Earthly Bodies, Magical Selves: Contemporary Pagans and the Search for Community Review

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Earthly Bodies, Magical Selves: Contemporary Pagans and the Search for Community ReviewThis is a great book. Pike spent years attending pagan festivals around the country, and she brings to her analysis the skills of a compassionate and sympathetic ethnographer and a critical scholar of religion. Her descriptions of pagan festivals are detailed, vivid and compelling; she opens this world up to readers who may not be familiar with it--and I am certain that pagans will recognize their culture in her careful account. Pike takes readers deep into the heart of pagan festivals, showing how participants create and inhabit their religious world using varied imaginative idioms, rituals, body work, and so on. Pike is also sensitive to the historical roots of this religious world, and offers helpful discussions of the traditions of alternative religions in American religious history. This is an exciting and engaging book, recommended for scholars and general readers, for anyone who wants to learn something about this important religious culture in the US beyond the distortions and hysteria with which it is too often treated.Earthly Bodies, Magical Selves: Contemporary Pagans and the Search for Community OverviewRecent decades have seen a revival of paganism, and every summer people gather across the United States to celebrate this increasingly popular religion. Sarah Pike's engrossing ethnography is the outcome of five years attending neo-pagan festivals, interviewing participants, and sometimes taking part in their ceremonies. Earthly Bodies, Magical Selves incorporates her personal experience and insightful scholarly work concerning ritual, sacred space, self-identity, and narrative. The result is a compelling portrait of this frequently misunderstood religious movement. Neo-paganism began emerging as a new religious movement in the late 1960s. In addition to bringing together followers for self-exploration and participation in group rituals, festivals might offer workshops on subjects such as astrology, tarot, mythology, herbal lore, and African drumming. But while they provide a sense of community for followers, Neo-Pagan festivals often provoke criticism from a variety of sources--among them conservative Christians, Native Americans, New Age spokespersons, and media representatives covering stories of rumored "Satanism" or "witchcraft."Earthly Bodies, Magical Selves explores larger issues in the United States regarding the postmodern self, utopian communities, cultural improvisation, and contemporary spirituality. Pike's accessible writing style and her nonsensationalistic approach do much to demystify neo-paganism and its followers.

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