Religious language and practices do not exist in a vacuum. When new religions arise they exist in linguistic and conceptual relationships of concert and conflict with existing hegemonic regimes of religion, language, and cognition. Presenters engage how the language of Protestantism affects Wiccan discourse, how esoteric practice and personal revelation transform norms of chaplaincy and how the language of secular aesthetics and cognition structures sequential meditative schema to produce (or conjure) perceptual interactions with ‘other-than-human’ actants. In turn, each of these decenters assumptions about where greater hermeneutic and interpretative authority lies in language, revelation and practice.
The goal of this paper is to explore the influence Christianity has on the American Wiccans understanding of their own spirituality. I will argue that the way Wiccans discuss their spirituality uses an emotional language that was inherited from a Christian understanding of what it means to be religious. I will then expand on this by showing the influence emotions have on cultivating religious experience using psychological research to support this argument.
This study investigates the impact of two key concepts, "open and closed practices" and "unverified personal gnosis" (UPG), on chaplaincy in contemporary Paganism. Drawing on qualitative data gathered through surveys and interviews with Pagan chaplains, practitioners, and scholars, this study explores how these ideas transform chaplaincy in Pagan communities.
This study highlights the ways in which the concepts of open and closed practices and UPG are transforming chaplaincy in contemporary Paganism. As Pagan communities continue to evolve and grow, the role of chaplains will remain an important and dynamic part of the spiritual landscape. This paper will explore the skills and knowledge chaplains may develop to navigate the complexities of these concepts to provide effective and supportive pastoral care to all members of their communities.
The influence of secularization in paganism and occult practice is generating cultures of magical practice with secular aesthetics. These secular aesthetics appeal to scientific reasoning when seeking sources from which to draw traditional authority. Tulpamancy is a magical practice that struggles with the term ‘magic,’ despite originating from traditions without this challenge. Instead, tulpamancy describes a collection of meditative and visualization techniques that create a particular experience while embodying a secular aesthetic. This embodiment makes tulpamancy particularly salient to the discourse on magic and science. Whereas other inquiries might reductively compartmentalize magical experience to engage it successfully with science or ethnographic theory, tulpamancy actively molds itself to that example. I suggest that this makes tulpamancy particularly salient to discourse on the relationship between emic experience and theory while providing valuable insight into non-sui generis models of practitioner experience and supernatural agent encounters.
| Giovanna Parmigiani | giovanna.parmigiani… | View |