In this article I intend to analyze the processes by which Pagan identity is formed and expressed by Israeli Pagan women, when attending ‘Women’s Spirituality’ festivals and workshops in Israel. As such it will deal with the complexities of identifying oneself as a (Jewish-born) Pagan in Israel, the nation state of the Jewish people. By doing so it will also hopefully contribute to research on the politics of identity in Israeli New Religious Movements, and more generally – in Israeli society at large. The findings I will present here are part of a wider and ongoing study of the Israeli Pagan community, which is intended to be the first book-length research to focus on Contemporary Paganism in Israel. In this article I will claim that the unique connections between (Jewish) religion and the state in Israel,coupled with the country’s distinct Jewish character, create a situation in which – unlike their North American and Western European sisters – Israeli Pagan women generally find it difficult to express their Pagan identity when participating in Israeli Women’s Spirituality festivals and workshops. This in turn contributes to a consolidation of a Pagan identity separate from the wider Israeli New Age scene.

It this article I would like to explore the rise of what can be called “the utilitarian self” in the contemporary spirituality arena in Israel. This social reality, which has its origins in the religious field of late nineteenth century America, is in Judaic social circles quite a recent development, and began to play a significant role in contemporary Israeli spirituality only since the 1990’s. I would like to suggest that the proliferation of certain Neo-Kabbalah and Neo-Hasidic movements since the 1990’s is indicative of its rise. By examining these we can better understand the utilitarian self, which lies in their background and which presents thecultural conditions for their popularity.I will therefore present a few typical examples of the utilitarian self’s manifestation in Israel, and will then try to clarify the socio-cultural reasons for its prevalence at this time. Let us start, however, with a description of the subject matter. The utilitarian self, I propose, is a particular hybrid of the Romantic spirit and Enlightenment rationalism, joined together by means of capitalist instrumental reason. It represents the current fascination with finding ways – indeed methods or techniques – which allow one to actualize and exercise her or his “hidden” or “unrealized” capabilities in order to undergo an inner transformation and maximize the external conditions of her or his life.

In 2012, the Church of Scientology’s Mission in Haifa, Israel, defected from the Church and reestablished itself as the independent Dror Center. The precipitatingevent was a critical email sent by high-ranking Scientologist Debbie Cook to her contacts throughout the Scientology world. The core of her critique was that theChurch was in decline – a decline she attributed to policies that deviated from guidelines set forth by Scientology’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard. The present paperanalyzes the current legitimation crisis within the Church of Scientology through the twin lenses of the Cook letter and the Haifa schism.

The present article proposes that the notion of forgery be incorporated as an analytic category within religious studies. Following a brief outline of three key periods of religious studies, the factors that have made researchers hesitant to deal with the topic are examined. Religious forgeries are then discussed in terms of different parameters, such as the age of the fabrication, the extent of the forgery and the mode of revelation. With the exception of forgeries created simply for “the fun of it,” religious document forgeries are motivated by the desire to legitimate the authority of certain opinions, systems of religious ideas, and/or the forger. For the most part, the people who manufacture sacred forgeries are not cynical or sinister. Rather, many religious forgers produce documents expressing ideas in which they really do believe and which they hope to promote via their fabrications.

This essay argues against the idea, frequently advanced by contemporary anti- and counter-cult writers, that the appearance of new religious movements in the last few decades is unprecedented. It shows that claim to be less a statement of fact than a rhetorical device that has been used frequently throughout history to incite and exacerbate fears about new religious groups that are perceived to be threatening to the status quo. It traces significant rhetorical and substantial continuities in the polemic against new religions not only to earlier American history in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries but also to the second and third centuries in the ancient Mediterranean world, where early Christian groups were subjected to the same types of criticisms as contemporary “cults.”

The tantric yoga organization MISA (Movement for Spiritual Integration in Absolute) has become one of the most successful European yoga schools. The teachings of MISA present a doctrine of synthesis wherein elements from Orthodox Christianity, esoteric Traditionalism, conspiracy theories, and New Age ideas are combined with Tantric philosophy and practice. The present paper presents (1) an exposition of the political intrigues and agendas surrounding the movement, and (2) the teachings of MISA as they appear in the outer and inner circles of the movement, taking the case of their Danish headquarters as an illustrative example.

Opinion surveys and media representations demonstrate the unpopularity of the Church of Scientology and its members, which is out of proportion to the group’s size or influence. Members have been persecuted and shunned in the United States and Europe. Monster theory, a form of critical theory that proposes that our monsters describe and circumscribe us, is used as a framework to evaluate the irrational side of this unpopularity. Monster theory identifies hybridity and boundary-crossing as hallmarks of monstrosity. While not arguing that members of these groups are in fact monsters, it is proposed that both hallmarks are found in New Religions Movements (NRMs) in general, but in Scientology to a greater degree. Scientology transgresses not only the borders of established religion, but also science, medicine, and psychiatry, foundation of the modern legal system and the secular state. While actual legal transgressions by the group’s leadership are acknowledged, it is argued that these are largely in the past and that residual antipathy has more to do with the group’s perceived “monstrosity” than with actual acts.

Nordic religion in the US takes the form of Heathenry, or Norse Paganism. Ranging from formal organizations like Asatru to eclectic mixes of Norse lore and Wiccan practice, Heathenry is a dynamic construction of Nordic religious and cultural identity in the midst of an increasingly ethnically pluralistic society. The present article provides ethnographic sketches of Heathen paths in Minnesota—a state notable for its large historically Scandinavian/Germanic cultural makeup—and explores how Heathenry is a way for Minnesotans to re-identify and redefine Nordic culture and identity in American terms.

The present paper surveys the NRMs and New Spirituality/New Age (NS/NA) that have arrived and/or emerged in Estonia after the collapse on the Soviet Union. During the Soviet period, Estonia became a spiritual center for some of the NRMs operating in the Soviet Union. At the same time, the esoteric and spiritual scene during that period laid foundations for the acceptance of the NS/NA in present day Estonia. The discussion focuses on general trends concerning the NRM and NS/NA in contemporary Estonia, and also on responses from state, society, media, and mainstream religions to the NRM and NS/NA.

Beginning in the late 1950s what was to become the Church of Scientology in Australia had become a topic of public concern. In response to a highly critical report issued by an official Board of Inquiry in the State of Victoria, held over the course of 1963-1964 under the auspices of Kevin Victor Anderson Q.C., state governments in Victoria (1965), Western Australia (1968) and South Australia (1969) passed legislation to restrict the activities of Scientologists. This legislation proved controversial and largely ineffective and was eventually repealed in all three state jurisdictions. This article provides a preliminary account of the circumstances that occasioned the original Board of Inquiry and the background and parliamentary debates surrounding each piece of legislation. Utilizing archival documents and public records this article examines how this controversial legislation passed into law and how Scientology initially responded to attempts to curtail its activities. The article concludes with a brief account of the circumstances surrounding the repeals of the legislation in Western Australia (1973), South Australia (1974) and finally in Victoria (1982).

Several recent and high-profile mainstream publications have foregrounded the matter of sexuality in their narration of life in Scientology. This paper, focusing on works by Lawrence Wright, Kate Bornstein and Jenna Miscavige-Hill, discusses the deployment of sexuality in their respective narratives, along with some brief speculation as to why this deployment in useful in the context of explaining engagement with Scientology to a non-specialist audience. Sexuality, I conclude, is widely accepted as a lever with sufficient power to explain the titanic personal realignment required of those who wish to either become Scientologists or to shed said identity in public view. As Foucault would have, modern constructions of personal truth rely on sexuality for their mystery and truthfulness – it is these two elements, I contend, that make the concept ideal fodder for popular ex-Scientologist biography.

The issue of Scientology and the media is in some ways an extension of the discussion of Scientology and controversy, and in other ways not. James R. Lewis’s “Scientology vs. the Media” surveys the larger question. In some ways, the Church of Scientology is but a case study of the larger media controversy surrounding new religions in general. From another perspective, Scientology’s Guardians Office was a uniquely vicious agency that, in the name of protecting the Church, ended up providing the basis for yet harsher criticisms. For many years, the Church of Scientology kept up a sustained attack against hostile outsiders. But it was with the emergence of the Internet that the Church of Scientology finally met its Waterloo.

This article does a scientific and critical examination of three polls commissioned by the Interministerial Mission for Monitoring and Fighting Cultic Drifts (MIVILUDES) to the national firm IPSOS, between 2010 and 2011. Since numbers are a frequently-used weapon from both sides of the “war against cults,” this article analyzes the “anti-cult arithmetic” through a particular case. First, it explores IPSOS’s methodology. Second, it wonders about MIVILUDES’s presupposed expectations and the relevance of its technical terminology towards the respondents. Third, it shows that most of the polls’ results invalidate the Mission’s urgent call to protect French citizens from cults. Additionally, still third, it points out the Mission expects to build its own existence upon the results by outnumbering them and by rephrasing the polls. Finally, this article offers a conceptualization of outnumbering, which is a frequent rhetorical tool regarding cults in general.

This article surveys major developments in the history and especially theology of the Church of Scientology from 1959 to 1967. During this period, Scientology’s founder L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986) transitioned the international ecclesiastical headquarters from Washington, D.C. to London and then East Grinstead, where in 1959 he purchased Saint Hill Manor. Although he traveled extensively during this period, “Saint Hill”—as it is internally known—became his main base of operations and as a result the center of the Scientology world. There, Hubbard developed and codified several features of what may be assembled and viewed as a nascent systematic theology. These primarily concern anthropology, education, sin, and evil in ways that influenced the orthopraxy of Scientology into the early history of the Sea Organization (founded in 1967) and continue to be lived realities for Scientologists to present day.

“Scientology v. the Internet” references the Church of Scientology’s ongoing struggle with Internet activists and users who attempt to access, disseminate, or modify copyrighted and trademarked church documents online. Since the mid 1990s the Church of Scientology has attempted to use copyright and trademarks to secure their sacred esoteric teachings, but Internet activists have argued that these policies transgress good “Netizen” etiquette and threaten the architecture of the digital platform as a space for the radical access and dissemination of information. This article seeks to revisit Scientology v. the Internet by highlighting the changing imagination of information within the Scientology tradition itself. While L. Ron Hubbard and the Church of Scientology maintain a Cold War era conceptualization of information as discrete data that is in need of control (because of the threat of entropy and misuse), recent calls from Independent Scientologists to “open source” the “tech” reflect greater cultural shifts that have begun to reimagine information as a process that carries along with it an emphasis on the values of open access, modification, and distribution. The tension between these two competing imaginations of information continues to fuel the Church of Scientology’s struggles online; while at the heart of “Open Source Scientology” lies a double movement of preservation and alteration that is intimately bound with narratives of authenticity.

Previous studies of contemporary Slavic Paganism in Russia—Rodnoverie—agree that nationalism is one of the central features of the movement. While in the West nationalism and conservatism are often assumed to be predominantly linked to right-wing politics, in Russia they also manifest themselves in in the framework of leftist political thinking. This article introduces several case studies of Rodnoverie groups and thinkers that illustrate the myriad ways in which conservative nationalism and leftist ideology are amalgamated into the movement. Some Rodnovers identify as leftist, but promote flagrantly nationalist and ultra-conservative ideas. Others—who draw sharp divisions between “us” and “them” on a national or ethnic basis, subscribe to conservative and pro-authoritarian ideas, and distinguish themselves from the political left—may still resort to such traditional leftist themes as social justice and economic equality. The analysis demonstrates that Rodnoverie societal thinking reflects the Soviet legacy, but also resembles contemporary European populism.