{"id":13906,"date":"2025-01-10T19:14:33","date_gmt":"2025-01-11T02:14:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13906"},"modified":"2025-01-10T19:18:36","modified_gmt":"2025-01-11T02:18:36","slug":"does-the-pagan-resurgence-start-with-folklore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13906","title":{"rendered":"Does the Pagan Resurgence Start with Folklore?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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“Politics is downstream from culture,” people like to say online — which is just a re-statement of something that I have long believed, that “Life imitates Art.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe I am just reflecting my online environment and the podcasts that I listen to, but folklore is suddenly big. My feed has a lot of British contributors in it; some have MA’s in folklore, which won’t get you a teaching job but maybe will give you the skills to write, make videos, and so forth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So there is a plethora of podcasts, such as the Modern Fairy Sightings <\/em>podcast<\/a>, hosted by Jo Hickey-Hall, one of Ronald Hutton’s former graduate students. Zines like I haven’t seen them since pre-Internet days. One of my favorites is Hellebore<\/a>, edited by Maria P\u00e9rez Cuervo, also a former grad student (fill in the blank). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So this is also niche stuff, but you have to add it up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Epigram, Bristol University’s independent student newspaper, just this week published an article “The Old Gods- The Resurgence of Paganism and Folklore,<\/a>“<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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These traditions may seem to belong to another time \u2013 yet interest in paganism and folklore is growing across the globe. Shamanism, although not an organised faith, is the fastest growing religion in England and Wales, according to the 2011 and 2022 censuses. In the US, the number of Wicca adherents is now over 1.5 million. Wicca, founded in the early half of the 20th<\/sup> century by Gerald Gardner, is one of the most influential and popular branches of the modern neopagan movement, with a complex variety of branches, denominations and traditions across the world.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I am not sure where those numbers come from, so just consider them to be “hand-waving.” Counting Pagans is a real difficult problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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North America’s Pagan resurgence, should one occur, is going to look different. But there are cross-overs. Just today I stopped at the nearest small-town grocery store. This guy was stocking the shelves (not one of the employees that I recognized, so maybe new), and he was wearing a big ol’ Mj\u00f6lnir amulet <\/a>around his neck, maybe a reproduction of the one at the linked page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Politics is downstream from culture,” people like to say online — which is just a re-statement of something that I have long believed, that “Life imitates Art.” Maybe I am just reflecting my online environment and the podcasts that I listen to, but folklore is suddenly big. My feed has a lot of British contributors […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":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":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26,37,5],"class_list":["post-13906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-culture","tag-folklore","tag-paganism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-3Ci","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":12154,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12154","url_meta":{"origin":13906,"position":0},"title":"Joining Folklore: The Electronic Journal of Folklore","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 5, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Last month I accepted an invitation to join the editorial board of Folklore: The Electronic Journal of Folklore, which is published by the Estonian Literary Museum in the city of Tartu. They have not yet updated the website, but you know how that goes. Because Folklore is government-supported and Web-only,\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\/2021\/04\/estonian-literary-museum-300x174.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":130,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=130","url_meta":{"origin":13906,"position":1},"title":"Witchcraft and folklore Folklorist Sabina\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 27, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Witchcraft and folklore Folklorist Sabina Magliocco, an anthropologist at California State University-Northridge and a previous contributo to The Pomegranate, has a new book out, Witching Culture: Folklore and Neo-Paganism in America. From the publisher's catalog: Taking the reader into the heart of one of the fastest-growing religious movements in North\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6347,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6347","url_meta":{"origin":13906,"position":2},"title":"‘Weird Tales,’ Hex Signs, and Folklore","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 14, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00b6 Joe Laycock examined the mythologies behind True Detective. (I have not seen it, being much the same situation as Jason Pitzl-Waters.) Religion scholar Philip Jenkins has suggested these two sources\u2014contemporary Satanic Panic and the \u201cweird tales\u201d of pulp horror\u2014are connected.\u00a0He suggests that it was the weird tales authors of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"folklore\"","block_context":{"text":"folklore","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=folklore"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5425,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5425","url_meta":{"origin":13906,"position":3},"title":"On the Science of How Plants Talk to Each Other","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 5, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Imagine this, a kernal (heh) of truth: Sound is so fundamental to life that some scientists now think there's a kernel of truth to folklore that holds humans can commune with plants. And plants may use sound to communicate with one another. Do beetles eavesdrop on drought-stressed pine trees? Maybe\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"folklore\"","block_context":{"text":"folklore","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=folklore"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1322,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1322","url_meta":{"origin":13906,"position":4},"title":"Pagans, Folklore, and Dogs","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 5, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Click over to Pagans for Archaeology, where Yewtree interviews Australian Pagan scholar David Waldron, author of Shock! The Black Dog of Bungay: A Study in Local Folklore, about dogs, folklore, and the Pagan revival.I think a key issue for me was that transmission of symbols, images and ideas from the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"dogs\"","block_context":{"text":"dogs","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=dogs"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=chascli-20&l=as2&o=1&a=095552377X","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":11319,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11319","url_meta":{"origin":13906,"position":5},"title":"“Folkloric” Pagan Statues Spark a Confrontation in Poland","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 21, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"The news article, \"Locals demand removal of \u201cdemonic, pagan\u201d sculptures on tourist folklore trail in Poland,\" starts this way: A small community in northern Poland is embroiled in a dispute over 13 wooden sculptures of spirits based on local folklore, pitting Catholics warning of \u201cdemonic idolatry\u201d conservatives against officials seeking\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Catholicism\"","block_context":{"text":"Catholicism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=catholicism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/folkloric-statue.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13906","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=13906"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13915,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13906\/revisions\/13915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}