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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
The Practitioner, The Priest, And The Professor: Perspectives On Self-Initiation In The American Neopagan Community, Marty Laubach, Louis Martinie’, Roselinda Clemons
The Practitioner, The Priest, And The Professor: Perspectives On Self-Initiation In The American Neopagan Community, Marty Laubach, Louis Martinie’, Roselinda Clemons
Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Research
Initiation is a religious practice that is generally understood as involving socialization and acceptance into a religious community, but American Neopaganism, with its emphasis on individualism and autonomy, has evolved a meaning that challenges that simple understanding. American Neopagan communities are marketplaces of ideas that are comprised of groups and solo practitioners, all in interaction in which they might conduct main holidays together, but not necessarily work together in what they would consider more “serious” practices in which they receive the spirit communications with which they develop the ideas. Among groups, these practices include initiations through which candidates are trained …
The Epistemology Of Esoteric Culture: Spiritual Claim-Making Within The American Neopagan Community, Marty Laubach
The Epistemology Of Esoteric Culture: Spiritual Claim-Making Within The American Neopagan Community, Marty Laubach
Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Research
Non-institutionalised religious communities within western esotericism, such as New Age or Neopagan subcultures, are dynamic marketplaces for knowledge construction that may appear to be chaotic and governed only by the rule of caveat emptor. However, a close examination reveals authorization processes developing along similar lines as those followed by scientific empiricism during the seventeenth century. Claims of esoteric knowledge are developed from psychism experiences, and are authenticated by examining the claimant’s social standing, the narrative structure of the claim and the interests of the claimant and the judge. Such claims are authorized by incorporation into collective action, publications, workshops and …