Within the context of the nexus of the fantastic and popular culture one of the more interesting expressions of this is the Otherkin. Danielle Kirby has written on this fascinating community in Frances Di Lauro, ed., Through a glass darkly: reflections on the sacred (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 2006). She also presented a paper on this topic at a conference titled Exploring the Religion and the Sacred in a Media Age in the U.K. in 2007. The paper was titled “Pulp fiction and the revealed text: an inquiry into the treatment of fantasy and science fiction narratives within the Otherkin community.” This paper was revised to become a chapter contribution as part of a forthcoming book to be published by Ashgate.

Kirby describes the Otherkin as “a loosely affiliated virtual community with an alternative metaphysical foundation” which can be found at websites such as www.otherkin.net. In her discussion of this community she notes that “The unifying feature of the Otherkin community is a shared belief in non-human, often fantastic or mythological, souls and selves.” As noted above, this understanding of self-identity is forged through the “conscious integration of explicitly fictional narrative into a sacred or spiritual context.” Here the fictional texts of the films of Star Wars informs Jediism, H.P. Lovecraft’s writings inform the Church of All Worlds, and the corpus of vampire mythology in literature and film informs vampires within the Otherkin.

One of the striking features of the Otherkin community is how their interaction with narrative fiction informs a sense of self-identity that goes much further than those involved with Jediism or various aspects of Neo-Paganism. Kirby says that the Otherkin “believe, primarily, that they are in some way other than human. The non-human aspects appear to have been largely drawn from mythology and fantasy literature,” and “[t]his relationship to the fantastic takes a variety of forms and can mean a non-human soul in a human body, multiple souls residing within the same person or inter-species reincarnation.”

In my exploration of the fantastic in popular culture as an academic, the existence of subcultures like the Otherkin with their neo-religiosity represent a fascinating path for research and understanding.

TheoFantastique: Peg, it’s a pleasure to talk with you. Thanks for making the time, and for your recent help with my research project into cinematic treatments of the Witch. Let’s begin with a little of your background. How did you come to embrace the Pagan pathway, and why did this also become an area of academic specialty?

Peg Aloi: It’s a pleasure to do this interview, and it’s gratifying to see so much interest in Paganism and academia on the web these days. I also have to thank you for finally nudging me to finish Chris Partridge’s book [on the re-enchantment of the West] which is wonderful.

It is always interesting to me to hear how people first “found” Paganism or Witchcraft or Wicca, because even as there are any similarities that modern Pagans have in common when it comes to the roots of their backgrounds, there are just as many unique differences. For me, I was raised in what I’d call a somewhat lapsed Catholic household. My father wanted us to be good church-going Catholics but my Mom rejected the church based on, well, let’s say the local parish priest did not approve of decisions she made based on her doctor’s advice, and that was that. I did not know the reasons at the time, but I did know my mom did not have much use for the church. I just always found the experience of church to be both wildly exciting (the robes and songs and beautiful stained glass and shiny things) and incredibly boring (the liturgy and rote recitations) at the same time. Shortly after being confirmed I decided it was not for me at all, but I still had to go to church occasionally.

I was also required to attend religious instruction classes once a week; we called it “relidge.” It got interesting briefly when I had this teacher who told us juicy stories about teenage girls using Ouija Boards and doing séances at slumber parties who got into all sorts of trouble. It was real satanic panic kind of stuff, which was pretty ubiquitous in the 1970s when I stop to think back on it. The people who ran the classes, who were basically all volunteers from the parish, decided the students should all bring their Ouija Boards one night and we’d burn them in a big bonfire. I really wanted to go and see this spectacle, but I definitely did not want to burn my Ouija Board, so I faked illness that day. I guess I have a kind of perverse relationship to my Catholic upbringing!

More significantly, I was raised in a family that really valued the beauty and utility of the natural world. My dad was a hunter, fisherman and avid gardener, and my mom’s ancestors all had farms, so as far back as I can remember we were either growing or catching our own food, or going into the country to pick fruit or gather nuts. We’d spend summer days fishing or wandering around in the woods at my uncle’s place in Pennsylvania, or picking blueberries in the woods in New York. In winter we’d chop firewood and cut down our own Christmas tree and smoke a goose my dad had killed for dinner. At the time, this sort of thing was not considered unusual but it’s really a dying way of life in this country now…I mean, many families do not even cook dinner or eat together. If I were a sociologist, I’d love to research the connection of these sorts of foodways that are going out of fashion and chart their decline against the proliferation of Paganism and other nature-based spiritualities. I am completely convinced that my affinity and appreciation for nature and love of the natural world are a direct result of my childhood experiences.

As a child, I was always interested in the occult and Witchcraft. I remember seeing the movie Crowhaven Farm on TV when I was little and somehow identifying with the idea of someone being reincarnated as one of the Salem witches. My aunt and uncle let me watch The Exorcist on HBO with them, but made me cover my eyes during certain parts. I think I never actually saw the film in its entirety until the director’s cut came out a few years ago. I loved the images of Witches or other magical beings I saw on TV, I Dream of Jeannie was a favorite show of mine, and I loved The Twilight Zone. I vaguely assumed there must be modern witches somewhere in the world because the occult revival and the hippie movement were happening but had no idea there was any sort of living tradition in the United States, so I just devoured books on the history of the occult and folklore and the Salem witch trials and vampires and whatever.

I first found my way into the actual Pagan community when I was working one summer for Greenpeace in Amherst, Massachusetts. One night we were sitting around a fire after a day of canvassing, drinking beer and whatnot, and someone started doing some Pagan chants, you know, what we now call “Pagan Top 40″ stuff like “The Earth is our mother” and that kind of thing. I was fascinated, here were these environmental hippie types, singing this Native-American-infused melody, it was the 1980s and the New Age was everywhere and I had only started to become aware that there was a Pagan community out there. Someone looked at me and said “Come on, Peg, you know the words!” I didn’t. But they were easy enough to pick up. We had some great times that summer, usually looking for secluded wooded areas to hang out in after work at night, sometimes swimming in forbidden places or sneaking onto private beaches on the Cape to sleep near the ocean.

Not long after this, I started to discover a Pagan community that was less connected to environmental or neo-hippie groups and more about Witchcraft and magic. I was attending the University of Massachusetts for graduate school, and one day I saw a flyer advertising the UMASS Pagan Student Organization. I think it was the first campus Pagan group in the US. I went to a meeting and, again, had this odd experience, just as with the Greenpeace group, of people expecting I knew more than I actually did. I had never attended a Pagan ritual before but at that first meeting when they were planning a Beltane ritual they asked me to be the high priestess. Who knows why? But I thought it was interesting that these strangers were assuming I was experienced in something I knew very little about, and I had not said or done anything to mislead them on this. Anyway, I hung out with these folks a while and they were not quite the kind of group I was looking for (they were a bit socially-awkward and not terribly interested in nature), but eventually I met some other people and attended all kinds of public and private events and I was off and running! I later moved to Boston which is a real vortext of Pagan community, so there was a lot going on, and eventually met people from the coven I later joined and still belong to. But now that I live in Albany, I do not attend rites as often and have become more of a solitary practitioner, which is what many people who belong to groups for a long time eventually become.

As for Paganism being an academic specialty of mine, well…I have an MFA in English. This is a terminal degree with a focus on creative writing. That and a couple bucks might get you a latte at Starbucks. I mean, it used to be a good degree but there are no jobs now, even PhDs are finding it hard. Fortunately, I did a minor in film when I was at UMASS. I also did an independent study course on Witchcraft in contemporary fiction, with a professor who specialized in myth and fantasy literature. After moving to Boston I was writing for an erotica magazine and a local arts weekly wanted to interview the women behind the magazine. This writer happened to be a film columnist and when he learned of my interest in film and my background he said he’d like to hire me to do short reviews for the paper. I had also taught a couple sections of Film and Literature in grad school. I did little bit of adjunct teaching here and there, including a course on Witchcraft in Film and Fiction. And eventually a friend I’d met through a film festival he was organizing hired me to teach at Emerson, where I have had freedom to develop a lot of unique courses. But I am still not really a bona fide film scholar or even a traditional scholar of any one subject. I have presented papers and published scholarly articles on everything from Celtic studies to travel writing to poetry, and of course film and media. The first time I presented a paper at a conference, the topic had a Pagan focus (it was on the unintentional destruction of sacred sites by Pagan tourists in the UK). Then the second paper I gave, I think it was on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, also had a Pagan focus. So I decided that every time I did any sort of academic presentation or research or published writing, it would have a pagan theme or focus. And that has held true for the last few years. It’s not like some sort of spiritual pact with the gods of livelihood, (here’s where I’d be laughing if we were doing this interview “live”), it’s just a quirky personal challenge that happens to fit well with my eclectic academic path. My spiritual path and my academic one have been similar in that they’ve both been rather untraditional, I guess.

TheoFantastique: How did you come to study film and its expression of the esoteric?

Peg Aloi: Like I said, I more or less fell into it. When I finally got a chance to teach something besides composition as a graduate teaching assistant, I had the choice of teaching Creative Writing or Film and Literature. Tough choice but I am glad I picked the film track as it has led to more teaching opportunities, and getting the job as a freelance film critic as helped, too. Anyway, one of the film classes I taught at UMASS was “Terror vs. Horror: The Psychological and Visceral Sources of Fear.” So of course I was exploring the difference between two models of horror cinema, the one a gory, shocking approach (such as one sees in slasher films, etc.) and the other a more subtle (but perhaps ultimately more unnerving) approach, the less-is-more approach. I wanted to try and expose students to things they might not normally think of as horror, like the Australian film Picnic at Hanging Rock, one of my favorites. At first glance, it looks like a costume drama but it has the qualities of mystery, horror and the paranormal as well. I am very intrigued by films that can’t be easily categorized, and television shows that meld different genres together, like Buffy or Twin Peaks.

My interest in the occult and in horror films has led me to design courses, on cinema and the occult, supernatural television, and Witchcraft and Paganism in contemporary media, and that’s all been really interesting, and the classes have been popular with students. Also, this is a very fertile field in academia now, especially since there is now a whole new branch of study known as “popular culture” which can be approached from within a variety of contexts. I have noticed for some time now that what we are currently calling “Paganism Studies” is still not a separate discipline unto itself, but is comprised of scholars whose specialties are very diverse: history, sociology, film and media, cultural studies, folklore, gender studies, you name it. And even if some scholars who want to be specialists in Paganism might find this frustrating, I think it works very well, in that it shows how this spiritual movement and its attendant imagery and texts and social implications have really permeated the culture in a very comprehensive and diverse way.

TheoFantastique: In a previous blog post I commend on Robert Ellwood’s observations of the influence of the “occult revival” of the 1960s counterculture on various aspects of popular culture such as television programming. You will touch on this in your forthcoming book. Can you summarize some of this revival for us, why it might have come about, and give us some examples of how it surfaced and continues to be worked out in television and film?

Peg Aloi: I think when one talks of an “occult revival” it is important to distinguish among the different occult revivals. There was an occult revival in England at the turn of the 20th century, one in the United States shortly thereafter, and one in the U.K. in the 1960s, concomitant with a revival in the U.S. The one we are most concerned with for our book is the most recent one, and in particular we wish to chronicle the ways in which film influenced it, and was influenced by it, both in the U.K. and the U.S. There are many factors which led to this revival, and interestingly these factors were quite different in these respective countries. For example, the rise of the American counterculture in the 1960s was a conflation of many societal tensions, including women’s liberation and the sexual revolution, civil rights, the Vietnam war protest movement, the environmental and back-to-the-earth movements, and of course drug use and, overlaying it all, the increasing social influence of popular music. As well, various works of literature were influential, both older classics and newer works. All of this had an impact upon increasing interest in the occult and the spread of Neo-Paganism. (Of course, the occult and Paganism are not the same thing, but there was and is enough overlap of these communities that they are generally seen as being interchangeable, at least to the mainstream observer). The U.K. did not have the same stake in the Vietnam situation, but the runaway popularity of the Beatles and their ability to directly influence the youth culture through their own spiritual exploration (after 1966 the Beatles were pretty much done with pop love songs) generated a similar sense of unrest among working class youth, and just as the British Wave of music had dramatic impact on the U.S., the energy of the American counterculture infused this unrest in the U.K.

As everyone knows, the behavior of many young people during this period of social unrest was seen as a very negative and corrupt trend in the culture, not to mention the widespread political shift. Once people started to really understand the atrocities and the rather hopeless situation in Vietnam, the general population followed the lead of the young in denouncing the American government’s actions; but at the same time, there were so many other aspects of youth culture that were widely disapproved of, and the occult was part of that. Sex, drugs, rock and roll: this phrase had both very negative or very positive connotations depending which side of the fence you were on. I think this was a source of great ideological conflict for many people and I picked up on it as a kid (I was born in 1963). I mean, on the one hand, everyone thought that the wholesale slaughter of young men was a problem; but some people were still caught up in the 1950s and early 1960s- era fear of Communism and the Cold War and were very protective of their burgeoning American dreams. Obviously, change was in the air, and the religious underpinnings of American culture were becoming unmoored by the large questions of morality that were blazing on American TV screens and newspapers. The coverage of the war was something no one could argue with: in those days, journalism was still a very straightforward and objective discipline. The images of Vietnam spoke for themselves. This really primed the canvas for the media to have a huge influence on the culture.

Those areas of social tension I mentioned earlier were and in many ways still are seen as “liberal” causes and interests. Which made the adoption of Pagan mindsets, such as earth-based spirituality and nature worship which are part of modern Wicca and other paths, seem like a natural outgrowth of the social zeitgeist. But interestingly, in the U.K., the factors which led to a Pagan revival were seen as “conservative” or right-wing sorts of issues. Ronald Hutton discusses this far more eloquently than I am doing in Triumph of the Moon. So not only were the roots of the revivals different, the types of people interested in them may well be very different. On a personal note, I have noted an interesting difference between American and British Pagans during my travels in the 1990s, that, in general, manifested in a much more male-dominated and dogmatic way of doing things than once sees in the more goddess-centered, eclectic paths in the U.S. The reason I mention all this is that I think we will find in our research that the popularity of certain occult film texts in both these nations will be to some extent a reflection of the occult communities.

But to offer a summary of the occult revival in film, for the purposes of our book we will probably try to determine a singular moment when it all began. Since we are mainly interested in popular culture, we will consider the influence of the works of experimental filmmaker Kenneth Anger in the 1950s. But the first example of occult cinema that had widespread and culture-changing impact was Roman Polanski’s 1968 film Rosemary’s Baby. In addition to its being a very artful and entertaining film, based on an equally artful novel by Ira Levin, there were some real-life occurrences that added to its aura of evil, and fuelled a widespread spirit of protest against all things occult, even as the film ushered in a palpable fascination with the occult. Namely, the murder of Polanski’s pregnant wife, actress Sharon Tate, by the members of the Manson family. Not long after, Polanski was accused of raping a 13-year old girl, and has lived abroad ever since because if he ever enters the U.S. again he will be indicted on that crime. Because the news media today is so obsessed with crime and scandal, we might think such a story is all in a day’s news. But at the time, the Manson family’s killing spree was a horrific, almost surreal narrative that engendered fear of “murdering cults.” Their association with the lyrics of various Beatles songs (scrawled on walls at crime scenes) helped convince the public that their aberrant behavior was somehow the result of the cultural climate.

I think also this is where the word “occult” became imbued with such negativity, because of course Manson’s clan were referred to as a “cult” under the influence of this crazy, charismatic guy. I hate to suggest the American public is incapable of making the distinction between these two very different words, but I recall the word “cult” became a buzzword associated with anything “occult.” What we now call “satanic panic” has its roots in the fear of the public that any sort of interest in the occult (evidenced by the Beatles lyrics that reflected their interest in Eastern spirituality and social protest) could potentially lead to involvement with murdering cults. A ridiculous leap in logic, perhaps. Anton LaVey founded the Church of Satan in 1966, and his spurious claim that he portrayed the demon who impregnated Rosemary in Polanski’s film further reinforced the idea that fiction and real life were frighteningly linked. And the portrayal of the “old folks next door” as a coven of murdering witches was somehow both campy and horrifying. Suddenly your neighbors were capable of anything. By the time The Exorcist came out in 1973, portraying incidents of Black Mass desecrations and the demonic possession of a pre-pubescent girl, the American public was completely convinced that Satanism, Witchcraft and the occult were a dangerous trend stealing away the souls of our young people. I mean, little Regan had a Ouija Board! I am sure that was the reason for why I was encouraged to burn mine. Then Linda Blair went on to star in all these rather shocking made-for-TV films, which were great, but underscored again that this actress played nothing but troubled or evil characters.

It’s also true that we saw a real dearth of occult film and TV in the 1980s, and I think that is directly due to the rise of the Moral Majority under Reagan. It was not until the early 1990s, when we saw the rise of the New Age and Neo-Paganism and Wicca, that we see a return to television of occult, Pagan and paranormal shows, like The X-Files or Xena, Warrior Princess. Let’s face it, Buffy could not have existed without Xena.

TheoFantastique: Scholars like Christopher Partridge in the U.K. have commented on this and referred to it as a process of re-enchantment in the Western world. He says this has given rise to a “popular occulture” that surfaces not only in film and television, but also video games and music. Would you agree with this sentiment? And if so, how would we differentiate between esoterically-influenced forms of pop culture and a simple increased interest in general fantasy, myth, and fairytales?

Peg Aloi: I think Partridge was right to try and explore the shift in those terms. I also appreciate his use of the term “neo-Romanticism” over other descriptive terms because if you really look at it, the Romantics were so very instrumental in both periods of occult revival. Without the poetry and perhaps more importantly, the ideology of the Romantics, which of course was rooted in a desire to revive the imagery of classical mythology and the dream of the pastoral life, Neo-Paganism would never have happened. Some theorists also credit the Romantics with influencing not only the occult revival but the entire 1960s cultural shift. Camille Paglia wrote an essay exploring various aspects of this, including the idea of rock music and the live concert experience as an expression of Dionysian impulses. We had a movement in the 1980s called “New Romanticism” which was mainly about music and fashion…and to some extent a renewal of interest in Romantic poetry and the paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites, for example. Partridge acknowledges the influence of various works of fiction on renewed interest in fantasy and fairy takes but also in Pagan worldviews and alternatives to mainstream spirituality, in particular Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy and, more recently, Terry Pratchettt’s Discworld series. Then there was the very popular artwork throughout the late ’70s and ’80s of Brian Froud, Boris Vallejo, Sulamith Wulfing, Susan Seddon-Boulet and others. That kind of art is still very popular with lots of new artists joining the ranks, although it seems to me it is getting more and more twee, maybe because it’s all aimed at little girls now. I don’t think there necessarily was or is a general increased interest in fairy tales that has fed the trend in literature and art; I think a few writers and artists whose personal visions have led them to produce work concerned with these worlds is what has fuelled that revival of interest. And I think perhaps their interests are more likely to have originated in esoteric interests, at least Pratchett’s. But there have been non-fiction works that no doubt influenced this as well, such as the work of Joseph Campbell, which started to be popularized in the 1980s thanks to Bill Moyer’s televised interviews. Or the documentary film version of The Ascent of Man.

I think it’s very complex and difficult to trace what influenced what, because clearly there is a lot of overlap. I mean, I personally think video games that are very fantasy-oriented these days have their basis in role-playing games which started in the late 1970s with Dungeons and Dragons, which of course was directly influenced by Tolkien’s worlds and lexicon. To be honest, I think that the reach of popular culture has become so pervasive and in a way insidious, in that many of us may have no idea where an idea or image or cultural trend of phrase first emerged. This makes it hard on artists because often their ideas or work is imitated and then it is the imitation that gets noticed more widely than the original. This has certainly been true in terms of Pagan literature and art. For years now I have abhorred the trend in the Pagan community to value mediocrity, to choose the cheap imitation over the original. Maybe we have the mainstreaming of Paganism to thank for this. And people also choose the simple over the complex, the quick fix over the thoughtful solution. Someone can become a Witch overnight, no need to engage in training or study, We certainly have Llewellyn Publishing to thank, or blame, for this. That’s not to say all their books are bad, or their practices are questionable, they simply gave the public what it wanted.

Something else that intrigues me about the idea of “occulture” is the way in which some entities have co-opted the imagery or message of the occult or Paganism in order to subvert its actual ideology. I have noticed a really disturbing trend in late night television commercials for the army, though: they have these really well-produced, special-effects laden ads that make military maneuvers look exactly like role-playing games, and seem to be suggesting that, if you are good at video games, you’d be good at using this equipment. But it seems really odd to me to suggest that the sort of teenager who would be interested in fantasy video games (and who this sort of ad is clearly aimed at) would be someone inclined to join the army. Now with all the young men and women at risk in the Iraq war, I wonder if this sort of advertising campaign has been successful in reaching disaffected young people. The majority of soldiers killed have been very young and from very small towns. Okay, I am starting to think I don’t want to take this too much further but readers can draw their own conclusions.

TheoFantastique: There has been a close connection between speculative fiction and Paganism for some time, from interest in the writings of H. P. Lovecraft to Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange World informing the mythos of the Church of All Worlds. Why do you think there is such a strong connection between Paganism and speculative fiction in its various forms?

Peg Aloi: As I understand it, speculative fiction, is different from science fiction in that it posits a possible and plausible future based on the way things are now and the way things seem to be going. So in science fiction, it’s all about space travel or technology, but in speculative fiction you see a lot of interesting ideas having to do with things like ecology, biology, evolution, politics, gender and sexuality, societal structure, drugs, etc. Sometimes this kind of fiction posits a very positive vision, as with the Heinlein book, and sometimes a negative one (like Ursula LeGuin’s The Word for World is Forest). Speculative fiction often functions as a cautionary tale, and usually offers a hopeful vision, because it can point out the mistakes made along the way and perhaps inspire ways to avoid an undesirable future. At its heart, the Pagan revival is a form of speculative fiction. Modern Pagans look at the world as it is and want to change it. They (we) see a lack of connection to nature, resulting in a range of problems from pollution to obesity. We see a dearth of compassion, leading to a loss of civility and cultural awareness. We see the absence of the childlike sense of wonder all humans need to access from time to time, which is making us all cynical and depressed. We see a failure to challenge and engage our children in traditional ways, which is making our children into spoiled, underachieving, entitled little zombies. We see an obsession with technology that is making us lose touch with what it means to be human.

Paganism means rejecting the world as it is, and sometimes you find Pagans who try their best to live in a sort of fantasy world. They might spend too much time involved with sub-cultural communities or role-playing games or escape into literature or the Internet. To some extent this kind of activity can help perpetuate the popular stereotype that Pagans are anti-social or geeky or whatever. But most Pagans want to effect change in ways that will effectively allow them to exist in the world as it is, but to improve the quality of life and in some cases, effect change in the culture. To do this they look to “the old ways” and to ideas, images, stories and myths of the past, and integrate this into contemporary living, using whatever technology and products are available. And now you see a real integration of different kinds of subcultures that are engaging with Paganism. It is impossible to gauge the importance or the Internet in spreading awareness and information, but of course it also levels the playing field and perhaps makes Paganism less unique or special. And of course some “old school” Pagans would rather have the community remain insular and underground, but there is no turning back now. I do think modern Pagans should give some thought to how such changes are affecting our spirituality and social interaction. The only way to get any perspective on this kind of thing is to remove yourself from it for a while. Which is why I like to attend Pagan gatherings outdoors where you can remove yourself from the online milieu and see how this movement really is a living one.

TheoFantastique: What do you think the future of our media culture holds for the continued expression of esotericism in cinema?

Peg Aloi: It’s been interesting to see the response to esoteric texts aimed at children. The Harry Potter franchise has been hugely popular and also has generated a lot of rage. People ban the books and burn them and actually think that the whole Hogwarts model is endangering our children by introducing them to Witchcraft. Some protest literature even tries (ineffectually, in my opinion) to compare the Hogwarts style of magic to Wicca, which it has nothing to do with, of course, but the kind of people who want to ban a series of books that actually get kids reading again are the kind of people who want as accessible a target as possible, and Wiccans are the new Satanists, really, aren’t they? There is a growing atmosphere of protest aimed at the new film The Golden Compass (based on the first book in Philip Pullman’s trilogy His Dark Materials) have garnered accusations of promoting atheism and being anti-Catholic. I did not read the books but having seen the movie I can’t understand where these accusations come from at all!

I have also heard that the studio funding for the sequel to The Wicker Man being filmed by Robin Hardy, Cowboys for Christ, is being held up because some of the financial backers are fundamentalist Christians offended by the title. It seems unlikely there will a change anytime soon in this kind of public scrutiny. I won’t get into the whole political situation we’re in now and how there is really a problem with people recognizing the appropriate separation of church and state. But clearly the climate of indignation and panic-mongering about the future of our children goes hand-in-hand with the very pervasive effort to turn this into a Christian, right-wing nation. It’s really feeling like the 1980s all over again, where the public outcry against the occult really did lead to an avoidance of occult topics in popular media. The only difference between how things are now and the more visible kinds of protest one saw during the era of satanic panic in the 1980s, is that the protest is now taking place among well-organized groups on the Internet, which is of course where many people believe all the most significant cultural discourse is taking place (she said/typed, in the interview which will appear on a popular esoteric blog).

TheoFantastique: You’ve already alluded to this, but does Paganism and esotericism in pop culture represent a continuing area of promising possibilities for researchers from a variety of disciplines?

Peg Aloi: Oh, absolutely. We’ve been seeing a surge in this for some time now. Perhaps the one place this really caught fire was within Buffy studies. The first international Buffy conference in England represented an astonishing array of disciplines. That was where I met Hannah. There were talks on Buffy that explored this TV show from very diverse contexts, including history, media, literature, psychology, ethnomusicology, queer studies, anthropology, etc. It was amazing. I think that has really helped set the tone for academic conferences that deal with Pagan-oriented topics as well, and in fact a lot of the same scholars who are into Buffy are also involved in Paganism studies. Hannah and I have co-organized two conferences with the Department of Folklore and Mythology at Harvard, the first one on Witchcraft and Paganism in Contemporary Media, and the second on Paganism, Folklore and Popular Culture. These were both very successful and dynamic, and the most exciting part was the wide variety of disciplines represented, even for the media conference.

One thing that has changed a lot since the 1980s is that now it is permissible to approach topics in Paganism and the occult as someone who is both a scholar and a practitioner. It used to be sort of controversial to be “out” as a Pagan if you were studying Paganism; partly because being an ethnographer usually connotes the image of an outsider. When Tanya Luhrman’s book came out (Persuasions of the Witch’s Craft) people were conflicted; it was a great book, very sensitive and thorough and insightful, but she posed an interested seeker to gain access to rituals and private Pagan events. I think that made some Pagan scholars uncomfortable and in some cases stymied their efforts to do research within the Pagan community. I also think that academics in the 1980s risked being seen as “weirdos” or being targeted with discrimination in the workplace if they came out as Pagan, but there is so much more awareness now of what contemporary Paganism is, it is less of a problem. This new trend of research being conducted by believers and practitioners is definitely an exciting trend, but a problematic one, too. Just as you find non-academic Pagans who are very dogmatic or inflexible in their beliefs, some academics are the same way, and in some cases may unwittingly or even intentionally imbue their work with aspects of their own beliefs or traditions. It is obviously crucial to remain as objective as one can if one is to maintain an academic perspective. This is the new challenge for Pagan and occult academics: objectivity fuelled by study of the many diverse traditions and expressions of esoteric beliefs and culture.

TheoFantastique: Peg, thanks again for sharing with us. I look forward to hearing more about your book as it nears completion. Please keep in touch so that we can promote the book when it becomes available.

Peg Aloi: It has been my pleasure! Thanks again for your interest and support.

TheoFantastique: Jason, thanks for making some time to answer a few questions. I am engaged in an ongoing research project that looks at the many facets behind the ongoing controversy over the Harry Potter books and how some are alarmed at what they perceive as “real witchcraft” in the stories. This is related to a broader set of questions concerning how not only Wicca, but also “the occult” or Western esotericism is portrayed in film and television, or at least how stereotypical expressions of them are portrayed for a popular audience. Can you comment on comment on some of the various portrayals of occultism and Wicca on television and how you have interacted with this as a scholar?

Jason Winslade: Let me first say that I have a hard time coming up with any examples of “real witchcraft” or “real magic” in television or films. As you rightly state in your blog, any portrayals of these phenomena are inevitably fantasy with fancy special effects and things flying around. Any practitioner will tell you that this does not happen. At least they do not in the waking world. (Of course, this begs the question what “real magic” actually is – ask 3 practitioners and you’ll get 5 answers. Certainly “real” magic, with the exception of ritual, is much more of an internal process, and thus doesn’t lend itself to special effects extravaganzas). Some programs may incorporate sound magickal philosophy and metaphysics but their application is ultimately fantastical. The recent SciFi Channel show about a Chicago wizard, The Dresden Files, is a good example of this. The writers had obviously done their research in terms of what practitioners have thought of as magical “law” since medieval times – in other words, every idea made sense in terms of theory and historical context – but the application of magical theory on the show had very little to do with actual practice. [Of course, the classic Hollywood example of this, one that I use in my classes, is the voodoo doll. I use this construct as a way to explain Frazer’s laws of homeopathy and contagion (like attracts like, contact creates power)]. Or a program may engage the trappings of various “real” practices, but incorporate them into a fantastical setting. For instance, the movie that reignited the teen witch trend in the 90s, The Craft, had a scene that included the exact liturgy of the first degree Wiccan initiation, which itself was adapted from Freemasonry, but the witches, of course, had Hollywood special effects powers, and their practice had nothing to do with the actual Wiccan religion. I believe some filmmakers and authors do tend to use these elements irresponsibly, thus creating an unnecessary connection between their fictional fantasy and “real” magic, which causes so much controversy and confusion in people who draw assumptions from these shows and films (here, I think of Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows, which obviously capitalized on Wiccan culture with its title and a Wiccan character, but ultimately, the director Joe Berlinger, who should have known better because of his West Memphis 3 documentaries, took information from a Pagan consultant about a grounding chant and used it in a horror scene, and made unfortunate associations, like the use of Germanic runes, the kind available for divination at any metaphysical bookstore, as evil symbols).

Every now and then, you have a show like The X-Files, which redefine the genre. The idea of occult investigators is not exactly new (ask Carl Kolchak), but The X-Files very cleverly (at least for the first 5 seasons or so) used occult content to address issues in culture and politics, even employing a specifically postmodern take on truth claims. As far as I can remember, that program was the first to address Wicca as if it was a real thing – in the episode “Sanguinarium” for instance, the characters actually pointed out that the pentagram was a symbol of protection rather than something Satanic and that Wiccans were actually legitimate – even though these “real” elements still operated in a fantasy context where Satanic creatures did exist and operate. Then you had shows in the late 90s, like Picket Fences, Judging Amy, or JAG, where the main characters interacted with guest stars who were Wiccan. Often these shows would bring up engaging social issues about the politics of difference. Even last season on ER, we saw a Wiccan couple in cultish white robes who had been “handfasted” too tightly in a brief scene meant to introduce a contrast to the main characters’ wedding plans.

In my classes and workshops, whether I’m dealing with students or practitioners, I often have to downplay the debate about whether shows are “accurate” in portraying magickal practice. I’m convinced that we’ll never see that kind of portrayal on the screen. It doesn’t sell. Some colleagues like myself who are practitioners and academics have joked about doing an HBO-type show about real practitioners and it would be much more like a soap opera than anything else. It would be great to see a non-fantasy show where several characters are Pagan, for instance, and that’s part of their identity, but they’re not set up on the show as “outcasts” or “special” with magical powers – but rather people just trying to make their way through life with an ostensibly different belief system than the mainstream world. It would be kind of like our version of the “L” Word – maybe the “W” Word or the “P” Word. So instead of focusing on accurate portrayals, I ask students to look at how the authors or filmmakers are actually deploying magic as a concept. Philosophically, since the Enlightenment, magic has been used as a metaphor for action, often action with hidden motives or hidden mechanics, so I try to discuss how magic works as part of politics, activism, ethical action, etc.

TF: In a previous blog post I drew attention to an article online that deal with the increase of so-called “occult-tinged” fiction on television. One of my readers felt that a distinction and qualification needs to be made when considering such things. Various forms of speculative fiction have long drawn upon the magical and fantastical in telling stories. This has been expressed in the use of magic and spell-casting to the inclusion of Witches and sorcerers as characters. It would seem that a proper hermeneutic of fiction would require that we distinguish between “fairytale” expressions of the magical from that found in the growing interest in Western esotericism. How would you distinguish between these two as they are expressed in popular culture?

Jason Winslade: I always tend to question when some entertainment writer makes statements about the “increase” of anything in the media. More often than not these statements are on the whole inaccurate. It’s like they focus on a recent trend (like Heroes) and then approach it with no sense of cultural history. I seem to remember critics saying the same thing when Lost became a hit only a couple of years ago. I haven’t counted (though I do watch way too much TV), but I tend to doubt that there are more fantasy programs coming up the pike than in the last few years. In fact, I’d guess that there were less (I do know that in the last few years several “occult” pilots specifically involving Witches, including an adaptation of the film Practical Magic, have not made it to air.) There has always been occult programming – I grew up with syndication of Dark Shadows and Twilight Zone, even Bewitched (definitely more fantasy than “occult,” I’d say), not to mention all the shows and cartoons with magic and super powers in the 80s. Rather than say that there is more “occult-tinged” programming, I’d say there’s simply more television, with so many new channels doing original programming. Thus you have a channel like Lifetime doing an occult detective show with vampires and demons (Blood Ties).

As far as how to distinguish between “fantasy” occultism and “real” occultism, it’s a tricky venture. For obvious reasons, practitioners want to distance themselves from these fantasy portrayals in order to educate the public about what they do and do not do, especially with the perennial accusations of Satanism. I even found myself the subject of a local Chicago blogger with extreme Christian beliefs who only briefly Googled me, saw my workshop listings at Starwood and saw the title of my class at DePaul and assumed I was luring students to the dark side – even calling for her readers to write the Bishop so that I would be fired, never mind the fact that magic and occultism has always played a prominent role in Western society, both at its center and its margins, and is a perfectly legitimate subject for university study (especially at a Catholic one), and that I do not and would never teach university students actual magical practice. Rather, I teach about the complex history and the continual cultural, philosophical, and political influence of magic and occultism. So I can see that education about magical practice is important in terms of distancing from fantasy narratives which more often than not associate magickal practice with, at the least, heartless manipulation, and at worst, Satanic evil. Not that magickal practice is all sweetness and light, like some practitioners would like to believe, but most of the time these negative portrayals are so way off the mark it’s laughable.

Having said that, “real” magick is always already caught up in fantasy. Especially since the late 19th century, magickal practice and fiction have always had a kind of symbiotic relationship in which each feeds the other. When Gerald Gardner first revealed his particular brand of Witchcraft, it was through a novel. Both Aleister Crowley and Dion Fortune used fiction to discuss the precepts of magick. You look at current graphic novels like Alan Moore’s Promethea, and it’s almost entirely Kabbalistic and Thelemic instruction. You have Wiccans basing actual practice on what they’ve read in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Mists of Avalon, or the Church of All Worlds, one of the earliest American Pagan organizations in the 1960s, basing their entire philosophy and life practice on Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land. Many argue that early source material for Wicca, like Charles Leland’s Gospel of Aradia, was entirely fictional. Practitioners have taken flawed and sometimes wholly inaccurate and incorrect scholarship like Frazer’s Golden Bough or Margaret Murray’s work on Witchcraft, or all kinds of wildly imaginative anthropological and archaeological speculation about supposed “Goddess” cultures, and used it as the basis for legitimate practice and political action. In its early years, Wicca longed for its own mythology, so Wiccans created it. To me, this doesn’t de-legitimize the religion, but is rather a crucial step in establishing a religion’s legitimacy, no different from any other religious venture. So yes, I would certainly want to separate fantasy portrayals from actual practice, but I would also remind people of the slippery boundaries between the two.

TF: You wrote an interesting article related to this topic for Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies (1:1) titled “Teen Witches, Wiccans, and ‘Wanna-Blessed-Be’s’: Pop-Culture Magic in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” In the article you refer to how such depictions of “popular occultism” have contributed to a “marketable new age spirituality.” How is the depiction of Witchcraft in Buffy or other television programs “part of a larger discursive field in popular media in which Wicca is presented as trendy and empowering for teenagers”?

Jason Winslade: What I’m talking about here is “occulture,” Christopher Partridge’s term you mentioned in your blog – I haven’t read his book yet, but I’ve been independently using the same term for some time now. Ultimately, when you represent magick and occultism in media, you’re dealing with one or more of three things: the actual practice, the solidification of the practice into a religion (which is rarely depicted) or a particular world view, or the culture in which these views prosper, including the many aspects of commodification. This third aspect is the “larger discursive field.” If you watch that brief scene in the Emmy-nominated “Hush” (the Buffy episode), you’ll see that not only does it contribute to the general theme of language, performative speech acts, saying vs. doing, and the power of silence that the episode so brilliantly explores, but it’s a legitimate satire of a youth subculture that attaches itself to the trendy aspects of Witchcraft and feminism without understanding the deeper cultural and spiritual implications. Thus, the Wanna-Blessed-Bes. When this episode came out in the fall of 2000, the teen Witchcraft trend was at its height with the release of the Teen Witch Kit, and all the controversy that surrounded that. In debates about legitimate representation of Witchcraft and Paganism, as well as in issues of group identification, I always think it’s important to distinguish between practice, religion, and culture while acknowledging their overlap. In my work in festival culture, I deal with groups that may define themselves very differently in terms of practice and belief, while still maintaining a sort of umbrella membership as an alternative subculture that can easily interact in a festival setting, especially around a fire. To me, it’s the same thing as saying the Irish troubles ultimately were about culture clashes rather than true religious differences.

TF: Dominique Wilson wrote an interesting article similar to the one you wrote for Slayage, titled “Willow and Which Craft? The portrayal of witchcraft in Joss Whedon’s Buffy: the Vampire Slayer.” In the article Wilson concludes that “[t]here is magic and spell craft in Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, but it is not the witchcraft found in historical accounts or practiced by contemporary wiccans, pagans and witches. Instead it is a means of exploring stereotypes and classic images assigned to witches and their craft within popular culture, from age-old fairy tales to the box office.” Would you agree with this assessment, and would this provide another conformation of some of what you are arguing for in your article for Slayage?

Jason Winslade: Absolutely. But I would go further and say that not only do these texts explore the stereotype of the Witch and what she means as a cultural symbol, but that Witchcraft and magick is presented as a tool for character growth, just as it is for actual practitioners. Thus magic on television and in fiction is a performative construct that allows viewers to tap into filmed and written narratives, interweaving their own stories.

If you trace the metaphorical use of magic in older folklore to today, there’s been a shift from where magic was seen as a hidden, almost fascist power, wielded by mysterious authority figures to control the masses and crush the individual spirit (think Wizard of Oz) to the notion of magic as a self-empowering way to resist those forces of authority. This shift is in no small part due to the development of feminist Witchcraft as something that exists in the world that actually uses magick for this purpose. And in turn, that “real” practice is due to the transformation of Enlightenment thinking about power into postmodernism and poststructuralism, with its roots in the mid-19th century and its reimagining in the 1960s, especially with writers like Michel Foucault, leading into feminist deconstructions of power, from Judith Butler to Starhawk.

As we’ve seen with Harry Potter and Buffy, this second sense of magic as empowering for the disenfranchised has proven particularly powerful for teenagers in that it is symbolic of the individuation process – magic is that challenge to realize your “true” identity and to turn that power towards action in a world where challenges abound, from both your enemies and your closest friends and family. This is why these texts are so resonant within magickal communities and practitioners – why the fantasy genre has always been an inspiring factor for these folk – they are able to read their own struggles of identity and action, mediated by magical practice, in the quest of Frodo, for instance. There’s a reason why Joseph Campbell’s “hero’s journey,” which can be read into classic literature from the Odyssey to Harry Potter, is an initiatory model. I think it’s the reason why initiations are still so important for practitioners today, despite the fact that so many reject the old, “occult” way of doing things, in which the candidate placed her fate in the hands of the initiating powers-that-be. People still want to experience that rite of passage, but they want to be more responsible for it themselves.

I also wanted to comment on the Harry Potter phenomenon. When one asks the inevitable question of “why this particular book” and “why now,” when fantasy literature involving the use of magic has always existed, I think there are several factors involved. For one, unlike Tolkien’s ancient elsewhere, Middle Earth, Rowling’s magical world is here and now, but truly occult – hidden from view of those not in the know, the Muggles. I think people are particularly sensitive to this division between magical and non-magical people – and in Rowling’s world, this in-group politics exists at many strata of the wizarding world with the race and class issues she raises. How this translates in the real world is that those who actually are magickal practitioners or at least fantasize about being practitioners are comforted by the notion of a hidden magical world existing alongside our own. However, for those that eschew magic and cling to hyper-rationalism or religion as the primary arbiter of reality, this notion can be particularly disquieting and brings up all kinds of regression from conspiracy theories to witch hunts. Of course, all this is dependent on its detractors actually reading the books which, in many cases, doesn’t seem likely. Another level of this is the sheer marketing power of the franchise. Rowling may not be a magickal practitioner as such, but she, and her creation, certainly has considerable mojo. She’s essentially created an icon. The archetype that Harry Potter draws from is certainly not original, but the solidification into a figure that serves as a symbolic product is unique (the same can be said for Buffy as an iconographic figure). What’s overwhelming for people who are already suspicious of pop culture is the inundation of merchandise. Their children can easily put on a costume and “become” Harry Potter, thus solidifying the audience reception of the books as a performative act. Again, this tends to frighten people (I think of that brilliant, satiric piece in The Onion from 1999 that featured children rejecting the Bible and using Harry Potter merchandise to worship Satan – one that apparently some fundamentalists thought was a real article). Finally, the fact that “real” witches and magickal practitioners have been so taken by these books, and the fact that the books have made “real” magickal practice more visible also plays a role. That some practitioners have adopted the term “Muggles” to reality in order to accentuate the division between magickal and non-magickal folk is certainly an extremely influential and problematic factor in how practitioners interact with society (I personally find that, although the term may be convenient, it essentializes magical practice and creates an inaccurate dichotomy. For instance, I know a few people who would fit under the category of Muggle who are far more connected to spiritual energy, than some who claim to be Pagans or Witches).

TF: In the past there have been some pretty negative depictions of Witchcraft, particularly in horror films which have lumped it together with Satanism and have reflected medieval Christian perspectives on demonology, Satan, and Witchcraft. Do you see this trend shifting with the more recent portrayals on television and film?

Jason Winslade: Since information on “real” witches is much more readily available nowadays, I see writers using research to become more creative in their storytelling and mixing more “real” elements in with their fantasy, but unfortunately, I don’t see those Satanic associations going away any time soon. The pentacle as demonic, particular in the context of horror films, is forever cemented into our psyche, in the same way that we cannot see a swastika as anything other than a Nazi symbol, even when it’s used in very positive religious contexts such as in Hindu and Native American symbolism. And let’s face it, Witchcraft as history understands it is a creation of medieval demonology. Satanic Witchcraft was an invention of the inquisitors who were looking for an anti-church conspiracy and basing their ideas on folklore and rumor. That narrative – the Black Mass, the women coupling with the Devil, etc. was a very powerful story that gripped Western Europe for quite some time. It takes a lot of energy to dispel that (no pun intended).

Many Witches acknowledge the impossible burden of taking on a name and symbol with millennia of negativity attached and attempting to reclaim it. Some have even said they wished they had chosen a different name for themselves, but that you certainly cannot put that genie back in the bottle. What I find troublesome is that every time a “witch” appears in any media, no matter how fantastical and unconnected to actual Wiccans and people who call themselves Witches today, that some people will still make that connection, either those who do that so in order to point out “real” witches as evil or just plain silly, or as a means for practitioners to claim ownership over an image and decry the text for misrepresenting them. The truth is that the figure of the Witch has existed cross-culturally long before Wicca came on the scene and it’s highly problematic and anachronistic for Wiccans to claim ownership over such a disseminated image – when their original association with that image was tenuous at best and chosen for political reasons more than anything else. I still think it’s a compelling figure to inspire magickal identity and practice, but I think people need to be much smarter about it, and many people are starting to realize that. Thanks to work by academics like Ronald Hutton and the development of what is now called Pagan Studies, whose scholars are often also practitioners, I think there has been an increase in awareness about the tricky contingencies of Witchcraft history and culture. I think most of these scholar/practitioners recognize Witchcraft as being a syncretic esoteric practice that represents an accumulation of cultural, religious, and political factors appropriate to the mid-20th century and is now redefining itself for the new millennium, often through mediatization, especially online presence.

TF: You have given a variety of presentations, one of which was at the Starwood Festival. One of these presentations touched on whether the increasing depiction of a magickal worldview in popular culture makes magickal practitioners wonder whether their practices and beliefs “are being trivialized and cheapened.” What are the reactions among practitioners to this phenomenon?

Jason Winslade: As I said, I do get a variety of responses, with many scoffing at their misrepresentation. Yet there is a constant split between those who want to maintain a good public face and are content to merely convince people they’re not Satanists, and those who want to pursue a more esoteric practice and experiment more profoundly, even if they threaten to tarnish the “sweetness and light” image that some media Pagans are trying to sell. I think quite a few practitioners agree with me that there’s a difference between “Witches” in the fantasy sense and any attempted association with actual Wiccans. Whether or not someone will see this representations as “realistic” and apply those standards to real Wiccans depends on how uninformed the viewer is. Some practitioners have absolutely no problem with commodification and the “Harry Potter-ification” of magic and witchcraft, often arguing that it helps increase awareness. I remember at one of these workshops a few years back, I talked about the unveiling of a statue of Samantha from Bewitched in Salem and the range of responses from the local Pagan communities. Some were mightily offended at its trivialization of the Witch trials (even though Salem’s theme park existence has already done this so extensively), while other Pagans thought it was great and saw the character of Samantha as a great role model for young Witches. I know several Pagans who collect “Witch kitsch” and get a kick out of images of sexy Witches on broomsticks and the like. I also tend to enjoy the kitsch factor and humor in these representations and again would emphasize the differences between culture. I can laugh at Witch kitsch and still have a serious relationship with the divine Feminine. As long as those images aren’t used as a way to deny someone’s right to worship and practice their religion, I have no problem with it. I know Christians who think Kevin Smith’s “Buddy Christ” from Dogma is hilarious.

TF: Jason, thanks again for making the time to answer a few questions. This is an interesting and ongoing area of research for me and I look forward to interacting with your scholarship and perspectives in the future.

Among the new supernaturally themed shows premiering is “Moonlight” a vampire-themed romantic detective series on CBS, “Eli Stone” concerning a lawyer who has visions, “Pushing Daisies” about a man who has the power to bring people back from the dead (both of those shows are on ABC), and Fox’s “New Amsterdam” about a immortal homicide detective. These shows (and several more fantasy/supernatural-themed programs) are, according to the article, much due to the success of the super-hero drama “Heroes”

I find this development interesting on a number of levels, including the increasing influence of alternative spiritualities in popular culture in general. This has been described by one scholar Christopher Partridge, as representing the existence of a popular “occulture,” which as he describes it “includes those often hidden, rejected, and oppositional beliefs and practices associated with esotericism, theosophy, mysticism, New Age, Paganism, and a range of other subcultural beliefs and practices.” This “reservoir of ideas, beliefs, practices and symbols” may be understood as having been part of a cultural underground in the past, but it has now moved to the surface of cultural discourse, so much so that the ideas are now part of the mainstream and surface as elements within television programs as well as fantasy literature, music, films, and video games. Further discussion of this may be found in Partridge’s The Re-Enchantment of the West: Alternative Spiritualities, Sacralization, Popular Culture, and Occulture, Vol. 1 (London & New York, T & T Clark, 2004).