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.

From the shelves of mainstream bookstores and the pages of teen magazines, to popular films and television series, contemporary culture at the turn of the twenty-first century has been fascinated with teenage identity and the presence of magic and the occult. Alongside this profusion of products and representations, a global network of teenage Witches has emerged on the margins of adult neopagan Witchcraft communities, identifying themselves through various spiritual practices, consumption patterns and lifestyle choices. The New Generation Witches is the first published anthology to investigate the recent rise of the teenage Witchcraft phenomenon in both Britain and North America. Scholars from Theology, Cultural Studies, Sociology, History and Media Studies, along with neopagan commentators outside of the academy, come together to investigate the experiences of thousands of adolescents constructing an enabling, magical identity through a distinctive practice of Witchcraft. The contributors discuss key areas of interest, inspiration and development within the teen Witch communities from the mid 1990s onward, including teenage Witches' magical practices and beliefs, gender politics, the formation and identification of communities, forums and modes of expression, media representation and new media outlets. Demonstrating the diversification and expansion of neopaganism in the twenty-first century, this anthology makes an exciting contribution to the field of Neopagan Studies and contemporary youth cultures.

Taking the reader into the heart of one of the fastest-growing religious movements in North America, Sabina Magliocco reveals how the disciplines of anthropology and folklore were fundamental to the early development of Neo-Paganism and the revival of witchcraft. Magliocco examines the roots that this religious movement has in a Western spiritual tradition of mysticism disavowed by the Enlightenment. She explores, too, how modern Pagans and Witches are imaginatively reclaiming discarded practices and beliefs to create religions more in keeping with their personal experience of the world as sacred and filled with meaning. Neo-Pagan religions focus on experience, rather than belief, and many contemporary practitioners have had mystical experiences. They seek a context that normalizes them and creates in them new spiritual dimensions that involve change in ordinary consciousness. Magliocco analyzes magical practices and rituals of Neo-Paganism as art forms that reanimate the cosmos and stimulate the imagination of its practitioners. She discusses rituals that are put together using materials from a variety of cultural and historical sources, and examines the cultural politics surrounding the movement—how the Neo-Pagan movement creates identity by contrasting itself against the dominant culture and how it can be understood in the context of early twenty-first-century identity politics. Witching Culture is the first ethnography of this religious movement to focus specifically on the role of anthropology and folklore in its formation, on experiences that are central to its practice, and on what it reveals about identity and belief in twenty-first-century North America.

Mona Chollet's In Defense of Witches is a “brilliant, well-documented” celebration (Le Monde) by an acclaimed French feminist of the witch as a symbol of female rebellion and independence in the face of misogyny and persecution. Centuries after the infamous witch hunts that swept through Europe and America, witches continue to hold a unique fascination for many: as fairy tale villains, practitioners of pagan religion, as well as feminist icons. Witches are both the ultimate victim and the stubborn, elusive rebel. But who were the women who were accused and often killed for witchcraft? What types of women have centuries of terror censored, eliminated, and repressed? Celebrated feminist writer Mona Chollet explores three types of women who were accused of witchcraft and persecuted: the independent woman, since widows and celibates were particularly targeted; the childless woman, since the time of the hunts marked the end of tolerance for those who claimed to control their fertility; and the elderly woman, who has always been an object of at best, pity, and at worst, horror. Examining modern society, Chollet concludes that these women continue to be harrassed and oppressed. Rather than being a brief moment in history, the persecution of witches is an example of society’s seemingly eternal misogyny, while women today are direct descendants to those who were hunted down and killed for their thoughts and actions. With fiery prose and arguments that range from the scholarly to the cultural, In Defense of Witches seeks to unite the mythic image of the witch with modern women who live their lives on their own terms.

A popular new image of Witches has arisen in recent years, due largely to movies like The Craft, Practical Magic, and Simply Irresistible and television shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and Charmed. Here, young sexy Witches use magic and Witchcraft to gain control over their lives and fight evil. Then there is the depiction in the Harry Potter books: Witchcraft is a gift that unenlightened Muggles (everyday people) lack. In both types of portrayals, being a Witch is akin to being a superhero. At the other end of the spectrum, wary adults assume that Witches engage in evil practices that are misguided at best and dangerous at worst. Yet, as Helen A. Berger and Douglas Ezzy show in this in-depth look into the lives of teenage Witches, the reality of their practices, beliefs, values, and motivations is very different from the sensational depictions we see in popular culture. Drawing on extensive research across three countries--the United States, England, and Australia--and interviews with young people from diverse backgrounds, what they find are highly spiritual and self-reflective young men and women attempting to make sense of a postmodern world via a religion that celebrates the earth and emphasizes self-development. The authors trace the development of Neo-Paganism (an umbrella term used to distinguish earth-based religions from the pagan religions of ancient cultures) from its start in England during the 1940s, through its growing popularity in the decades that followed, up through its contemporary presence on the Internet. Though dispersed and disorganized, Neo-Pagan communities, virtual and real, are shown to be an important part of religious identity particularly for those seeking affirmation during the difficult years between childhood and adulthood.