Not to answer for anyone else, but I didn't get the sense that a popular or low-culture origin or development of a faith was being disparaged at all. It's possible to discuss issues of social status and cultural impact without assuming a value judgment. Indeed, given the amount of effort taken historically to frame alternative religions and magic in those terms, engagement with these concepts is necessary.
Dan Harms
Coordinator of Instruction Librarian
State University of New York - Cortland
Memorial Library B-110
(607) - 753-4042
________________________________
From: Society for The Academic Study of Magic on behalf of jason winslade
Sent: Fri 1/6/2006 12:38 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Pop-Wicca
Maybe I'm not reading you correctly, but are you placing a value judgement on a practice being once highbrow or aristocratic as opposed to popularized? What is the relevance of such a distinction? Weren't Gardner and Sanders more 'highbrow' than the average Wiccan today? Even though your earlier style over substance comment might be true for a vast number of pagans, I still think it is an unfair generalization, especially since many 'intelligent souls' out there are pagan.
jlw
kaligrafr <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Aloha,
On 1/5/2006 at 11:59 AM Daniel Harms wrote:
>Regarding this discussion, I should point out that there's an article on
>"The Commodification of Witchcraft" in the new WITCHCRAFT AND MAGIC:
>CONTEMPORARY NORTH AMERICA from U. Penn Press. It deals with m! any of
>these issues regarding the popularization of Wicca, though I was hoping
>for something more in-depth.
Thanx. I'll add the book to my wanna-get list.
What I was trying to get at in my earlier post is that, considering the
sort of
culture that we live in, Neo-Paganism and Wicca/wicca could only develop
in and through popular/lowbrow/mass culture. It's been popularized in the
sense that more people know about it, but not in the sense that it was once
aristocratic/highbrow/elite.
Musing The *Culture* Is Always Higher On The Other Side Of The Theatre!
Rose,
Pitch
Above all, she wished desparately she knew that key word that
spoken would make the world right again.
--Alexei Panshin, *Star Well*
________________________________
Yahoo! DSL <http://pa.yahoo.com/*http://us.rd.yahoo.com/evt=37474/*http://promo.yahoo.com/broadband/> Something to write home about. Just $16.99/mo. or less
|