{"id":14159,"date":"2025-11-29T05:58:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-29T12:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=14159"},"modified":"2025-11-29T17:55:54","modified_gmt":"2025-11-30T00:55:54","slug":"revisiting-initiatory-wicca-are-they-still-scourging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=14159","title":{"rendered":"Revisiting Initiatory Wicca: Are They Still Scourging?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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As you can see, this conversation was recorded last spring, but I got around to listening to it only this month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both Rufus Harrington and Judith Noble come from initiatory British Wiccan traditions. A psychotherapist by profession, he is also a trustee of the Doreen Valiente Foundation, which protects and preserves many of the original Books of Shadows belonging to Gerald Gardner and Doreen Valiente.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nobel herself is an artist and professor of Film and the Occult at Arts University Plymouth (UK). “She began her career as an artist filmmaker, exhibiting work internationally and worked for over twenty years as a production executive in the film industry, working with directors including Peter Greenaway and Amma Asante. Her current research centres on artists\u2019 moving image, Surrealism, the occult and work by women artists, and she has published on filmmakers including Maya Deren, Derek Jarman and Kenneth Anger.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A lot of the interview deals with “What is initiatory Wicca?” and “How has it changed since they were brought in?” — forty years ago in Harrington’s case. So it’s not like nothing has changed since Stewart and Janet Farrar, who were Alexandrian initiates, were discussing these issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Esoteric Crossroads: Scholars Meet Practitioners <\/em>is a spin-off from Stephanie Shea’s main podcast, Rejected Religion<\/em>, created in collaboration with the Research Network for the Study of Esoteric Practices<\/a>. Shea herself has studied at Amsterdam Hemetica,<\/a> the university’s center for “Hermetic philosophy and related currents.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can find episodes of Rejected Religion <\/em>listed at its site, at the usual places such as Apple podcast,<\/a> or on her Academia.edu home page. There is a Patreon site too, w<\/a>ith the usual “the more you pay, the more access you have.” (Some content is free; other content becomes free after a time.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

As you can see, this conversation was recorded last spring, but I got around to listening to it only this month. Both Rufus Harrington and Judith Noble come from initiatory British Wiccan traditions. A psychotherapist by profession, he is also a trustee of the Doreen Valiente Foundation, which protects and preserves many of the original […]<\/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":[474,89,402,433,4,6],"class_list":["post-14159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-amsterdam","tag-esotericism","tag-hermeticism","tag-podcasts","tag-scholarship","tag-wicca"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-3Gn","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1199,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1199","url_meta":{"origin":14159,"position":0},"title":"Doreen Valiente remembered","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 2, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Hecate reminds us that ten years have passed since the Wiccan world lost Doreen Valiente, who still does not get enough credit for her part in creating the religion.I corresponded with her some in the 1980s, but, ironically, arrived in her home of Brighton just weeks after passing. Riding city\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"England\"","block_context":{"text":"England","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=england"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6449,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6449","url_meta":{"origin":14159,"position":1},"title":"Investigating a “Grandmother Story”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 12, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Robert Mathiesen and Theitic, The Rede of the Wiccae: Adriana Porter, Gwen Thompson and the Birth of a Tradition of Witchcraft (Providence, R.I.: Olympic Press, 2005), 167 pp., $17.95 (paper). \u2022 \u2022 \u2022 Gwen Thompson (Craft name of Phyllis Healy), 1928\u20131986, founded the New England Coven of Traditional Witches in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"Book cover of Rede of the Wiccae","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/redeofthewiccae-e1399928966661.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6142,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6142","url_meta":{"origin":14159,"position":2},"title":"1971: Witches in Bellbottoms, Talking Heads","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 4, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Here is a 1971 documentary from the BBC that is supposed to be about witches. But at the time it was made, no one was making much effort to sort out the new Pagan Witches, anthropological and folkloric witches, and Satanic witches of the Church of Satan variety. So what\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":[]},{"id":8173,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8173","url_meta":{"origin":14159,"position":3},"title":"New Pomegranate Issue Published","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 10, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"A new issue of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies has been published online and will be available in print before long. Links to all articles are available here. Book reviews are free downloads, but there is a charge for articles.((But talk to an interlibrary loan librarian.)) Articles\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"Pom header","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Pom-header-1024x123.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Pom-header-1024x123.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Pom-header-1024x123.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Pom-header-1024x123.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":5350,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5350","url_meta":{"origin":14159,"position":4},"title":"Around the Pagan Blogosphere","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 19, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"\u2022 At The Used Key Is Always Bright, a young boy's dream of \"small gods\" intriguingly includes \"the god of keys.\" \u2022 Ivo Dominguez deals with someone who thinks that His People own the idea of four directions, the elements, etc.\u00a0Via Miniver Cheevy, where there is a postscript. \u2022 Christopher\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"blogging\"","block_context":{"text":"blogging","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11816,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11816","url_meta":{"origin":14159,"position":5},"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":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14159","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=14159"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14164,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14159\/revisions\/14164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}