‘Spiritual’ witchcraft and magic 2.0 as weapons of resistance: The emergence of a new movement?

Abstract

At the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the landscape of religions and the dynamics of beliefs are reshaped by several movements. On one side, a ‘return of magic’ in contemporary societies and the rise of a modern witchcraft, and in parallel, and on another side, the rise and expansion of forms of ‘spirituality’. These two movements, both featuring in a specific manner the new face of the sacred, are often considered isolated from each other by social sciences and humanities, and religious studies, they, however, significantly crossover. As a result, modern witchcraft is turning more ‘spiritual’, whereas spirituality is – to a certain extent – becoming more ‘witchy’. With reference to the empirical examples of the emerging movements Magic for resistance and Witches 2.0, this article aims at demonstrating that the issue of politics and empowerment facilitate the cross-fertilization of the two movements in the context of high digitization.