{"id":6142,"date":"2013-12-04T14:27:26","date_gmt":"2013-12-04T21:27:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6142"},"modified":"2013-12-05T16:29:23","modified_gmt":"2013-12-05T23:29:23","slug":"1971-witches-in-bellbottoms-talking-heads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6142","title":{"rendered":"1971:  Witches in Bellbottoms, Talking Heads"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/wi9pZEhNQvQ\" height=\"315\" width=\"420\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>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 you get is all of them! Plus talking heads \u2014 academics, clergy, exorcists . . .<\/p>\n<p>Like so many of the paperback &#8220;I go among the witches&#8221; books of the time, the filmmakers interview a few of the most public Pagans, such as Doreen Valiente (who should get equal billing with Gerald Gardner in creating Wicca), Alex and Maxine Sanders, and others. But they quickly run out of interview subjects \u2014 there were not too many in Britain back then \u2014 so they start skipping around: a famous murder case with a possible (folk) witchcraft connection, desecration of graveyards, the evil grip of Satanism, and so forth, to fill up their 49 minutes.<\/p>\n<p>I write about this period in Chapter 4 of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.powells.com\/biblio\/61-9780759102026-1\"><em>Her Hidden Children<\/em><\/a>: &#8220;The Playboy and the Witch: Wicca and Popular Culture.&#8221; Looking at a number of paperback books on the American scene, I created a rough spreadsheet of places visited and people interviewed. It was interesting how much overlap there was. There seemed to be a &#8220;witchcraft trail&#8221; that the writers followed \u2014 you could imagine it starting at the Warlock Shop\/Magical Child store in New York City and ending at Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey&#8217;s house in San Francisco.<\/p>\n<p>What is missing at this moment from the outsiders&#8217; view is an overall sense of the new Paganism, at least until Hans Holzer&#8217;s 1972 book, <a href=\" http:\/\/www.abebooks.com\/servlet\/SearchResults?an=holzer&amp;sts=t&amp;tn=new+pagans\"><em>The New Pagans. <\/em><\/a>Even the participants themselves were just coming to the view that Wiccans, for instance, might share a Pagan outlook with Druids \u2014 the new Druids, that is. We often forget how deliberately isolated those covens were (&#8220;We can&#8217;t circle with Coven XYZ because it would mean sharing our secrets!&#8221; Really, I heard stuff like that in the 1970s.)<\/p>\n<p>Serious academic study of the new Paganism(s) would not really get rolling until the 1980s. For instance, during the 1970s Robert Ellwood, Jr. at the University of Southern California was writing <em>A<a href=\"https:\/\/www.powells.com\/biblio\/1-9780226206189-2\">lternative Altars: Unconventional and Eastern Spirituality in America<\/a><\/em> (1979), which would offer some theoretical models applicable to the new Paganism, but he did not incorporate it into his discussion in that book.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Welcome, visitors from<em> The Wild Hunt. <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\">Look around a bit.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<h5><strong><\/strong>(Thanks to Renna in Denver for the link.)<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 you get is all of [&hellip;]<\/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":[10,88,95,36,5,153,29],"class_list":["post-6142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-american-religion","tag-britain","tag-journalism","tag-movies","tag-paganism","tag-television","tag-witchcraft"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1B4","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":12603,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12603","url_meta":{"origin":6142,"position":0},"title":"Interview with Helen Berger, Leading Scholar of Paganism","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 19, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"At his blog, now called On New and Alternative Religions, Ethan Doyle While interviews Helen Berger, one of the leading American scholars of contemporary Paganism. Since completing her PhD research on the early modern witch trials in the 1980s, Berger has devoted her career to the sociological analysis of modern-day\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\/11\/helen-berger.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":13560,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13560","url_meta":{"origin":6142,"position":1},"title":"Helen Cornish on Witchcraft Drumming and Chanting","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 9, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"The article \"Musicking and Soundscapes amongst Magical-Religious Witches Community and Ritual Practices\" by Helen Cornish is available as a free download from Religions journal. Abstract Drumming and chanting are core practices in modern magical-religious Witchcraft in the absence of unifying texts or standardized rituals. Song and musicality contribute towards self-creation\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Britain\"","block_context":{"text":"Britain","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=britain"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10725,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10725","url_meta":{"origin":6142,"position":2},"title":"Caroline Tully on Pagan Art and Fashion","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 28, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"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\u2026","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":4639,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4639","url_meta":{"origin":6142,"position":3},"title":"Tempest in a Pointy Hat","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 5, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Organizers of this year's Pagan Pride Day in Denver, Colorado, want to set a Guinness World Record for the largest number of people dressed as pointy-hat witches.\u00a0 One of the organizers posted to a statewide mailing list, I think that we should let witches in non-black hats participate, too...I was\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1482,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1482","url_meta":{"origin":6142,"position":4},"title":"Ten Worst Movies about Witches and Pagans","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 3, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Blogger Gus diZerega polled his readers on \"The Ten Worst Movies Depicting Witches and Other Pagans.\" Readers differed on The Craft: \"As a movie, I don't think it was too bad. But their portrayal of witches as goth teenage girls with (somewhat severe) psychological problems just rubs me the wrong\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"movies\"","block_context":{"text":"movies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=movies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8868,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8868","url_meta":{"origin":6142,"position":5},"title":"They Were Not Witches \u2014\u00a0They Are Our Martyrs","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 18, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"This is the memorial created in 1992 for the victims of the Salem trials in Salem, Mass. Each \"bench\" contains the name of an accused person: \"Margaret Scott. Hanged. September 22, 1692.\" Walk there, and you know that it has become a shrine. Then you realize that you are walking\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/red-coat-3.jpeg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/red-coat-3.jpeg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/red-coat-3.jpeg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6142","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=6142"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6157,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6142\/revisions\/6157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}