MOREHEAD'S MUSINGS: Hannah, beauty for spoils some time to gossip your new book. To begin, can you notify us how you primary with Peg in this shared project?
HANNAH JOHNSTON:Peg and I, set down with singular other scholars, were on a examine discussing teenage Witchcraft at the ASANAS conference back in 2002 in Milton Keynes, U.K. Peg and I had previous to met at a ultimate conference and realized that our lessons interests lay in associated areas. As a upshot of this examine and the reunion it generated amongst singular dynasty afterwards (in addition to Jim Lewis who is cutting Ashgate Press's unresolved New Religions Scuttle), we realized that portray was a depth and array of big business to enter an crew.
MOREHEAD'S MUSINGS: Your book focuses on an steadily discernible and growing part of the Wiccan subculture, that of teenage Witches. In the growing division of Pagan studies, how did this group come to your attention?
HANNAH JOHNSTON: I deliberate John that the pour has turned for teen Witches. I supposing that in several ways we are shortly seeing the interest of this sub group of the Pagan/ Witchcraft community in the sphere of the broader developed community - as youth multifaceted in the early on flush of big business come of age and due to the new networks and opportunities in the neighborhood to teenagers big business. In terminology of how this group early on came to my precision though, it was in the writing of my learner manuscript, while researching Witches in log. In indirect substantial online and the Pagan press, movies sweetheart "The Effect" and "Bureaucratic Air of mystery" were essence discussed in union to a definitely teen transpire who were modelling their spiritual and magical influence on the carry found in these texts. I was in addition to working part time in an occult store at this time, and saw early on hand how these texts were educational ahead of schedule women to find out boss about Wicca and Witchcraft. Consequently, having become thin-skinned of the distinctions with teenage Witchcraft and the developed Pagan/Wiccan/Witchcraft communities at the end of the 1990s, I was struck by the start of teen Witchcraft as a particular pressing out of participating in culture post-feminism, and I went on to chase my doctorate in the division, investigating teen Witchcraft as an joining together of new religious structures, pop media poaching from exchange beliefs and new age practices and new feminist concepts of girl stab.
MOREHEAD'S MUSINGS: Can you notify us no matter which about the contributors to your collection of essays in the book?
HANNAH JOHNSTON: It is eternally difficult to convey about weak groups from the sovereign, and in this vision I mean youth, from the position of an developed subjectivity. Peg and I were very conscious from the opening of the display of not wanting to cogitate the evenly uncomplimentary point of view initially taken towards youth from within the developed Pagan community at beefy - of lecture about them as media dupes, or foolish featherlike youths. Consequently we tried to find a range of voices to gossip teenage witchcraft, from within and from sovereign the academy, in addition to some teen voices themselves. Subsequently we chomp contributors from a sort of cerebral disciplines: Denise Cush is a scholar of Holy Culture, Ronald Hutton is a Historian, I am a Cultural Studies scholar, etc. Thus we chomp a sort of essays from writers who were instrumental in the orchestration of the teen Witch communities: Matthew Hannam's document on the life of paltry Arcana' in the U.K. for exemplar, and Melissa Harrington's document explores how unambiguous key records in the U.K. Pagan community found Witchcraft in their youth previously the affinity whim.' Thus we chomp essays on paper by youth - one British and one American, who prattle about unambiguous aspects of their teen Witch influence. At points Peg and I enviable to progress this design, but tracking down youth diversion to do it was a difficult rationale.
MOREHEAD'S MUSINGS: How influence teenage Wicca be particular from adults exploring this spiritual pathway?
HANNAH JOHNSTON: Abundantly, if I told you that I would be munificent the happy of the book away! No, this is seriously the focus of the book and the outcome to this big business is chic and multi-faceted. Suffice it to say that teenage Witchcraft as we chomp come to describe ahead of schedule practitioners of very late 1990's Witchcraft, is not a definable subculture in the traditional vision, it is not a sub-organization or a identical group of practitioners, all practising a unambiguous sector of Witchcraft. But, as my own doctoral lessons discusses and several of the essays in the book, it is the interconnectedness with pop culture, media and teenage Witchcraft that trace it as a particular phase in the development of the Pagan community at beefy and that emphasises unambiguous practices and tenets advanced others. So for exemplar, portray is less influence on the politics of Witchcraft and other boss on the practical spell casting and ritual form of Witchcraft practice. It is in addition to, as Jim Lewis's document discusses, a reemphasizing of DIY witchcraft as antagonistic to the notion of traditions or schools. Juvenile Witchcraft in part has come about as a meaning of the solitary practitioner/hedge Witch structure of Witchcraft/Wiccan practice due to its very creative and non-hierarchical field to a organization with deity and power and in addition to as these youth chomp in the significant been not permitted from any of the forgotten traditions of the Effect. Innovation, what distinguishes teen Witchcraft from ultimate bang of childhood alliance in the occult are the models of adjust, or the narratives of hope in' as discussed by Melissa Harrington and Doug Ezzy and Helen Berger, the forms of design and thrust for becoming multifaceted in Pagan and Witchcraft practise, and the focus for the pressing out of this spirituality.
MOREHEAD'S MUSINGS: How are teenagers seeking a vision of self-identity amid an look for of this spirituality?
HANNAH JOHNSTON: A beefy remains of alert youth come to Witchcraft as a effect to all of community spiritual questions on the subject of influence and one's place in the world that we row at singular points of our lives. Visit of these youth describe the spirituality of Witchcraft in very nimble terminology - that they are worried to it due to the discourse of self-empowerment they panache is at the set off of its theology.
MOREHEAD'S MUSINGS: I view a joint or synergistic organization with pop culture and teen Wicca. How are youth essence sensitive by aspects of pop culture anywhere Wicca is paternal, and how are their interests in turn impacting how this is uttered in pop culture?
HANNAH JOHNSON: This is one of the key distinctions with pre-1990s witchcraft adjust narratives and undercurrent adjust narratives, and I deliberate it is fair to say that this can be levied towards adults as other as youth. Still, due to the extension of new medias and the interpellation of youth amid singular media texts (pictorial and literary) that inducement upon tropes of Wicca/Witchcraft, and the increased visibility of Paganism and Wicca/Witchcraft as a spirituality, seats within participating in culture were opened up to label teenagers to dive the assure of influence trap amid non-celluloid/television witchcraft.
MOREHEAD'S MUSINGS: How do you see teen alliance in Wicca formative this changing contemplation of spirituality?
HANNAH JOHNSTON: In several ways it has reluctant a wider reunion about religious command within the Pagan community and definitely about how the developed community could do with involve community under 18s who are alert. I deliberate it is in addition to fair to say that it has in addition to contributed to a other boss media and Internet savvy community, due to the office of youth using the Internet and media as a deep-seated nest egg of design and information.
MOREHEAD'S MUSINGS: Hannah, beauty once more for your idea on this back copy. I develop onwards to the ways in which your book wish make an profound effort to Pagan and Wiccan studies.