Kathryn Rountree

Christine Morris

Alan A. D. Peatfield

Archaeology of Spiritualties provides a fresh exploration of the interface between archaeology and religion/spirituality. Archaeological approaches to the study of religion have typically and often unconsciously, drawn on western paradigms, especially Judaeo-Christian (mono) theistic frameworks and academic rationalisations. Archaeologists have rarely reflected on how these approaches have framed and constrained their choices of methodologies, research questions, hypotheses, definitions, interpretations and analyses and have neglected an important dimension of religion: the human experience of the numinous - the power, presence or experience of the supernatural. Within the religions of many of the world’s peoples, sacred experiences – particularly in relation to sacred landscapes and beings connected with those landscapes – are often given greater emphasis, while doctrine and beliefs are relatively less important. Archaeology of Spiritualities asks how such experiences might be discerned in the archaeological record; how do we recognize and investigate ‘other’ forms of religious or spiritual experience in the remains of the past?. The volume opens up a space to explore critically and reflexively the encounter between archaeology and diverse cultural expressions of spirituality. It showcases experiential and experimental methodologies in this area of the discipline, an unconventional approach within the archaeology of religion. Thus Archaeology of Spiritualities offers a unique, timely and innovative contribution, one that is also challenging and stimulating. It is a great resource to archaeologists, historians, religious scholars and others interested in cultural and religious heritage.

Archaeology of Spiritualities

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.

Feminist Ritual-Makers in New Zealand

Embracing the Witch and the Goddess

Contemporary western Paganism is now a global religious phenomenon with Pagans in many parts of the world sharing much in common - from a nature-revering worldview and lifestyle to a host of chants, invocations, ritual tools and magical practices. But there are also locally-specific differences. Local religious contexts, landscapes, histories, traditions, politics, values and norms all impact on local Paganisms. This is nowhere more evident than in a strongly Catholic society, where religion and culture are deeply entwined. Taking the Mediterranean society of Malta as a case study, this book invites readers inside the world of a small, hidden sub-culture. Showing what it is like being Pagan in a society where the vast majority of the population is Roman Catholic, and Catholicism permeates every sphere of public and domestic, social and political life, Rountree reveals that Paganism here is a unique brew of indigenous and global influences. Pagans employ both creativity and borrowing in constructing identities within a cultural context characterized by antagonism as well as continuity. This book explores the intersections of religious and cultural identity, the global and local, Paganism and Christianity, with insights grounded in rich ethnographic detail based on long-term fieldwork. Rountree makes invaluable comparisons with other studies of modern Pagans and their various worlds.

Crafting Contemporary Pagan Identities in a Catholic Society

Roundtree shows the vital links of feminism with the goddess movement and provides a fascinating insight into the lives and beliefs of witches based on interviews and fieldwork.

Feminist Ritual-makers in New Zealand

Pagan and Native Faith movements have sprung up across Europe in recent decades, yet little has been published about them compared with their British and American counterparts. Though all such movements valorize human relationships with nature and embrace polytheistic cosmologies, practitioners’ beliefs, practices, goals, and agendas are diverse. Often side by side are groups trying to reconstruct ancient religions motivated by ethnonationalism—especially in post-Soviet societies—and others attracted by imported traditions, such as Wicca, Druidry, Goddess Spirituality, and Core Shamanism. Drawing on ethnographic cases, contributors explore the interplay of neo-nationalistic and neo-colonialist impulses in contemporary Paganism, showing how these impulses play out, intersect, collide, and transform.

Kathryn Rountree

About

Books

Join the club