A Community of Witches
Encyclopedia
A Community of Witches: Contemporary Neo-Paganism and Witchcraft in the United States is a sociological study of the Wiccan
and wider Pagan
community in the north-eastern United States written by American sociologist Helen A. Berger of West Chester University. First published in 1999 by the University of South Carolina Press
, it was released as a part of their series on 'Studies in Comparative Religion', edited by Frederick M. Denny, a religious studies
scholar at the University of Chicago
.
Berger became interested in studying the Wiccan and Pagan movement in 1986, when she presented a lecture on the subject at the Boston Public Library
. Subsequently becoming acquainted with members of the New England Pagan community, she undertook fieldwork in a local Wiccan coven, the Circle of Light, as well as in a wider Pagan organisation, the EarthSpirit Community (ESC). Befriending the ESC's founder, Andras Corban Arthen, the two of then undertook a "Pagan Census" survey of the U.S. in the mid-1990s in order to obtain more data. In total, Berger undertook 11 years of fieldwork among the Pagan community in preparation for the work.
A Community of Witches provides a sociological
study of the Wiccan community of the north-eastern U.S., based on interviews with over a hundred practicing Wiccans and Pagans, study of the pre-existing literature on the subject and a national survey of the Pagan community in the U.S. As a theoretical basis, Berger interprets Wicca as a religion of late modernity
as opposed to postmodernity
, and subsequently examines it using the theories of sociologists Anthony Giddens
and James A. Beckford
. Themes covered include Pagan conceptions of the self, the role of covens and the wider Pagan community, the place of children in the movement and the increasing routinization of Wicca through the foundation of organised churches and clergy.
Academic reviews were largely positive of the book, noting its importance in the developing discipline of Pagan studies
and the wider sociological investigation into new religious movements in the U.S. Berger would go on to make further studies of the Pagan community, focusing her interest on the popularity of Wicca among teenagers.
used to identify a wide variety of modern religious movements
, particularly those influenced by or claiming to be derived from the various pagan
beliefs of pre-modern Europe. The religion of Pagan Witchcraft, or Wicca
, is one of a number of different Pagan religions, and developed in England during the first half of the 20th century. The figure at the forefront of Wicca's early development was the English occultist Gerald Gardner
(1884-1964), the author of Witchcraft Today
(1954) and The Meaning of Witchcraft
(1959) and the founder of a tradition known as Gardnerian Wicca
. Gardnerian Wicca revolved around the veneration of both a Horned God
and a Mother Goddess
, the celebration of eight seasonally-based festivals in a Wheel of the Year
and the practice of magical rituals in groups known as coven
s. Gardnerianism was subsequently brought to the U.S. in the early 1960s by an English initiate, Raymond Buckland
(1934-), and his then-wife Rosemary, who together founded a coven in Long Island
.
In the U.S., new variants of Wicca developed, including Dianic Wicca
, a tradition founded in the 1970s which was heavily influenced by second wave feminism, rejecting the veneration of the Horned God and emphasizing female-only covens. One initiate of both the Dianic and Gardnerian traditions, who used the pseudonym of Starhawk
(1951-), later founded her own tradition, Reclaiming Wicca
, as well as publishing The Spiral Dance: a Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess
(1979), through which she helped to spread Wicca throughout the U.S.
Prior to Berger's work, three American sociologists working in the field of Pagan studies
had published investigations of the Pagan community in both the United States and the United Kingdom. The first of these had been the practicing Wiccan, journalist and political activist Margot Adler
in her Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America Today first published by Viking Press in 1979, but which would be republished in several revised editions in subsequent years. A second study was produced by Tanya M. Luhrmann
in her Persuasions of the Witches' Craft: Ritual Magic in Contemporary England (1989), in which she focused on both a Wiccan coven and several ceremonial magic orders that were then operating in London. This was followed by Loretta Orion's Never Again the Burning Times: Paganism Revisited (1995), which focused on Pagan communities on the American East Coast and Midwest.
at the Boston Public Library
. She devoted the final lecture to the subject of contemporary Pagan Witches, or Wiccans, who were living in the area, taking her information both from the information published in the works of Margot Adler, Starhawk and Marcello Truzzi
, and also from a singular interview that she had carried out with a woman who was "peripherally associated" with Paganism. After the lecture, several audience members approached Berger to identify themselves as practicing Wiccans, and it was through them that she came into contact with the New England Pagan community. Three of the Wiccans at the lecture invited Berger to "participate as a researcher" as they founded their own coven, the Circle of Light, and she would go on to attend their weekly meetings and festival celebrations for the next two years.
At the first open Pagan ritual that she attended, Berger met Andras Corban Arthen, the founder of the EarthSpirit Community (ESC), a Pagan organization open to non-Wiccans which she joined after paying the annual membership fee of $30. Attending many of the ESC's open rituals and festivals, she was introduced to a "diverse group" of Wiccans and other Pagans, developing up a contact base in the community. Berger and Arthen subsequently embarked on a project entitled "The Pagan Census" in an attempt to gain sociological data from the Pagan community across the U.S. Receiving funding from the Faculty Development Fund at West Chester University, Berger was aided in this project by over 15 students who helped her to code and enter data for the survey. Together, Berger and Arthen wrote and distributed their survey through Wiccan and Pagan organizations across the country, as well as in journals, on the internet and at festivals, with the duo receiving over 2000 responses, providing Berger with one of her main sources of information.
Throughout her 11 year period of fieldwork, Berger had to use snowball sampling
in order to retrieve her data on the Pagan community, something that she attributed to the "secrecy of groups and practitioners". She conducted formal interviews with over forty practicing Pagans, with over sixty others instead being informally interviewed during conversations at Pagan events, following which Berger recorded their responses in her fieldnotes. She participated in rituals with ten different Wiccan covens, two of which were all-female covens, and the other eight of which were mixed-gender in structure, but all of whom assembled in the north-eastern United States. Accepting that this regional focus might affect her results, she supplemented her fieldwork by reading literature on Paganism from across the country, concluding that "the differences among groups and practitioners within the United States are less important than the similarities." Unlike the sociologists Margot Adler and Loretta Orion, both of whom had been or became Pagans whilst studying the movement, Berger stated that she had not joined the religion, thereby remaining an "outsider" throughout her research, but had made many friends within the Pagan community.
A Community of Witches was a part of a series of books entitled 'Studies in Comparative Religion' that were published by the University of South Carolina Press, and edited by Frederick M. Denny. In Denny's preface to the book, he argued that it "adds significantly to the steadily growing scholarly literature" on the subject of Wicca and contemporary Paganism, being of "considerable use for our understanding of how other new religious communities are sustaining and developing themselves in the unprecedented rich tapestry of American religious pluralism."
which she attended. Proceeding to introduce both the Wiccan religion and her theoretical approach, Berger explains both the British sociologist James A. Beckford
's approach to the religions of late modernity as well as Anthony Giddens
' theoretical approaches to modernism.
In the second chapter, entitled "The Magical Self", Berger examines the ways in which Wiccans in the U.S. understand themselves, looking at sociological ideas about self-identity and utilising them in her analysis of Wiccan rituals that deal with the transformation of the self. She then moves on to look at concepts of gender
in the Wiccan community, both for men and women and also for homosexuals. The third chapter, entitled "The Coven: Perfect Love, Perfect Trust", provides an explanation of the coven system within Wicca, and the ways in which friendships are built and collapse amongst coven members, and the extent to which covens imitate family structures.
Chapter four, "A Circle within a Circle: The Neo-Pagan Community", looks at the wider community beyond the coven structure, interpreting it through theoretical ideas about community in late modernity. Moving on, Berger looks at ideas of community memory and community building amongst U.S. Pagans, before examining the manner in which some Pagans engage in both emancipatory politics and life politics. The fifth chapter, entitled "The Next Generation", is devoted to the place of children within the Pagan community, and deals with ideas of rites of passage, attitudes towards children's sexuality and the extent to which children are involved in rituals.
The sixth chapter, "The Routinization of Creativity", looks at the relationship between Wicca and routinization, and examines how the anti-authoritarian ethos of the religion has been in part eroded through the creation of Pagan organisations like the EarthSpirit Community and the Circle Sanctuary
, which have purchased land and led to the development of a paid clergy. Finally, Berger concludes her work with a round-up of her study, and muses on the possible future for Wicca in the United States.
movement, in A Community of Witches, Berger argued against this, instead considering Wicca to be a religion of late modernity
. In supporting this position, Berger turned to the work of the British sociologist of religion, James A. Beckford
(1942-), who in his book Religion and Advanced Industrial Society (1989) had argued that many new religious movements reflect the characteristics of late modernity by challenging traditional definitions of religion, sharing a holistic worldview and emphasising the development and transformation of the self. Berger stated that while "Wicca is not specifically mentioned by Beckford, it does fit the model of New Age
religions that he is analyzing." Whilst accepting that elements of postmodernism can certainly be found within Wicca, Berger argued that the religion does not "signify an epistemological break with Enlightenment
thought", and that as such it was intrinsically late modernist in structure; as she related, the "emphasis on globalism, the belief in personal and social transformation, and the use of noninstrumental rationality place Wicca firmly within the Englightenment tradition."
". As evidence, she noted that the religion had been created by modern westerners picking and choosing elements from a variety of "older and geographically disparate religious practices" in order to fashion their new faith, something which she believed was only possible in a globalised world.
In her review of A Community of Witches published in the Sociology of Religion journal, Frances Kostarelos of the Governors State University
commented positively on Berger's work, describing it as "an invaluable theoretical and descriptive account of Wicca" that is also "a fine example of ethnographic research and writing." Stefanie von Schnurbein of the University of Chicago
described A Community of Witches as "an exciting and important approach to the study of contemporary neopaganism" in her review published in The Journal of Religion
. Schnurbein believed that Berger "has an intimate knowledge of her field and makes creative and interesting use of contemporary sociological theory" but that a "discussion of the vivid cultural and theoretical controversies around gender and sexuality would have added to the theoretical value of Berger's book."
Writing in the Contemporary Sociology
journal, Tanice G. Foltz of Indiana University Northwest
described A Community of Witches as "Well organized, clearly written, and aimed at an academic audience". Believing it to be a "valuable addition to the existing scholarship on witchcraft", Foltz did however highlight some problems with the work, wishing that it had included an "in-depth analysis" of her Pagan Census survey and noting that it erroneously used the terms "Neo-Paganism", "Witchcraft" and "Wicca" interchangeably. In her review for the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion
, Mary Jo Neitz of the University of Missouri
was more critical, arguing that Berger had generalised information from the north-eastern U.S. and claimed that it was applicable for the Pagan community across the entire country, something which Neitz felt was counter to her "own observations of Wicca."
In 2005, the University of Pennsylvania
published an edited anthology entitled Witchcraft and Magic in the New World: North America in the Twentieth Century, which had been edited by Berger. In 2007, Berger's third book was published, Teenage Witches: Magical Youth and the Search for the Soul, which had been co-written with Douglas Ezzy, a senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Tasmania
in Australia.
Wicca
Wicca , is a modern Pagan religious movement. Developing in England in the first half of the 20th century, Wicca was popularised in the 1950s and early 1960s by a Wiccan High Priest named Gerald Gardner, who at the time called it the "witch cult" and "witchcraft," and its adherents "the Wica."...
and wider Pagan
Paganism (contemporary)
Neopaganism is an umbrella term used to identify a wide variety of modern religious movements, particularly those influenced by or claiming to be derived from the various pagan beliefs of pre-modern Europe...
community in the north-eastern United States written by American sociologist Helen A. Berger of West Chester University. First published in 1999 by the University of South Carolina Press
University of South Carolina Press
The University of South Carolina Press , founded in 1944, is a university press that is part of the University of South Carolina.-External links:*...
, it was released as a part of their series on 'Studies in Comparative Religion', edited by Frederick M. Denny, a religious studies
Religious studies
Religious studies is the academic field of multi-disciplinary, secular study of religious beliefs, behaviors, and institutions. It describes, compares, interprets, and explains religion, emphasizing systematic, historically based, and cross-cultural perspectives.While theology attempts to...
scholar at the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
.
Berger became interested in studying the Wiccan and Pagan movement in 1986, when she presented a lecture on the subject at the Boston Public Library
Boston Public Library
The Boston Public Library is a municipal public library system in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It was the first publicly supported municipal library in the United States, the first large library open to the public in the United States, and the first public library to allow people to...
. Subsequently becoming acquainted with members of the New England Pagan community, she undertook fieldwork in a local Wiccan coven, the Circle of Light, as well as in a wider Pagan organisation, the EarthSpirit Community (ESC). Befriending the ESC's founder, Andras Corban Arthen, the two of then undertook a "Pagan Census" survey of the U.S. in the mid-1990s in order to obtain more data. In total, Berger undertook 11 years of fieldwork among the Pagan community in preparation for the work.
A Community of Witches provides a sociological
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
study of the Wiccan community of the north-eastern U.S., based on interviews with over a hundred practicing Wiccans and Pagans, study of the pre-existing literature on the subject and a national survey of the Pagan community in the U.S. As a theoretical basis, Berger interprets Wicca as a religion of late modernity
Late modernity
Late modernity is a term that has been used to describe the condition or state of some highly developed present day societies...
as opposed to postmodernity
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
, and subsequently examines it using the theories of sociologists Anthony Giddens
Anthony Giddens
Anthony Giddens, Baron Giddens is a British sociologist who is known for his theory of structuration and his holistic view of modern societies. He is considered to be one of the most prominent modern contributors in the field of sociology, the author of at least 34 books, published in at least 29...
and James A. Beckford
James A. Beckford
James Arthur Beckford is a British sociologist of religion. He is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Warwick and a Fellow of the British Academy...
. Themes covered include Pagan conceptions of the self, the role of covens and the wider Pagan community, the place of children in the movement and the increasing routinization of Wicca through the foundation of organised churches and clergy.
Academic reviews were largely positive of the book, noting its importance in the developing discipline of Pagan studies
Pagan studies
Pagan studies refers to the academic discipline devoted to the study of contemporary Paganism. It embraces a variety of different approaches, including history, sociology, anthropology, folklore and religious studies....
and the wider sociological investigation into new religious movements in the U.S. Berger would go on to make further studies of the Pagan community, focusing her interest on the popularity of Wicca among teenagers.
Paganism and Wicca in the United States
Contemporary Paganism, which is also referred to as Neo-Paganism, is is an umbrella termUmbrella term
An umbrella term is a word that provides a superset or grouping of concepts that all fall under a single common category. Umbrella term is also called a hypernym. For example, cryptology is an umbrella term that encompasses cryptography and cryptanalysis, among other fields...
used to identify a wide variety of modern religious movements
New religious movement
A new religious movement is a religious community or ethical, spiritual, or philosophical group of modern origin, which has a peripheral place within the dominant religious culture. NRMs may be novel in origin or they may be part of a wider religion, such as Christianity, Hinduism or Buddhism, in...
, particularly those influenced by or claiming to be derived from the various pagan
Paganism
Paganism is a blanket term, typically used to refer to non-Abrahamic, indigenous polytheistic religious traditions....
beliefs of pre-modern Europe. The religion of Pagan Witchcraft, or Wicca
Wicca
Wicca , is a modern Pagan religious movement. Developing in England in the first half of the 20th century, Wicca was popularised in the 1950s and early 1960s by a Wiccan High Priest named Gerald Gardner, who at the time called it the "witch cult" and "witchcraft," and its adherents "the Wica."...
, is one of a number of different Pagan religions, and developed in England during the first half of the 20th century. The figure at the forefront of Wicca's early development was the English occultist Gerald Gardner
Gerald Gardner
Gerald Brousseau Gardner , who sometimes used the craft name Scire, was an influential English Wiccan, as well as an amateur anthropologist and archaeologist, writer, weaponry expert and occultist. He was instrumental in bringing the Neopagan religion of Wicca to public attention in Britain and...
(1884-1964), the author of Witchcraft Today
Witchcraft Today
In the book Gardner also repeats the claim, which had originated with Matilda Joslyn Gage, that 9 million victims were killed in the European witch-hunts." Current scholarly estimates of the number of people executed for witchcraft during this time period vary between about 40,000 and 100,000.The...
(1954) and The Meaning of Witchcraft
The Meaning of Witchcraft
The Meaning of Witchcraft is a non-fiction book written by Gerald Gardner, the, known to many in the modern sense as the "Father of Wicca", based around his experiences with the religion of Wicca and the New Forest Coven...
(1959) and the founder of a tradition known as Gardnerian Wicca
Gardnerian Wicca
Gardnerian Wicca, or Gardnerian Witchcraft, is a mystery cult tradition or denomination in the neopagan religion of Wicca, whose members can trace initiatory descent from Gerald Gardner. The tradition is itself named after Gardner , a British civil servant and scholar of magic...
. Gardnerian Wicca revolved around the veneration of both a Horned God
Horned God
The Horned God is one of the two primary deities found in some European pagan religions. He is often given various names and epithets, and represents the male part of the religion's duotheistic theological system, the other part being the female Triple Goddess. In common Wiccan belief, he is...
and a Mother Goddess
Mother goddess
Mother goddess is a term used to refer to a goddess who represents motherhood, fertility, creation or embodies the bounty of the Earth. When equated with the Earth or the natural world such goddesses are sometimes referred to as Mother Earth or as the Earth Mother.Many different goddesses have...
, the celebration of eight seasonally-based festivals in a Wheel of the Year
Wheel of the Year
The Wheel of the Year is a Neopagan term for the annual cycle of the Earth's seasons. It consists of eight festivals, spaced at approximately even intervals throughout the year. These festivals are referred to as Sabbats...
and the practice of magical rituals in groups known as coven
Coven
A coven or covan is a name used to describe a gathering of witches or in some cases vampires. Due to the word's association with witches, a gathering of Wiccans, followers of the witchcraft-based neopagan religion of Wicca, is also described as a coven....
s. Gardnerianism was subsequently brought to the U.S. in the early 1960s by an English initiate, Raymond Buckland
Raymond Buckland
Raymond Buckland , whose craft name is Robat, is an English American writer on the subject of Wicca and the occult, and a significant figure in the history of Wicca, of which he is a High Priest in both the Gardnerian and Seax traditions.According to his written works, primarily Witchcraft from the...
(1934-), and his then-wife Rosemary, who together founded a coven in Long Island
Long Island
Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...
.
In the U.S., new variants of Wicca developed, including Dianic Wicca
Dianic Wicca
Dianic Witchcraft and Dianic Feminist Witchcraft, is a tradition, or denomination, of the Neopagan religion of Wicca. It was founded by Zsuzsanna Budapest in the United States in the 1970s, and is notable for its focus on the worship of the Goddess, and on feminism...
, a tradition founded in the 1970s which was heavily influenced by second wave feminism, rejecting the veneration of the Horned God and emphasizing female-only covens. One initiate of both the Dianic and Gardnerian traditions, who used the pseudonym of Starhawk
Starhawk
Starhawk is an American writer and activist. She is well known as a theorist of Paganism, and is one of the foremost popular voices of ecofeminism. She is a columnist for Beliefnet.com and On Faith, the Newsweek/Washington Post online forum on religion...
(1951-), later founded her own tradition, Reclaiming Wicca
Reclaiming (neopaganism)
Reclaiming is an international community of women and men working to combine earth-based spirituality and political activism. Its predecessor organization, the Reclaiming Collective, was founded in 1979 by two Neopagan women of Jewish descent, Starhawk and Diane Baker, in order to explore and...
, as well as publishing The Spiral Dance: a Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess
The Spiral Dance
The Spiral Dance: a Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess is a best-selling book about Neopagan belief and practice written by Starhawk. It was first published in 1979, with a second edition in 1989 and a third edition in 1999...
(1979), through which she helped to spread Wicca throughout the U.S.
Prior to Berger's work, three American sociologists working in the field of Pagan studies
Pagan studies
Pagan studies refers to the academic discipline devoted to the study of contemporary Paganism. It embraces a variety of different approaches, including history, sociology, anthropology, folklore and religious studies....
had published investigations of the Pagan community in both the United States and the United Kingdom. The first of these had been the practicing Wiccan, journalist and political activist Margot Adler
Margot Adler
Margot Adler is an author, journalist, lecturer, Wiccan priestess and radio journalist and correspondent for National Public Radio .- Early life :Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, Adler grew up mostly in New York City...
in her Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America Today first published by Viking Press in 1979, but which would be republished in several revised editions in subsequent years. A second study was produced by Tanya M. Luhrmann
Tanya Luhrmann
Tanya Marie Luhrmann is an American psychological anthropologist best known for her studies of modern-day witches, charismatic Christians, and psychiatrists. She received her AB summa cum laude in Folklore and Mythology from Harvard-Radcliffe in 1981, working with Stanley Tambiah...
in her Persuasions of the Witches' Craft: Ritual Magic in Contemporary England (1989), in which she focused on both a Wiccan coven and several ceremonial magic orders that were then operating in London. This was followed by Loretta Orion's Never Again the Burning Times: Paganism Revisited (1995), which focused on Pagan communities on the American East Coast and Midwest.
Berger and her research
Berger first became involved in the study of the Pagan movement in October 1986, when she gave a series of public lectures on the subject of the historical witch trials of New EnglandNew England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
at the Boston Public Library
Boston Public Library
The Boston Public Library is a municipal public library system in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It was the first publicly supported municipal library in the United States, the first large library open to the public in the United States, and the first public library to allow people to...
. She devoted the final lecture to the subject of contemporary Pagan Witches, or Wiccans, who were living in the area, taking her information both from the information published in the works of Margot Adler, Starhawk and Marcello Truzzi
Marcello Truzzi
Marcello Truzzi was a professor of sociology at New College of Florida and later at Eastern Michigan University, founding co-chairman of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal , a founder of the Society for Scientific Exploration, and director for the Center for...
, and also from a singular interview that she had carried out with a woman who was "peripherally associated" with Paganism. After the lecture, several audience members approached Berger to identify themselves as practicing Wiccans, and it was through them that she came into contact with the New England Pagan community. Three of the Wiccans at the lecture invited Berger to "participate as a researcher" as they founded their own coven, the Circle of Light, and she would go on to attend their weekly meetings and festival celebrations for the next two years.
At the first open Pagan ritual that she attended, Berger met Andras Corban Arthen, the founder of the EarthSpirit Community (ESC), a Pagan organization open to non-Wiccans which she joined after paying the annual membership fee of $30. Attending many of the ESC's open rituals and festivals, she was introduced to a "diverse group" of Wiccans and other Pagans, developing up a contact base in the community. Berger and Arthen subsequently embarked on a project entitled "The Pagan Census" in an attempt to gain sociological data from the Pagan community across the U.S. Receiving funding from the Faculty Development Fund at West Chester University, Berger was aided in this project by over 15 students who helped her to code and enter data for the survey. Together, Berger and Arthen wrote and distributed their survey through Wiccan and Pagan organizations across the country, as well as in journals, on the internet and at festivals, with the duo receiving over 2000 responses, providing Berger with one of her main sources of information.
Throughout her 11 year period of fieldwork, Berger had to use snowball sampling
Snowball sampling
In sociology and statistics research, snowball sampling is a non-probability sampling technique where existing study subjects recruit future subjects from among their acquaintances. Thus the sample group appears to grow like a rolling snowball...
in order to retrieve her data on the Pagan community, something that she attributed to the "secrecy of groups and practitioners". She conducted formal interviews with over forty practicing Pagans, with over sixty others instead being informally interviewed during conversations at Pagan events, following which Berger recorded their responses in her fieldnotes. She participated in rituals with ten different Wiccan covens, two of which were all-female covens, and the other eight of which were mixed-gender in structure, but all of whom assembled in the north-eastern United States. Accepting that this regional focus might affect her results, she supplemented her fieldwork by reading literature on Paganism from across the country, concluding that "the differences among groups and practitioners within the United States are less important than the similarities." Unlike the sociologists Margot Adler and Loretta Orion, both of whom had been or became Pagans whilst studying the movement, Berger stated that she had not joined the religion, thereby remaining an "outsider" throughout her research, but had made many friends within the Pagan community.
A Community of Witches was a part of a series of books entitled 'Studies in Comparative Religion' that were published by the University of South Carolina Press, and edited by Frederick M. Denny. In Denny's preface to the book, he argued that it "adds significantly to the steadily growing scholarly literature" on the subject of Wicca and contemporary Paganism, being of "considerable use for our understanding of how other new religious communities are sustaining and developing themselves in the unprecedented rich tapestry of American religious pluralism."
Synopsis
Starting with a preface in which Berger explains how she first began studying the Wiccan and Pagan community of New England, Berger opens the main part of her book with a description of a WiccaningWiccaning
A wiccaning is a Wiccan ceremony or ritual analogous to a christening or baptism for an infant which centers on the presentation of the infant to the God and Goddess for protection.-Application:...
which she attended. Proceeding to introduce both the Wiccan religion and her theoretical approach, Berger explains both the British sociologist James A. Beckford
James A. Beckford
James Arthur Beckford is a British sociologist of religion. He is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Warwick and a Fellow of the British Academy...
's approach to the religions of late modernity as well as Anthony Giddens
Anthony Giddens
Anthony Giddens, Baron Giddens is a British sociologist who is known for his theory of structuration and his holistic view of modern societies. He is considered to be one of the most prominent modern contributors in the field of sociology, the author of at least 34 books, published in at least 29...
' theoretical approaches to modernism.
In the second chapter, entitled "The Magical Self", Berger examines the ways in which Wiccans in the U.S. understand themselves, looking at sociological ideas about self-identity and utilising them in her analysis of Wiccan rituals that deal with the transformation of the self. She then moves on to look at concepts of gender
Gender
Gender is a range of characteristics used to distinguish between males and females, particularly in the cases of men and women and the masculine and feminine attributes assigned to them. Depending on the context, the discriminating characteristics vary from sex to social role to gender identity...
in the Wiccan community, both for men and women and also for homosexuals. The third chapter, entitled "The Coven: Perfect Love, Perfect Trust", provides an explanation of the coven system within Wicca, and the ways in which friendships are built and collapse amongst coven members, and the extent to which covens imitate family structures.
Chapter four, "A Circle within a Circle: The Neo-Pagan Community", looks at the wider community beyond the coven structure, interpreting it through theoretical ideas about community in late modernity. Moving on, Berger looks at ideas of community memory and community building amongst U.S. Pagans, before examining the manner in which some Pagans engage in both emancipatory politics and life politics. The fifth chapter, entitled "The Next Generation", is devoted to the place of children within the Pagan community, and deals with ideas of rites of passage, attitudes towards children's sexuality and the extent to which children are involved in rituals.
The sixth chapter, "The Routinization of Creativity", looks at the relationship between Wicca and routinization, and examines how the anti-authoritarian ethos of the religion has been in part eroded through the creation of Pagan organisations like the EarthSpirit Community and the Circle Sanctuary
Circle Sanctuary
Circle Sanctuary is a non-profit organization and legally recognized Wiccan Church based in southwestern Wisconsin, USA. Circle is the publisher of Circle Magazine, which has approximately 15,000 subscribers...
, which have purchased land and led to the development of a paid clergy. Finally, Berger concludes her work with a round-up of her study, and muses on the possible future for Wicca in the United States.
Wicca as a religion of late modernity
Whereas the sociologist Loretta Orion had believed that contemporary Paganism was a postmodernPostmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
movement, in A Community of Witches, Berger argued against this, instead considering Wicca to be a religion of late modernity
Late modernity
Late modernity is a term that has been used to describe the condition or state of some highly developed present day societies...
. In supporting this position, Berger turned to the work of the British sociologist of religion, James A. Beckford
James A. Beckford
James Arthur Beckford is a British sociologist of religion. He is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Warwick and a Fellow of the British Academy...
(1942-), who in his book Religion and Advanced Industrial Society (1989) had argued that many new religious movements reflect the characteristics of late modernity by challenging traditional definitions of religion, sharing a holistic worldview and emphasising the development and transformation of the self. Berger stated that while "Wicca is not specifically mentioned by Beckford, it does fit the model of New Age
New Age
The New Age movement is a Western spiritual movement that developed in the second half of the 20th century. Its central precepts have been described as "drawing on both Eastern and Western spiritual and metaphysical traditions and then infusing them with influences from self-help and motivational...
religions that he is analyzing." Whilst accepting that elements of postmodernism can certainly be found within Wicca, Berger argued that the religion does not "signify an epistemological break with Enlightenment
Enlightenment
-Culture:*Age of Enlightenment, period in Western history and its corresponding movement*Enlightenment , a final blessed state free from ignorance, desire and suffering*Enlightenment in Western secular tradition*Enlightenment in Buddhism...
thought", and that as such it was intrinsically late modernist in structure; as she related, the "emphasis on globalism, the belief in personal and social transformation, and the use of noninstrumental rationality place Wicca firmly within the Englightenment tradition."
Wicca as a result of globalism
Berger was of the opinion that Wicca's "development and spread" could be seen as "an outgrowth of globalismGlobalism
Globalism can have at least two different and opposing meanings. One meaning is the attitude or policy of placing the interests of the entire world above those of individual nations...
". As evidence, she noted that the religion had been created by modern westerners picking and choosing elements from a variety of "older and geographically disparate religious practices" in order to fashion their new faith, something which she believed was only possible in a globalised world.
Reviews
In a review published in the Review of Religious Research journal, Stephen D. Glazier of the University of Nebraska described A Community of Witches as an "important study" which had "many virtues and few faults." Glazier commended it as an improvement on earlier sociological studies of contemporary Paganism, which in his opinion had dwelt on "personal experiences" and acted as something of "proselytizers for Neo-Pagan beliefs and practices." Praising Berger for "maintaining a high degree of theoretical sophistication while remaining accessible for the average reader", he did however have some criticisms, for instance noting that Berger had used the terms "Wiccan" and "Neo-Pagan" interchangeably, despite the fact that they have different meanings and he felt that this might confuse some of the book's readers.In her review of A Community of Witches published in the Sociology of Religion journal, Frances Kostarelos of the Governors State University
Governors State University
Governors State University is a public university located in University Park, Illinois. The campus is located south of Chicago, Illinois. Founded in 1969, GSU is an upper-division university, offering undergraduate courses at the junior and senior levels as well as graduate level coursework at...
commented positively on Berger's work, describing it as "an invaluable theoretical and descriptive account of Wicca" that is also "a fine example of ethnographic research and writing." Stefanie von Schnurbein of the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
described A Community of Witches as "an exciting and important approach to the study of contemporary neopaganism" in her review published in The Journal of Religion
The Journal of Religion
The Journal of Religion is an academic journal published by the University of Chicago Press founded in 1882 as The American Journal of Theology. The journal "embraces all areas of theology as well as other types of religious studies ."...
. Schnurbein believed that Berger "has an intimate knowledge of her field and makes creative and interesting use of contemporary sociological theory" but that a "discussion of the vivid cultural and theoretical controversies around gender and sexuality would have added to the theoretical value of Berger's book."
Writing in the Contemporary Sociology
Contemporary Sociology (journal)
Contemporary Sociology is a peer-reviewed academic journal of sociology published by SAGE Publications in association with the American Sociological Association. Each issue of the journal publishes a large number of both in-depth and brief reviews of recent publications in sociology and related...
journal, Tanice G. Foltz of Indiana University Northwest
Indiana University Northwest
Indiana University Northwest is a regional university campus in the Indiana University system in Gary, Indiana, USA, established in 1963.-Courses:...
described A Community of Witches as "Well organized, clearly written, and aimed at an academic audience". Believing it to be a "valuable addition to the existing scholarship on witchcraft", Foltz did however highlight some problems with the work, wishing that it had included an "in-depth analysis" of her Pagan Census survey and noting that it erroneously used the terms "Neo-Paganism", "Witchcraft" and "Wicca" interchangeably. In her review for the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion
The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion is a peer-reviewed journal, published by Wiley-Blackwell in the United States of America under the auspices of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, dedicated to publishing scholarly articles in the social sciences, including psychology,...
, Mary Jo Neitz of the University of Missouri
University of Missouri
The University of Missouri System is a state university system providing centralized administration for four universities, a health care system, an extension program, five research and technology parks, and a publishing press. More than 64,000 students are currently enrolled at its four campuses...
was more critical, arguing that Berger had generalised information from the north-eastern U.S. and claimed that it was applicable for the Pagan community across the entire country, something which Neitz felt was counter to her "own observations of Wicca."
Influence and recognition
A Community of Witches was awarded the A List Exceptional Books of 1999 Award.Berger's later work
Berger herself would continue her sociological research into the Wiccan community in the U.S. following the publication of A Community of Witches. 2003 saw the publication of her data collected from the "Pagan Census" in the form of a book co-written with Evan A. Leach and Leigh S. Shaffer. Entitled Voices from the Pagan Census: A National Survey of Witches and Neo-Pagans in the United States, the book was once again published by the University of South Carolina Press.In 2005, the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
published an edited anthology entitled Witchcraft and Magic in the New World: North America in the Twentieth Century, which had been edited by Berger. In 2007, Berger's third book was published, Teenage Witches: Magical Youth and the Search for the Soul, which had been co-written with Douglas Ezzy, a senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Tasmania
University of Tasmania
The University of Tasmania is a medium-sized public Australian university based in Tasmania, Australia. Officially founded on 1 January 1890, it was the fourth university to be established in nineteenth-century Australia...
in Australia.