The Mysteries of Witchcraft

 #MagicResistance: Anti-Trump Witchcraft as Register Circulation Fine, Julia C. “MagicResistance: Anti‐Trump Witchcraft as Register Circulation.”  Journal of Linguistic Anthropology , vol. 30, no. 1, 2020, pp. 68–85, doi:10.1111/jola.12249 https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jola.12249 Summary:       Fine interviewed five magical practitioners who decided to take part in a ritual in an attempt to stop Trump from causing harm during his presidency. She asks them what brought them to decide to take part in witchcraft and why they wanted to pursue political activism. She also talks about the importance witchcraft can have on the self and communities like LGBTQ. It can be emotionally uplifting and can help practitioners take control of situations when they may feel helpless.  Author: Julia Fine was a graduate student in the Department of Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She specializes in Linguistic ...

The argument that I am presenting is why many women choose to become a part of witchcraft, and what it means for them once they joined this religion. Witchcraft is a very new and controversial religion that many don't understand, often seeing it as evil or odd. I am arguing that it can be self-fulfilling and good for the world, opposite of what is normally portrayed.  Thesis: Many women find themselves becoming a part of witchcraft as a means of re-enchantment, whether that is re-enchanting the world or re-enchanting the self through empowerment and self-development. Roburt Burkett, Wade Myers, and other authors who wrote Emotional and Behavioral Disturbances in Adolesents Involved in Witchcraft and Satanism, argue the point of view that young adults involved in witchcraft suffer from mental illness and participate in many evil acts including animal sacrifice. I disagree with this point of view. They don't separate Satanism and witchcraft, only describe it as one thing that com...

 The case that I will be using is within the book, Teenage Witches: Magical Youth and the Search for the Self  by Helen Berger and Douglass Ezzy. Here, the two authors interviewed many young witches in Australia, Great Britain, and the United States, to find out what drove them to become a part of witchcraft and what this spiritual way of life does for them when navigating the real world.  Nika is a young American witch who found herself becoming attracted to witchcraft with an initial interest in Greek goddesses. Her story comes with one of re-enchantment, reclamation, and empowerment. She chooses to use the word witch because of the negative connotations it is associated with. She uses symbols of goddesses in Greek mythology as a means of empowering herself and as an empowering symbol for women. She uses witchcraft mostly for self-development, especially for coping with being a victim of sexual assault when she was 14. Nika's story is very important to my theoretical fr...

 My theoretical frame for my essay is "Re-enchantment." I have come across many different reasons for why women choose to become a part of Wicca: female empowerment, to create their own identity, or to escape and cope with their everyday life. All these reasons can revolve around one thing: enchantment of the self and the world around them.  In the book, Teenage Witches, Magical Youth and the Search for the Self, by Helen Berger and Douglass Ezzy, we can examine how many young witches found themselves in witchcraft and how becoming a part of witchcraft has changed the ways in which they view the world, and how they can improve, or re-enchant, the world around them.  We also see how the symbol of the witch is used in Feminist Wicca: Path to Empowerment, by Linda Warwick, and in the book, Waking the Witch: Reflections on Magic, Women, Magic, and Power  by Pam Grossman. Here we see how women use the symbol of the witch as a means of feminism and empowerment, a way to gr...

  Teenage Witches: Magical Youth and the Search for the Self by Helen Berger and Douglass Ezzy Citation: Berger, Helen A., and Douglas Ezzy.  Teenage Witches: Magical Youth and the Search for the Self . Rutgers University Press, 2007.  JSTOR , www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5hj9jq . Summary:     Berger and Ezzy interviewed many young witches in the United States, England, and Australia to find out what drove them to become witches and what it means to be a witch. They dive deep into the moral ethics of witchcraft and how these people find themselves and their identity within the religion. Some of the interviews that showed the most insight were placed at the beginning of the book or between each chapter, giving us a firsthand experience from witches themselves.  Authors:      Helen Berger is an American sociologist who has done a lot of research into Paganism and witchcraft. Her interest in witchcraft began in 1986 and since then she has performe...

This is a graph of the recent rise in people who are identifying as Wicca. As we can see, in just 18 years the religion has grown by almost 400,000 people, with the biggest increase starting in '01.  Kopf, Dan, and Sangeeta Singh-Kurtz. “The US Witch Population Has Seen an Astronomical Rise.” Quartz , Quartz, 2018, qz.com/quartzy/1411909/the-explosive-growth-of-witches-wiccans-and-pagans-in-the-us/.