Contested Meanings: Earth Religion Practitioners and the Everyday

Authors

  • Jenny Blain

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/pome.v13i10.15

Keywords:

Neo-Paganism, earth religion, traditional cultures,

Abstract

In many ‘traditional’ cultures, religion and magic are not easily separated from people’s everyday existence. Today, an increasing number of people within North America are drawn to some form of earth-centred spirituality, whether as solitary practitioners or members of Neopagan circles, Wicca covens, Heathen kindreds or Druid groves. For many of these people, religion and spirituality do not form a closed category of their experience: they inform, and are formed by, events of their lives as distinct or diverse as childbirth, gardening, social protest, sexual expression, and everyday occupations of work and leisure

References

Blain, Jenny, 1999a. “Seidr as Shamanistic Practice: Reconstituting a Tradition of Ambiguity”. Shaman 7.2: 99-121.

Blain, Jenny, 1999b. “Speaking shamanistically: seidr, academia and rationality”. ‘Going Native’ conference, Folklore Center, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, May 21, 1999. Forthcoming in DISKUS.

Blain, Jenny, 2000. “Shamans, Stones, Authenticity and Appropriation: Contestations of Invention and Meaning”. Forthcoming in New Approaches to the Archaeology of Art, Religion and Folklore: A Permeability of Boundaries? eds. R.J. Wallis, K. Lymer and S. Crooks. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports.

Blain, Jenny and Robert J. Wallis, In Press. “The ‘Ergi’ Seidman: Contestations of gender, shamanism and sexuality in northern religion past and present”. Forthcoming in Journal of Contemporary Religion.

Gallagher, Anne-Marie, 1999. “Weaving a Tangled Web? Pagan ethics and issues of history, ‘race’ and ethnicity in Pagan identity”. The Pomegranate 10: 19-29

Harvey, Graham, 1997. Listening People, Speaking Earth: Contemporary Paganism.

Hutton, Ronald, 1996. The Stations of the Sun: a history of the ritual year in Britain. Oxford University Press.

Marcus, George, 1998. Ethnography through Thick and Thin. Princeton: Princeton U.P.

York, Michael, 2000. “Defining Paganism”. The Pomegranate 11: 4-9.

Published

2000-05-01

How to Cite

Blain, J. (2000). Contested Meanings: Earth Religion Practitioners and the Everyday. Pomegranate, 12(Spring), 15-25. https://doi.org/10.1558/pome.v13i10.15