Earth, Air, Fire, Water and the Big Smoke. Urban Paganism: Ritual performance, identity construction and meaning making within and without the city.

Abstract

The dilution and/or disappearance of religious ideals throughout western societies has been identified as a result of the turn of the enlightenment, the advent and advancement of scientific rationale, processes of industrialization and fundamentally the political and societal separation between church and state (Nietzsche 1882, Jung 1964). Post-enlightenment philosophies have worked to distance individuals in their relationship to religious institutions, notions of God and spiritual modes of consciousness. And the secular model on which “modern” nations have developed oftentimes relegate spirituality or faith praxis to the peripheries of contemporary societal action and discourse. Considering the spiritual proclivities of individuals identifying with Pagan and earth based nature spiritualities in the UK, this paper attempts to explore the reasons as to why such spiritual groups are growing in a time of precipitous decline of affiliation with traditional Anglican ideology. Based on ethnographic research conducted predominantly in the city of London the paper focuses on the function of ritual performance as a method for “coping” in the city. Through processes of ceremony, self-work, and creativity the Pagan community is imagined within the “superdiversity” that is the capital city of England. Self-identities are structured in accordance with alternative belief practices and spiritual principles function to question dominant political and social ideologies.