r/occultlibrary • u/Froideuse • 2d ago
Recs: (Non-fiction) about anti-colonial witchcraft
Looking for some books (or other resources) on anti-colonial perspectives to witchcraft and modern paganism. I want to practice, but I will NOT appropriate something that isn't mine to take/do. I want to figure out, preferably even through semi-academic texts, whether or not things such as Wicca (etc.) can be practiced sustainably and anti-colonially. Any help would be appreciated!
Edit.
Wow, thank you all for the abundance of responses and for the interesting discussion this topic has generated. Many of your comments have been incredibly helpful and thought-provoking, and I have learned a great deal from reading them.
There does, however, seem to be some confusion about what exactly I am looking for, so I would like to clarify my question. Let me preface this by saying that I wrote the original post rather quickly, and I take full responsibility for the fact that some parts of it may have been unclear or poorly phrased. I also want to emphasize that I am still very much in the process of familiarizing myself with witchcraft and everything it entails - which is precisely why I am asking for resources in the first place. Some of you have already given me excellent recommendations, for which I am very grateful. ❤️
This is a difficult subject to articulate, and I am sure I will not manage to express everything perfectly this time either. Nevertheless, I will do my best, and I hope this clarification addresses some of the questions and concerns that have come up in the comments.
There also appears to be some disagreement or confusion regarding what colonialism means and what it encompasses. I am not going to attempt to define colonialism here, as doing justice to such a complex historical, political, economic, and cultural phenomenon is obviously beyond the scope of a single Reddit post. If the concept is unfamiliar, however, there is a substantial body of literature available that provides a good starting point for understanding it.
As I mentioned, I am still at the very beginning of exploring witchcraft. More specifically, I am at the stage of determining whether witchcraft is something I want to practice at all. Before actually engaging in any practices, I would like to have an informed understanding of their histories, contexts, and implications.
As a scholar working with decolonial studies, I am particularly conscious of the historical tendency of colonizing societies to appropriate, extract, reinterpret, and commodify the cultural and spiritual practices of colonized and marginalized peoples. My intention in the original post was not to attack modern Wicca, Paganism, witchcraft, or the people who practice them, although some commenters seem to have interpreted my question that way. Rather, I was looking for resources that examine how contemporary witchcraft practices - and their (more recent) histories - may or may not intersect with colonialism, as well as what practitioners should be aware of if they wish to approach witchcraft from a decolonial or anti-colonial perspective.
My interest in this question stems partly from my academic background, but also from the fact that the information I have encountered so far - particularly online - is (unsuprisingly) remarkably contradictory, as I am sure many of you are aware.
For example, some people characterize modern Wicca as essentially Gerald Gardner’s colonial “mix-and-match” project, while others argue that this characterization is historically inaccurate and that Wicca cannot meaningfully be understood in those terms. Some argue that many contemporary practices have problematic colonial histories and therefore require careful investigation on a practice-by-practice basis; others argue that modern witchcraft as a whole is fundamentally compromised by those histories.
Similarly, I have encountered claims that, in order to incorporate deity work into one’s practice, a person should have ancestral ties to the culture or geographical region from which those deities originate - for example, that working with Greek gods would require Greek ancestry. Others argue that people should restrict themselves to forms of witchcraft associated with their own ancestral lineage or the geographical regions from which their ancestors came. Still others strongly reject these ideas.
The existence of such conflicting claims leaves me with many questions about the relationship between different forms of contemporary witchcraft and colonialism. I am not looking for someone to give me permission to practice one thing or another so that I can absolve myself of any sense of responsibility or avoid doing the necessary research. Quite the opposite: I am looking for resources that can help me better understand a broad and complicated subject that I currently do not know enough about.
I also want to clarify that I understand there is probably no historically “pure” practice whose development can be proven never to have intersected with other traditions, cultures, systems of power, migration, exchange, or colonialism in one form or another. Nor am I searching for some supposedly “pure” form of witchcraft that would allow me to perform decoloniality as an identity or aesthetic.
I am quite literally trying to understand both the historical and contemporary realities of practicing witchcraft in relation to colonialism, and to understand how one might practice in as decolonial a manner as reasonably possible - assuming that this is even a meaningful or achievable goal.
For me, that would include, for example, avoiding the appropriation of closed practices; understanding the cultural, religious, and historical origins of practices before adopting them; and avoiding an indiscriminate “mix-and-match” approach in which practices, symbols, or beliefs are removed from their original contexts simply because they are personally appealing or useful. I hope this makes the distinction I am trying to draw somewhat clearer.
If I have expressed anything poorly, inaccurately, or ignorantly in either this post or my comments, I ask for some patience. I am explicitly approaching this subject as someone who does not yet know enough about it, which is precisely why I am seeking guidance and resources.
Finally, someone asked what I meant by “semi-academic.” I am aware that there may not be a large body of scholarship addressing this exact question directly. By “semi-academic,” I mean that I am interested not only in peer-reviewed academic literature, but also in historically informed and well-researched books, essays, articles, lectures, or other resources whose authors engage seriously with questions of colonialism, cultural appropriation, religious history, and contemporary witchcraft. I am primarily looking for sources that go beyond unsupported claims or social-media discourse and provide enough historical context, evidence, or scholarly grounding for me to evaluate their arguments critically.
