Academic Grimoires: Conversations with Foundational Texts in Contemporary Pagan Studies

Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches, published in 1899 by Charles Godfrey Leland, is the most “political” of the foundational documents of the twentieth-century Wiccan movement. In all, Aradia sets forth several ideas that would shape the new religion of Wicca in the early 1950s. Leland asserts the existence of an Old Religion (and is the original source “The Charge of the Goddess”), paralleling archaeologist Margaret Murray’s claim to have discovered traces of such a Pagan survival in England and Scotland The book describes the practice of ritual nudity, which found ready acceptance with as Wicca developed. Third, it describes Diana as a Moon goddess and Queen of the Witches, patroness of the poor and oppressed, who gave license to use harmful magic against the upper classes. This justification for “anti-oppression” witchcraft one of  Aradia’s most visible legacies.

Matilda Joslyn Gage was a major women’s suffrage leader, collaborating with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. In 1893 she published Woman, Church and State: a Historical Account of the Status of Woman through the Christian Ages: with Reminiscences of Matriarchate, the results of her research into women’s political oppression. She presents a historical overview of structural injustices underlying the current social condition, in which women are oppressed and disenfranchised along-side other excluded persons, including African Americans and Native Americans. Here I investigate her trajectory from ancient patriarchy through present oppressions, including a passionate chapter on to the European witch trials, which, among other influences, is the source of the infamously incorrect assertion that “nine million” people were executed. The text remains foundational for feminist Witchcraft communities and for popular understandings of historical trials, especially the idea that women tried for witchcraft were actually practicing an ancient, Goddess religion.

It is both an honor and a humbling task to review a book as iconic for both Pagan Studies and more generally for New Religious Movements as Margot Adler’s Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers and other Pagans in America. The book was published on Samhain (Halloween) 1979 by Viking Press; a paperback edition of the original book and three subsequent updated, expanded, and revised editions were published by other presses. This was the first book to present an overview of the, then still nascent but growing, Pagan movement in America. Its importance goes beyond its historic role as it continues to be cited in both academic and popular works. 

In Black Magic: Religion and the African-American Conjuring Tradition (2003),Yvonne Chireau analyzes Hoodoo as an amalgamation of what people remembered from their West and West-Central African homeland, some European Christian and folk traditions, and Indigenous American knowledge of the local land. Here I demonstrate that the label of "magic" is less significant for Hoodoo than the effort to redefine it as a religion. This shift is driven by several factors. First, classifying Hoodoo as a religion offers protection from the racially charged negativity often linked to "magic." Second, practitioners are moving away from the commercially exploited aspects frequently associated with magic, instead prioritizing the re-centering of religious Africana theological elements, particularly ancestor veneration. Finally, redefining "religion" allows Hoodoo to stand apart from Christianity, establishing itself as an ethno-religion, a distinct cultural and spiritual way of life. This reorientation is in conversation with efforts of other magic-using communities, including contemporary Paganisms