Short description
Ronald Hutton offers a microhistory of attitudes to paganism, witchcraft, and magic in Britain since 1800. Its pages reveal village cunning folk, Victorian ritual magicians, classicists and archaeologists, leaders of woodcraft and scouting movements, Freemasons, and members of secret societies.
Long description
A first full-scale scholarly study of the only religion England has ever given the world; that of modern pagan witchcraft, which has now spread from English shores across four continents. Hutton examines the nature of that religion and its development, and offers a microhistory of attitudes to paganism, witchcraft, and magic in British society since 1800. Its pages reveal village cunning folk, Victorian ritual magicians, classicists and archaeologists, leaders of woodcraft and scouting movements, Freemasons, and members of rural secret societies. We also find some of the leading of figures of English literature, from the Romantic poets to W.B. Yeats, D.H. Lawrence, and Robert Graves, as well as the main personalities who have represented pagan witchcraft to the world since 1950.
Review
An excellent reference edition....I highly recommend it. --Weekly Alibi
Hutton uses his historical skills to tease apart some of the themes in this popular rural romanticism, and to locate their purely modern origin. --Times Literary Supplement, UK
Hutton's book is excellent... --Times Literary Supplement
Hutton has synthesized a huge body of sources, and woven together a fascinating narrative with supreme skill. The reader is sure to be gripped by the wonderful cast of characters that he assembles...Hutton shows us that paganism is a matter of interest not only for the classicist and archeologist, but for the modern historian as well. In doing so his Triumph of the Moon proves to be a triumph of cultural history. --Owen Davies, History Today (UK, Vol. 50 No. 3
Table of contents
- Macrocosm
- Finding a Language
- Finding a Goddess
- Finding a God
- Finding a Structure
- Finding a High Magic
- Finding a Low Magic
- Finding a Folklore
- Finding a Witchcraft
- Matrix
- God (and Goddess) Parents
- Microcosm
- Gerald Gardner
- Gerald's People
- The Wider Context
- Hostility
- The Wider Context
- Reinforcement
- Old Craft, New Craft
- The Man in Black
- Royalty from the North
- Uncle Sam and the Goddess
- Coming of Age
- Grandchildren of the Shadows