11 - Czech Neopagan Movements and Leaders

Summary

PERSPECTIVE AND BACKGROUND

Given that the background of the scholar significantly influences her inter interpretation, it is ethical to reveal this to the reader and to reflect how the position of the scholar guides her analysis. Therefore, I begin my discussion with a short outline of my professional path to the study of Neopaganism, but also as a Neopagan leader myself.

I followed my father's footsteps into the Institute of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the Charles University in Prague. Though the institute was mainly oriented toward historical topics, I was more interested in Neopaganism, New Age, and contemporary alternative movements, and specialized in the study of these phenomena. At that stage, my research was indeed quite independent or even isolated. Nevertheless, I managed to accomplish a thesis on health and healing in Neopaganism (2008), and some popular and academic writings about these topics. A turning point in my study was a Reuropa conference in Szeged in 2008, where I met other scholars studying similar topics in other countries. I also got an invitation to speak in Krakow at a conference dedicated to Neopaganism in Poland. For me, these two events opened a new field of possible methodologies. I was particularly impressed by some anthropological studies and started to employ a more anthropological approach, discarding the sociological framework I had applied earlier. At the same time, I postponed the processing of the questionnaire data I have collected for years and began to gather other kinds of material, such as oral histories.