Column: On the Altar, in the Academy

When Ronald Hutton’s Triumph of the Moon hit bookstores in 1999 something changed in British Pagan culture. It was immediate. Someone known to be friendly and spiritually sympathetic had put us on the academic map, and shown Pagans we have a rightful place in Britain’s cultural history. The book was eloquent and magisterial, linking Pagan ideas to literature, social justice, liberalism and the broad cultural avenue of western esotericism. The book drew young Pagans who were intellectually gifted to want to study Pagan-related subjects at universities for Masters and doctorate degrees.