To tabloid newspapers, at least, one of the most striking features of modern Pagan witchcraft, or Wicca, has been the way in which many of its members have worked ceremonies in the nude. This mode of operation is certainly unusual for a religion; but how unusual is it, exactly? Ronald Hutton sets out to answer that question, and in doing so opens a door onto a world in which ritual nudity has been, since ancient times, a constant feature of two phenomena which stand outside the norms of world religion: magic and initiation rites. Why this has been so, and how it has been carried on, are two of the preoccupations of his talk; and with them a further question, of the implications of this historical background to religion in the modern world.
Speaker: Professor Ronald Hutton is a Professor of History at the University of Bristol. He is a leading authority on history of the British Isles in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, on ancient and medieval paganism and magic, and on the global context of witchcraft beliefs.
Britain can claim to possess the richest and most diverse collection of physical remains left by pre-Christian religions in any part of Europe, including Celtic, Roman, Germanic and Scandinavian pantheons of goddesses and gods, with others from all over the Roman Empire, and five successive ages of outstanding prehistoric monuments. Ronald Hutton invites you to join him for an evening to be spent looking at these remains and posing the question of how far it is possible to recover the beliefs which inspired their creation. He will propose his own answer to this, and then considers the implications of it in two special case studies, of the most famous prehistoric monument in the world, Stonehenge, and the most carefully studied ancient human body to be found in Britain, the so-called Lindow Man. It will end by asking what the best relationship between professional archaeologists and historians specialising in the subject, and everybody else interested in it, might be in the new century.
Professor Ronald Hutton is a Professor of History at the University of Bristol. He is a leading authority on history of the British Isles in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, on ancient and medieval paganism and magic, and on the global context of witchcraft beliefs.
