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Libra Esoterica

Earthly Bodies, Magical Selves

Contemporary Pagans and the Search for Community

by Sarah M Pike

  • First published:
  • 21st century
  • Language: English

Description

Description from Harvard LibraryCloud (opens in a new tab)

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

Provenance

Why this book is in the catalog

Included because retained bibliographic metadata links this work to Ancient religions, animism, and ritual, Astrology, Demonology, angelology, and possession, Divination and oracles, Mythology, folklore, and sacred legends, Ritual magic and grimoires, and Witchcraft and folk magic.

  • Ritual magic and grimoires

    Controlled discovery queries from harvard matched “ritual magic”. Retained metadata contains “Magic” in the subject metadata.

    • “ritual magic”· via Harvard LibraryCloud
    • “Magic”· in subject
  • Witchcraft and folk magic

    Retained metadata contains “Witchcraft” in the description.

    • “Witchcraft”· in description
  • Astrology

    Retained metadata contains “Astrology” in the description.

    • “Astrology”· in description
  • Divination and oracles

    Retained metadata contains “Tarot” in the description.

    • “Tarot”· in description
  • Demonology, angelology, and possession

    Retained metadata contains “Satanism” in the description and “Satanism” in the subject metadata.

    • “Satanism”· in description
    • “Satanism”· in subject
  • Mythology, folklore, and sacred legends

    Retained metadata contains “Mythology” in the description and “Folklore” in the subject metadata.

    • “Mythology”· in description
    • “Folklore”· in subject
  • Ancient religions, animism, and ritual

    Retained metadata contains “Paganism” in the description, “Gods” in the subject metadata, “pagan religion” in the subject metadata, and 1 additional metadata match(es).

    • “Paganism”· in description
    • “Gods”· in subject
    • “pagan religion”· in subject
    • “Paganism”· in subject

Membership records how this book met the catalog’s discovery criteria — relevance to a tradition, not a judgment of the book’s claims.

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Editions

One edition cataloged here.

Contemporary Pagans and the Search for Community

Harvard LibraryCloud bibliographic record

1 online resource (314 p.)

2001University of California PressEnglish
  • 9780520923805
Catalog record

Subjects

32 subject headings

Identifiers & provenance

How this record was assembled, and the authority identifiers it carries.

Cataloged from

Catalog id
harvard:99158718571203941
Edition coverage
Multi source partial
Retrieved