Name: Matter-Reality in the Charge of the Goddess: Bodies, Objects, Places, and Sensations
Start: 2026-07-17T10:30:00-0400
End: 2026-07-17T11:30:00-0400

Matter-Reality in the Charge of the Goddess: Bodies, Objects, Places, and Sensations

Friday July 17, 2026 10:30am - 11:30am EDT

Ashford

Shelley Rabinovich and James Lewis called the Charge of the Goddess “perhaps the most important single theological document in the neo-Pagan movement". Knowing Paganism’s deep affinity with materiality, or matter-reality, such a foundational Wiccan document as the Charge would naturally incorporate bodies, objects, places, and sensations. Material aspects bring a sense of value, meaning, and order to Wicca, serve as symbols to be interpreted for religious meanings, build traditions over time, participate in assemblages along with Wiccans, and act on Wiccans and shape them. In this paper, I will compare five versions of the Charge dating from 1899 to 1979; and the short excerpt from the Charge which Gerald Brousseau Gardner included in his 1954 book Witchcraft Today, to understand what material aspects he and his initiators considered suitable and best to share with Wicca’s earliest public audience.

Speakers

Polly Springhorn

M.Div. student, Theology & Religious History, Cherry Hill Seminary

Polly Springhorn is an M.Div. student at Cherry Hill Seminary studying Theology and Religious History, and the Pagan Studies Unit Chair for the American Academy of Religion Western Region. She's also a Gardnerian High Priestess who's led one of the oldest covens in the San Francisco... Read More →

Friday July 17, 2026 10:30am - 11:30am EDT
Ashford

PAPERS

Take aways: I would like attendess to come away with a more detailed sense of the history of the Charge of the Goddess, and how the material aspects in the different versions have changed over time. I would also like for them to have a heightened awareness of how the bodies, objects, places, and sensations in the Charge have shaped Wicca as a religion, and the individual experiences of Witches.

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Mystic South

Polly Springhorn

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Mystic South

Polly Springhorn

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