But while Robert Hutton explores this dark side of witchery, he stresses the positive, reminding us that devotion to art, the natural world, femininity, and the classical deities are also central to the practice of wicca. Meticulously researched, it provides a thorough account of an ancient religion that has spread from English shores across four continents.įor centuries, pagan witchcraft has been linked with chilling images of blood rituals, ghostlike druids, and even human sacrifices. The Triumph of the Moon is the first full-scale study of the only religion England has ever given the world-modern pagan witchcraft, otherwise known as wicca. Hutton brings witchcraft out of the shadows.
We chat about the importance of the book and the reason for its reissue. The author of over a dozen books and myriad articles, Professor Hutton’s work is both prodigious and percipient. This edition incorporates new research carried out by the author as well as research by others who have been inspired by this book over the twenty years since its first publication.Today we speak to Ronald Hutton, Professor of History at the University of Bristol, in the United Kingdom about the twentieth anniversary, and concomitant reissue, of the extremely important The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft (Oxford UP, 2019). Meticulously researched, The Triumph of the Moon presents an authoritative insight into an aspect of modern cultural history which has attracted sensational publicity but has hitherto been little understood. The material is by its nature often sensational, and care is taken throughout to distinguish fact from fantasy, in a manner not previously applied to most of the stories involved. Thriller writers like Dennis Wheatley, and films and television programmes, get similar coverage, as does tabloid journalism. Lawrence and Robert Graves, as well as the main personalities who have represented pagan witchcraft to the public world since 1950. We also find some of the leading figures of English literature, from the Romantic poets to W. 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. Ronald Hutton examines the nature and development of this religion, and offers a history of attitudes to witchcraft, paganism and magic in British society since 1800. This second edition of The Triumph of the Moon extensively revises the first full-scale scholarly study of modern pagan witchcraft. Modern pagan witchcraft is arguably the only fully-formed religion England has given the world, and has now spread across four continents.
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