Persuasions of the Witch's Craft

Persuasions of the Witch's Craft

File:Persuasions of the Witch's Craft.jpeg The first edition cover of the book.
Author	Tanya Luhrmann
Country	United States
Language	English
Subject	Anthropology of religion Pagan studies
Publisher	Harvard University Press
Publication date	1989
Media type	Print (Hardcover & Paperback)
Pages	382

Persuasion's of the Witches' Craft: Ritual Magic in Contemporary England is a study of several Wiccan and ceremonial magic groups that assembled in southern England during the 1980s. It was written by the American anthropologist Tanya M. Luhrmann (1959–) of the University of California, San Diego, and first published in 1989.

The work would be criticized by later academics working in the field of Pagan studies and western esotericism, who charged it with dealing with those it was studying in a derogatory manner.

Influence

Writing in her paper within James R. Lewis' edited Magical Religion and Modern Witchcraft anthology, Siân Reid described Luhrmann's work as "a solid ethnography". Nevertheless, she felt that the study "occasionally rings hollow" because Luhrmann failed to take into account the "subjective motivations for magical practice". In her anthropological study of the U.S. Pagan community, Witching Culture (2004), the American academic Sabina Magliocco noted that her work both built upon and departed from Luhrmann's.