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The Ritual Places of Contemporary Pagans in Kraków In the following article I describe ritual places used by four Kraków Neopagan groups (Native Polish Church, Group Mir, Free Rodnovers of Kraków, and Reformed Druids of Gaia Poland). The most important locations include the surroundings of Krakus Mound (along with the Liban quarry below and the ‘sacred circle’ on the opposite site of the quarry) and Grove by the Wilga river. The used sites and their context are analysed, as well as the reasons why a particular place was chosen. I focus on the perspective of my interviewees, using Kim Knott’s spatial analysis and the combination of the three approaches by Belden C. Lane. Based on participant observation and semi-structured interviews with members of the studied groups, I distinguish three categories of reasons (physical; connected to culture and tradition; metaphysical), which show the multidimensional character of the decisions made and many perspectives in which ritual places are perceived.

Numerous contemporary Pagan groups conduct their ritual ceremonies outside, communing with nature. This essay describes research conducted in a small, eclectic group following the Wiccan wheel of the year in Warsaw, Poland. It focuses on the places used by the group, applying Edward Casey’s phenomenological approach to understand an encountered place, and examines what constitutes a good ritual place according to the group members. The initial supposition was that technical aspects would prevail: privacy, accessibility, and proximity of the four elements. However, the participant observation and semi-structured interviews proved that choosing the right place was primarily based on the experience and interpretation of the feeling evoked by the place: namely, whether the atmosphere was right and the entities dwelling there were seen as welcoming or not.

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