The Pagan Revival
The Roots of Modern British Paganism, 1700-1950
Will be published approx. on 1. September 2026
Book
Hardback
240 pages
978-1-80050-527-8 (ISBN)
Description
This book is a unique documentary history of the religious tradition known as contemporary Paganism. It covers the period from around 1700 to 1950, with an emphasis on developments in Great Britain.
Through the medium of pertinent texts accompanied by narrative and commentary, it seeks to explain and illustrate how this fascinating tradition was conceived and how it evolved over time. It takes in the various twists and turns in the story, from the first stirrings of revival in the Enlightenment years, via Romantic poets and Victorian occultists, to the Woodcraft and witchcraft movements of the twentieth century.
Some of the texts that are reproduced are well-known and familiar, while others are being made widely available for the first time.
The story of how Pagan religious traditions came be revived in the modern world has been told many times, but the scholarship has tended to focus disproportionately on developments in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In particular, researchers have tended to focus on the decades after 1950, when Gerald Gardner and his followers were publicizing the witch religion of Wicca and the work of Aleister Crowley underwent a rediscovery.
The Pagan Revival is a valuable resource for academics and students in the fields of Pagan studies, cultural history and the history of ideas. It will also be of interest to general readers who are curious about this absorbing chapter of modern religious history.
Through the medium of pertinent texts accompanied by narrative and commentary, it seeks to explain and illustrate how this fascinating tradition was conceived and how it evolved over time. It takes in the various twists and turns in the story, from the first stirrings of revival in the Enlightenment years, via Romantic poets and Victorian occultists, to the Woodcraft and witchcraft movements of the twentieth century.
Some of the texts that are reproduced are well-known and familiar, while others are being made widely available for the first time.
The story of how Pagan religious traditions came be revived in the modern world has been told many times, but the scholarship has tended to focus disproportionately on developments in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In particular, researchers have tended to focus on the decades after 1950, when Gerald Gardner and his followers were publicizing the witch religion of Wicca and the work of Aleister Crowley underwent a rediscovery.
The Pagan Revival is a valuable resource for academics and students in the fields of Pagan studies, cultural history and the history of ideas. It will also be of interest to general readers who are curious about this absorbing chapter of modern religious history.
Reviews / Votes
Pre-Publication ReviewBetween the 18th and 20th centuries a small but often influential minority of religious and cultural pioneers experimented with the idea of reviving Paganism. In The Pagan Revival Robin C. Douglas presents key texts from complex and multifaceted efforts at revival across three centuries, along with commentary placing these revivals within their historical and religious context. 'Paganism' could have multiple meanings for those drawn to it. For some, Paganism was synonymous with the ecstatic, the aesthetic, the sensuous, and morally liberated behaviour, while others were drawn to morally austere expressions of ancient Pagan worldviews, and many of the revivals detailed here had no obvious ideological heirs. Nevertheless, every attempt to revive Paganism in the modern world, however ephemeral, edged forward a little further to the critical moment in the mid-20th century when modern Paganism was birthed as a fully-fledged religion.
The book features some well-known writers, from Keats and Shelley to Yeats, Browning and Stevenson, but these are set alongside many more forgotten writers who laboured to restore Paganism in obscure publications and unremembered ritual experiments. The religious adventurers who revived Paganism included scholars, aesthetes, poets, translators and esotericists, and all brought their own distinctive vision and emphasis.
The Pagan Revival ranges across Enlightenment Deism, early Romanticism, late Romantic Aestheticism and Decadence, the late Victorian 'cult of Pan', early anthropology, late Victorian and Edwardian occultism and, finally, the roots of mid-20th-century modern Paganism to provide the most complete collection of primary sources ever assembled for the modern Pagan revival.
Francis Young, Historian and Folklorist
More details
Person
Robin Douglas is a writer and researcher based in London, England. His academic background is in classical studies and history (PhD, Cambridge), and his work is on the history of esoteric and Pagan religious traditions from antiquity to the present day.