It is engagingly written, even when dealing with difficult concepts, and the linking of medieval with modern representations of magic is fascinating, especially because many students are first attracted to studying magic because of modern TV shows or novels . As Pagan studies burgeoned in the early 2000s, associated scholars, including many of my mentors, were clear that Witchcraft was only an appropriate label for white-dominated Wicca and other Paganisms explicitly associated with European pre-Christian folk traditions.

This book analyzes the gendered transformation of magical figures occurring in Arthurian romance in England from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries. I have never used item creation feats or done any crafting with any of my characters, past, or present.Not only is it a matter of empirical fact that there are BIPOC individuals who identify as Witches and who understand their ancestral traditions as forms of Witchcraft religions, but the shift is also political. As I was outlining these power dynamics in a lecture for my “Witchcraft, Magic, and the Occult” course, a student furrowed her brow and raised her hand. Witch can become accusation, empirical description, or praise as it reflects perceptions of practices and people, rather than anything inherent in a particular object, action, or identity. Concerns about Witch as a racist label have driven efforts to limit its use within scholarship to Wicca and other contemporary Paganisms.

As movements for women’s suffrage, abolition, colonial independence, and workers’ rights drew attention to ways that traditional structures perpetuated multiple injustices, popular interest in alternatives to traditional religious institutions also grew.

When discussing witch-hunting stereotypes and victims of those stereotypes, I do not capitalize witch or pagan, because the accused do not self-identify with those terms. It legitimates claims of authority to speak and teach, diffuses white dominance within Witchcraft spaces, and recognizes the voices of those elided or marginalized by scholarly and contemporary Pagan discourse, especially women and queer folks who are Black, Latine, and Indigenous. Personalised advertising may be considered a “sale” or “sharing” of information under California and other state privacy laws, and you may have a right to opt out.