A Posthuman Grimoire: exploring current and potential relationships between witches/wicca and posthumanism Main Menu

Witchy Feminism

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Paganism and Feminism are interconnected in their philosophies around the roles of equality and power politics in the world. When speaking with friends about the subject matter for this project the association that the majority of them had with Wicca was with the burning of witches, more specifically with the Salem Witch Trials. How those trials are relevant to posthuman studies was a question that was often asked, and the answer lies in the posthuman promotion of the 'other' and the association that feminism and the promotion of a greater equality has with posthuman thought processes. Though there is a clear connection between the women who were called witches and persecuted for not agreeing with men or the societal structures of the time with Humanist Feminism the conversation around persecution and hierarchy structures is equally relevant in a post-anthropocentric context. 

The Goddess is one of the guiding figures in Wicca worship practices, something that highlights the matriarchal status of their society while at the same time conforming to gender binaries and stereotypes. Rountree explains in her article on the politics of a Goddess figurehead in paganism that  the issue of essentialism is deeply embedded in the practices, and humanist problems, of Wicca feminism (Rountree, 138). The Goddess is nurturing, maternal, fertile, and woman, all characteristics that fit into a distinctly humanist perspective, though her power may align with some aspects of feminism, her human based aspect and conformation to strict gender roles make it so that her character is not directly aligned with post anthropocentric feminism which would ideally acknowledge nature, animals, queerness, and a plethora of other identities and aspects that have been excluded. 

Wicca activists and public voices like Starhawk participate in the movement towards an eco-feminism that tries to combat an anthropocentric understanding of equality and an approach to community and environmentalism that acknowledges the earth through spirituality. In understanding her pagan spirituality Starhawk explains that, as opposed to a worldview that sees the sacred as "imminent in the living world" ecofeminism and Wicca paganism rely on nature as the imminent force that guides the sacred (Starhawk, 174). Based on an interconnectedness that equates the female body with the sacred earth and deeply entrenches itself within the natural world ecofeminism is the Wicca answer to prior Humanist forms of feminism and understanding. 

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  1. A Posthuman Grimoire Madeleine Richardson

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