Embracing The Witch And The Goddess

Embracing the Witch and the Goddess is a detailed survey of present-day feminist witches in New Zealand. It examines the attraction of witchcraft for its practitioners, and explores witches' rituals, views and beliefs about how magic works. The book provides a detailed portrait of an undocumented section of the growing neo-pagan movement, and compares the special character of New Zealand witchcraft with its counterparts in the United States, Great Britain, and Australia. Kathryn Rountree traces the emergence and history of feminist witchcraft, and links witchcraft with the contemporary Goddess movement. She reviews scholarly approaches on the study of witchcraft and deals with the key debates which have engaged the movement's adherents and their critics, and ultimately presents what Mary Daly declared was missing from most historical and anthropological research on witchcraft: a 'Hag-identified vision'. Based on fieldwork amongst witch practitioners, Embracing the Witch and the Goddess is an important contribution to the emerging profile of present-day witchcraft and paganism.

Embracing the Witch and the Goddess is a detailed survey of present-day feminist witches in New Zealand. It examines the attraction of witchcraft for its practitioners, and explores witches' rituals, views and beliefs about how magic works. The book provides a detailed portrait of an undocumented section of the growing neo-pagan movement, and compares the special character of New Zealand witchcraft with its counterparts in the United States, Great Britain, and Australia. Kathryn Rountree traces the emergence and history of feminist witchcraft, and links witchcraft with the contemporary Goddess movement. She reviews scholarly approaches on the study of witchcraft and deals with the key debates which have engaged the movement's adherents and their critics, and ultimately presents what Mary Daly declared was missing from most historical and anthropological research on witchcraft: a 'Hag-identified vision'. Based on fieldwork amongst witch practitioners, Embracing the Witch and the Goddess is an important contribution to the emerging profile of present-day witchcraft and paganism.

This monograph focuses on "Christian Goddess Spirituality" (CGS), the phenomenon of (mostly) women who combine Christianity and Goddess Spirituality, including Wicca/Witchcraft. Mary Ann Beavis’s study provides ethnographic data and analysis on the lived religious experience of CGS practitioners, drawing on interviews of over 100 women who self-identify as combining Christianity and Goddess spirituality. Although CGS also has implications for Goddess Spirituality and related traditions (e.g., Neopaganism, Wicca), here, CGS is considered primarily as a phenomenon within Christianity. However, the study also shows that the fusion of Christian and Goddess spiritualties has had an impact on non-Christian feminist spirituality, since Goddess-worshippers have often constructed Christianity as the diametrical opposite and enemy of the Goddess, to the point that some refuse to admit the possibility that CGS is a valid spiritual path, or that it is even possible. In addition, biblical, Jewish and Christian images of the divine such as Sophia, Shekhinah, the Virgin Mary, and even Mary Magdalene, have found their way into the "Pagan" Goddess pantheon. The main themes of the study include: overlaps and differences between Christian feminist theology and CGS; the routes to CGS for individual practitioners, and their beliefs, practices and experiences; proto-denominational classifications ("spiritual paths") within CGS; CGS thealogy (Christian discourse about the female divine); and the future of CGS in social scientific and ecclesiological context. Christian Goddess Spirituality will be of interest to scholars of religion, especially those with interests in women and religion, feminist spiritualities, feminist theology/thealogy, alternative spiritualities, New Religious Movements, and emergent Christianities.

Never before in e-format, Embracing the Moon has been the go-to book for those wanting to learn a non-traditional, eclectic magickal system. Yasmine Galenorn first wrote this book in 1998. With over 50,000 copies of the book in print, it went out of print. Now, 17 years later, Galenorn has chosen to make it available in e-format. Faerie magick, shadow magick, natural magick... all of these forms of witchcraft are rooted in the natural world around us. Embracing the Moon is a practical, yet mystical, guidebook to finding and creating your own spiritual path. The old gods still walk the Earth, and this book is a shamanic, experiential path to finding your way to them. Be aware, while similar in some ways, this is not a Wiccan guide. Note: I now have a print version out with the new cover! Keywords: Nonfiction, metaphysical, magick, tarot, totems, spells, paganism, pagan, Wicca, witchcraft, the Craft, occult, magickal protection, prosperity, love spells, meditation, guided meditation, oracle, runes, ogham, Celtic, Norse, mythology, Greek, Finnish, gods, goddesses, priestess, priest, Ukko, Rauni, Mielikki, Tapio, Brighid, Cerridwen, Cernunnos, Herne, Taliesin, Thor, Odin, Freya, Frigga, Heimdall, Tir, Rhiannon, Epona, faerie, fairy, Fae, mythology

A text on the academic study of contemporary wicca and paganism throughout the world.

The book investigates the witch as a key rhetorical symbol in twentieth- and twenty-first century feminist memory, politics, activism, and popular culture. The witch demonstrates the inheritance of paradoxical pasts, traversing numerous ideological memoryscapes. This book is an examination of the ways that the witch has been deployed by feminist activists and writers in their political efforts in the twentieth century, and how this has indelibly affected cultural memories of the witch and the witch trials, and how this plays out in popular culture representations of the symbol through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Consequently, this book considers the relationship between popular culture and media, activist politics, and cultural memory. Using hauntological theories of memory and temporality, and literary, screen, and cultural studies methodologies, this book considers how popular culture remembers, misremembers, and forgets usable pasts, and the uses (and misuses) of these memories for feminist politics. Given the ubiquity of the witch in popular culture, politics and activism since 2016, this book is a timely examination of the range of meanings inherent to the figure, and is an important study of how cultural symbols like the witch inherit paradoxical memories, histories, and politics. The book will be valuable for scholars across disciplines, including witchcraft studies, feminist philosophy and history, memory studies, and popular culture studies.

Get to know Hecate, a student of witchcraft, in this twenty-seventh Goddess Girls adventure! Eleven-year-old Hecate loves being a student at Hexwitch School but gets nervous about things that could go wrong. To try and stem her anxious feelings, she gathers all the facts about different situations—that way, she will always be prepared if disaster strikes. After stumbling into a pet cemetery, Hecate meets Melinoe, who calls herself a ghost herder. She is in charge of leading the ghosts of pets and other animals to the River Styx in the Underworld. But Melinoe doesn’t notice when one of her ghost animals follows Hecate home! More and more of the lost ghosts gather with Hecate, and she learns they have unfinished business left on Earth and refuse to enter the Underworld. The deceased pets are counting on Hecate, but Melinoe isn’t too thrilled with having competition! Can Hecate help the animals without making a new enemy?

This important work provides a unique, single-volume reference to more than a thousand goddesses of the world. The book is also of enormous practical value in discovering and celebrating the transforming love of the Goddess.The Witches’ Goddess falls into three main sections. Part I reveals the many faces of the Goddess: her presence throughout history, her Earth and Moon symbolism, her Madonna and Magdalene disguises, her revelation in Woman and her influence today. In Part II, the Farrars share detailed Craft rituals for involving the Goddess in thirteen of her many aspects from Ishtar to Isis, from dark Hecate to Aphrodite. Part III is an alphabetical listing of more than a thousand goddesses of the world, giving a brief history and the main correspondences for each. All three sections have helpful line drawings and diagrams in addition to the photographic illustrations accompanying the text.The Witches’ Goddess is an invaluable contribution to the literature on the Goddess principle, written at a time when that principle is inspiring or disturbing Western thought more than it has for many centuries.