{"id":10725,"date":"2019-07-28T16:24:46","date_gmt":"2019-07-28T22:24:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10725"},"modified":"2019-07-28T16:24:46","modified_gmt":"2019-07-28T22:24:46","slug":"caroline-tully-on-pagan-art-and-fashion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10725","title":{"rendered":"Caroline Tully on Pagan Art and Fashion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Caroline Tully is an Australian scholar of Classics, archaeology, and esotericism with a background in fine arts:<\/p>\n

I am an Honorary Fellow in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne. I have a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art from Monash University, Graduate and Postgraduate Diplomas in Classics and Archaeology and a PhD in Aegean Archaeology from the University of Melbourne. From 1996 to 2010 I worked as a professional tapestry weaver at the Australian Tapestry Workshop, during which (from 1999 to 2005) I also worked as a feature writer, reviewer and news and events editor at Australia\u2019s Witchcraft Magazine<\/em>. I returned to university study in 2004, started PhD research in 2009 and was awarded my Doctorate in 2017. My PhD, which is on tree worship in the Late Bronze Age Aegean and East Mediterranean (primarily Crete and mainland Greece, with comparative material from Cyprus, the Levant and Egypt), is currently in press with Peeters Publishers and due out this year. I also work on the reception of the ancient world, particularly the ways in which ancient Egyptian and Minoan (Bronze Age Crete) religions have been interpreted by late nineteenth century British magicians such as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and their spiritual heirs, the 20th<\/sup> and 21st<\/sup> century ceremonial magicians, witches and Pagans.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Last year she waded into the job of guest-editing an issue of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies<\/em> on Pagan art and fashion,<\/a> which she is now assembling.<\/p>\n

The Wild Hunt <\/em>had a short interview with her last year, but here is a long version of her interview by Rick de Yampert.<\/p>\n

I think Paganism is inherently creative because of its this-worldly, rather than other-worldly, focus. There is a wide spectrum of aesthetic expression that manifests in the materiality of Paganism; in the ritual objects we use, the way we design rituals, our robes (or lack thereof), direct \u2013 bodily \u2013 contact with deities, ecstatic expression, sexuality, and the general artistic legacy of all forms of ancient pagan religions that we are able to draw upon in order to create our religion and rituals. However, the initial impulse to create this special issue came from the creativity, often aligned with business savvy, of Witches on Instagram; the sex-positive feminist collective website, Slutist.com; and the fact that Witchcraft was appearing in high fashion contexts such as catwalk collections and featuring in magazines like Vogue<\/em>. Witchcraft has become glamorous \u2013 and I\u2019m not talking about its traditional faerie glamour, but fashionista glamour. Bloggers, Peg Aloi (\u201cThe Young Ones:Witchcraft\u2019s Glamorous New Practitioners\u201d<\/a>), and Thorn Mooney (\u201cThe HipsterWitch: Aesthetics, Empowerment and Instagram<\/a>\u201d), have already noted that this is a new kind of Witchcraft, less focussed on deities, Pagan history and community, and more focussed on self-care and characterised, to quote Mooney, by \u201ca strong entrepreneurial streak\u201d. These Witches are also politically active, more multicultural than Paganism has traditionally been, and read magazines like Sabat<\/em> and Ravenous<\/em>, and books like Kristen J. Sollee\u2019s Witches, Sluts, Feminists: Conjuring the Sex Positive.<\/em> This issue of The Pomegranate<\/em> is interested in research on these new slick Witches \u2013 who are they? Are they really so new after all? What does it mean for Witchcraft to be so distinctively stylish?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the whole interview here at her blog Necropolis Now.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Caroline Tully is an Australian scholar of Classics, archaeology, and esotericism with a background in fine arts: I am an Honorary Fellow in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne. I have a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art from Monash University, Graduate and Postgraduate Diplomas in Classics and Archaeology […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[45,26,299,229,4],"class_list":["post-10725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-art","tag-culture","tag-pagan-studies","tag-pomegranate","tag-scholarship"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-2MZ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":12811,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12811","url_meta":{"origin":10725,"position":0},"title":"New Pomegranate Published \u2014\u00a0New Editor Joins","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 8, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"A new issue of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies has been published online. The special double issue on the theme of Pagans, museums, and heritage organizations was guest-edited by Pomegranate's new associate editor, Caroline Tully. She is an archaeologist at the University of Melbourne, Australia and the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/POME-23.1-2-TOC-2.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":14146,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=14146","url_meta":{"origin":10725,"position":1},"title":"All Those Witches: Caroline Tully Sorts Them Out","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 4, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"\/ Caroline Tully, Pomegranate associate editor and long-time denizen of the Australian Pagan scene, gots onto an Australian podcast,The Briefing, as Witch-with-a-PhD to sort of in a very short time the difference between Wiccan witches, Etsy witches, and the rest of the social media witch-fauna. Released on Halloween 2025, of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Australia\"","block_context":{"text":"Australia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=australia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11594,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11594","url_meta":{"origin":10725,"position":2},"title":"Dior Dresses the Fair Folk","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 12, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"This promotional film has me thinking of the special \"Paganism, Art, and Fashion\" issue of The Pomegranate, guest-edited by Caroline Tully, University of Melbourne, and coming very soon Or at least it is the very object correlative of \"Pagan-ish,\" which is how I will label it.","rel":"","context":"In \"art\"","block_context":{"text":"art","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9676,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9676","url_meta":{"origin":10725,"position":3},"title":"Call for Papers: A Special Issue of The Pomegranate on Pagan Art and Fashion","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 22, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"From Caroline Tully (University of Melbourne, Australia), guest editor of an upcoming issue of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies devoted to Pagan art and fashion. A beautiful young woman drapes her long auburn hair over a human skull, pressing it close to her face like a lover.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/pomegranate-cover.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":13227,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13227","url_meta":{"origin":10725,"position":4},"title":"A New Look at “The Golden Bough,” a Book both Loved and Hated","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 23, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Lots of books, documentaries, etc, purport to tell you the \"real story\" that academics are \"afraid to reveal,\"\u00a0 particularly in history, archaeology, and related fields. Then there is Sir James G. Frazer's The Golden Bough. In its day, it was academic. Now it is \"the book that has single-handedly inflicted\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/golden-bougfh-hardcover-209x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":11623,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11623","url_meta":{"origin":10725,"position":5},"title":"The “Paganism, Art, and Fashion” Issue of The Pomegranate","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 4, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"A new issue of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies devoted to Paganism, art, and fashion has been published online (print to follow) and is currently available as \"open acess,\" in other words, free downloads. It is guest-edited by Caroline Tully (University of Melbourne), who writes in her\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"art\"","block_context":{"text":"art","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Figure-1-Gareth-Pugh-.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10725"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10725\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10726,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10725\/revisions\/10726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}