Articles with the keyword magic

• Annika Teppo

  “My House is Protected by a Dragon”: White South Africans, magic and sacred spaces

  Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society Volume 34(1) 2009: 19-41

  Abstract

  Abstract
  Until the end of apartheid, White South Africans were solely presented as
  Christians, with other religious practices all but forbidden to them. Since the
  negotiated revolution of 1994, the new liberal constitution has guaranteed
  religious freedom to all, with the global New Religious Movements gaining
  popularity. Tens of thousands of White South Africans have seized the opportunity
  to explore charismatic churches, New Age-practices as well as traditional African
  religions, while the popularity of traditional Christianity has dropped. The
  informants of this research are White South Africans from Cape Town, neopagans
  who practice Wiccan witchcraft and sangomas who practice traditional African
  religion. In South Africa, Whites are seldom regarded as practitioners of witchcraft
  or magic. Yet there are thousands of Whites who believe in and practice both,
  and create their own sacred spaces within the urban spaces which were previously
  subjected to rules and regulations of racialised social engineering. This article
  examines how witchcraft, magic and new global religions meet in the conjunctions
  of global and local, where new concerns arise and where new heterotopias and
  spatial practices are established as answers to White neopagans’ anxieties about
  spiritual insecurity and racial boundaries. The places where these sacred urban
  spaces are created are at homes, in public spaces, and on the Internet.

  Keywords African religion, Cape Town, magic, sacred spaces, Wicca, witchcraft