Goddess Spirituality and the Witch
Dr Sharon Jagger is Associate Professor in Religion at York St. John. Specialising in women’s spirituality, Sharon has started a project that explores the beliefs and practices of women who have a goddess spirituality. Through her interviews with women practitioners, several themes have emerged; goddess worship and identifying as a witch sometimes overlap, women who identify as Christian draw on Pagan-related practices and beliefs, sometimes aligning themselves to the witch identity, and many women who have a goddess or witchcraft practice are also entrepreneurial.
Sharon’s core research is with women priests. There are still deep prejudices against women in the ordained ministry and social media reveals the misogyny circulating some areas of the Church. The insult ‘feminist priestess witch’ can often be seen in comments – this is where Sharon’s research interests collide; often, ‘the witch’ represents foundational constructions of gender that frame women as Other, anti-Christian, and susceptible to the diabolical. The struggle between priest and witch (see Zwissler, 2018) is a heritage that casts a long shadow over women in the priesthood, but also over women who express an individualised spirituality that reaches for the feminine divine and the rehabilitation of the notion of magic.
Sharon has been invited to give a public lecture on feminism and the witch in February, 2025. Watch this space for details.