{"id":11709,"date":"2020-08-16T15:48:18","date_gmt":"2020-08-16T21:48:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11709"},"modified":"2020-08-22T21:31:38","modified_gmt":"2020-08-23T03:31:38","slug":"witchcraft-youre-not-making-it-strange-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11709","title":{"rendered":"Witchcraft: You’re Not Making It Strange Enough"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Teresa Palmer as Diana Bishop, historian and witch, in A Discovery of Witches,<\/em> Episode 1 (2018).<\/p><\/div>\n

The final article in the “Paganism, art, and fashion<\/a>” issue of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies <\/em>argues that books and television series based on historical witchcraft make it too safe and fail to portray “the genuine strangeness of witches and magic users in all periods and cultures.”<\/p>\n

<\/a>It is written by literature professor Diane Purkiss<\/a> and titled “Getting It Wrong: The Problems with Reinventing the Past<\/a>” (currently a free download). Purkiss’ books include At the Bottom of the Garden: A Dark History of Fairies, Hobgoblins, Nymphs, and Other Troublesome Things<\/em><\/a> and The Witch in History: Early Modern and Twentieth-Century Representations<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

The works she discusses include Deborah Harkness’ A Discovery of Witches<\/em><\/a> and the series<\/a> developed from it, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon<\/em><\/a> (both the novel and the TV series), and the Outlander <\/em>series<\/a>\u2014not to mention such classics as Lord of the Rings.<\/em><\/p>\n

The authors, she argues, focus too much on female empowerment and not enough on how “early modern witches are much stranger and much more disconcerting than anything likely to be found at Hogwarts or in Narnia or Rivendell.”<\/p>\n

Thus the “getting it wrong” of her title not an attack on contemporary Pagan-themed literature \u2014 she admits its creative energy\u2014 but the suggestion that if you think you are doing something “transgressive” now, you ought to look at some primary sources. And since she teaches at Oxford, she has some snarky things to say about how her university is portrayed in Discovery of Witches <\/em>on TV.((Purkiss’ exclamation over the fictional Professor Bishop, ‘That\u2019s not how this works!” might equally well have been applied to the long-running British Inspector Morse<\/em> mystery series, set in Oxford town, which portrayed Oxford dons as bludgeoned on an almost-weekly basis. Apparently that is how positions are opened up for new hires. Perhaps Bishop arrived immediately after a murder.))<\/p>\n

M. Z. Bradley, she points out, was more influenced by Starhawk than by anything on ancient Pagan religion. “We tend to want goddesses with moral characteristics derived from Christianity and from the Enlightenment, and matriarchal societies with characteristics derived from Christian socialism and even Marxism. All this excludes the bitter truths embodied in Pagan myths and ideology.”<\/p>\n

It’s not that we cannot enjoy Diana Bishop, heriditary witch and professor, but that, as Purkiss is anxious to point out, the real thing was even stranger than the “anondyne” modern re-creations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The final article in the “Paganism, art, and fashion” issue of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies argues that books and television series based on historical witchcraft make it too safe and fail to portray “the genuine strangeness of witches and magic users in all periods and cultures.” It is written by literature […]<\/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":[100,299,229,4,153,333,29,12],"class_list":["post-11709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-history","tag-pagan-studies","tag-pomegranate","tag-scholarship","tag-television","tag-witch-trials","tag-witchcraft","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-32R","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10074,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10074","url_meta":{"origin":11709,"position":0},"title":"Call for Papers: Pagan Art & Fashion","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 12, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"CFP for a special issue of The Pomegranate on Pagan Art and Fashion\u00a0 \u00a0A beautiful young woman drapes her long auburn hair over a human skull, pressing it close to her face like a lover. Another, clad in black and holding a wooden staff, poses like a model in a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9676,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9676","url_meta":{"origin":11709,"position":1},"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":11816,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11816","url_meta":{"origin":11709,"position":2},"title":"Call for Papers: Pagans and Museums","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 16, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"NOTE UPDATED DEADLINES AT BOTTOM Museums and contemporary Paganism are inextricably linked. Gerald Gardner, founder of modern pagan witchcraft, first publicized Wicca in 1951 at Cecil Williamson\u2019s Folklore Centre of Superstition and Witchcraft at Castletown (later The Museum of Magic and Witchcraft) on the Isle of Man. Some of his\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"museums\"","block_context":{"text":"museums","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=museums"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/ray-buckland-34-17-at-museum.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/ray-buckland-34-17-at-museum.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/ray-buckland-34-17-at-museum.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":14146,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=14146","url_meta":{"origin":11709,"position":3},"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":11623,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11623","url_meta":{"origin":11709,"position":4},"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":[]},{"id":13495,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13495","url_meta":{"origin":11709,"position":5},"title":"Lifting up Love & Light in North Carolina","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 4, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"A mug with the Pagan triple goddess symbol is pictured at Quantum Soul in Carrboro on Sunday, Oct. 22, 2023. The student newspaper at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, does the annual Pagans-and-witches story but reaches out a little farther to interview a graduate student working in that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11709","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=11709"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11740,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11709\/revisions\/11740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}