, and atheists within its midst. When deity forms are utilised, they are usually drawn from the pre-Christian belief systems of Europe and its environs and commonly include both female and (or in place of) male divinities. Practitioners typically identify as âwitchesâ and perform ritesâeither solitarily or in groups known as covensâwhich involve spellcasting as a common practice and which practitioners refer to as being âmagicalâ in nature. Wiccans often mark a series of seasonal festivals known as Sabbats, collectively termed the Wheel of the Year; this emphasis on observing the changing of the seasons leads many practitioners to identify Wicca as a form of ânature religionâ or ânature spirituality.â3
Wicca is the best known and largest form of modern Paganism, a broad milieu comprising a variety of religious, spiritual, and esoteric groups consciously inspired and influenced by the non-Abrahamic belief systems which existed in Europe, North Africa, and the Near East prior to the establishment of Christian and Islamic hegemony.4 Alongside Wicca, other prominent forms of modern Paganism include modern Druidry, whose practitioners identify with the druids of Iron Age Western Europe, and Heathenry, a movement heavily inspired by the belief systems of the pre-Christian societies of linguistically Germanic Europe.5 Numerically smaller forms include groups professing to revive the belief systems of the ancient Greeks, Canaanites, and Egyptians.6 In Eastern and Central Europe, various âNative Faithâ movements have developed in recent decades in an effort to reconstruct the ancient polytheistic traditions which were supplanted by Christianity. These groups usually try to distance themselves from Western forms of modern Paganism.7
Like most modern Pagan religions, Wicca also constitutes a form of esotericism and of occultism. Defining âesotericismâ remains a contested issue, although the term has long been associated with such diverse practices as Kabbalah, Theosophy, and New Age. The historian of religion Wouter Hanegraaff has argued that esotericism can be best understood as a conceptual category within Western culture into which societyâs ârejected knowledgeâ has been relegated by both mainstream Judeo-Christian religion and the forces of scientific rationality.8 Within scholarship on esotericism, the term âoccultismâ is usually reserved for esoteric currents that developed from the nineteenth century onwards, in part because the term itself first appeared in the 1840s. Hanegraaff has argued that these can be distinguished from other, older esoteric traditions because they have had to either âcome to terms with a disenchanted worldâ or operate âfrom the perspective of a disenchanted secular world.â9 In reflecting beliefs which are at odds with both Judeo-Christian doctrine and established rationalist understandings of the universe, Wicca is clearly a form of esotericism, something made particularly clear through its heavy utilisation of elements from older esoteric currents, such as Freemasonry and ceremonial magic. At the same time, the fact that it emerged within a disenchanted twentieth-century society ...