Varieties of the (Australian) Witchcraft Community's Religious Experience

The Religious Experience of the (Australian) Witchcraft Community

This website is organised into a series of commentaries on the lectures that constitute The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James. These lectures can be found under the Introduction tab. The lectures are interspersed with comments and interviews from members of the Australian Witchcraft community. In essence, the question posed here is ‘Do the religious experiences of the Australian Witchcraft community ‘map on’ to those explored by James?’. Other pages include a reflexive blog and how art may be used in ritual.

Feel free to follow or get in touch via the Contact page

“What is witchcraft? The answer is simple: Witchcraft is the work of the enemy. Witchcraft is the sex that other people have, witchcraft is the drug that other people take, witchcraft is the rite that other people perform. Witchcraft is the magic that other people do. Witchcraft is the clothes that other people wear. WItchcraft is the words that other people speak. Witchcraft the Goddess they venerate.” (Grey, 2013, p. 6)

Old Horny, Museum of Witchcraft and Magic, England, 2017

Welcome.

So…what’s it all about?

This website is a living repository of the Witch’s religious experience. Intitially, it will contain data and writing from my PhD but it is envisioned that over time, it will be opened up to the global Witchcraft community and academics as both a resource and so that practitioners can upload/contribute/share their own experiences. Thus will it organically grow and develop. It is most defintely not a social media thing.

Ah, but how do you define ‘Witch’?

A good question. When conducting the qualitative research phase of my PhD, I used the deliberately broad criteria of self-identification. Do you identify as a Witch, irrespective of the denomination/path that you follow (eg, Wiccan, Kitchen, Hedge, etc)? Then you are a Witch!

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YCDT – Petersen, 2020