RR Patreon Tier 2 Groves of Orpheus with Peg Aloi: Contemporary Reception of Witchcraft and 'The Occult' in the USA

This month’s Patreon Tier 2 guest is Peg Aloi. Peg is a freelance film and TV critic, a former professor of media studies, and co-editor (with Hannah Sanders) of The New Generation Witches: Teenage Witchcraft in Contemporary Culture (Routledge) and Carnivale and the American Grotesque: Critical Essays on the HBO Series (Macfarland). With Hannah she also co-organized two scholarly conferences at Harvard University on paganism, witchcraft and media. Peg's forthcoming book The Witching Hour: How Witches Enchanted the World is a cultural analysis of the witch in contemporary media. Peg was also one of the co-founders of The Witches' Voice and wrote about film and TV for the site for over a decade. Her long-running blog "The Witching Hour" can now be found on Substack.

This conversation was inspired by a lecture in April of 2024 by Peg for The Last Tuesday Society called “The Satanic Panic: Its Roots and Branches,” that explored a number of disparate but often-related elements that converged to create the Satanic Panic of the 1980s and 90s, including Satanic-themed horror films. In this discussion, we pick up were Peg left off and explore how viewpoints surrounding Witchcraft and ‘The Occult’ have changed since that time until our present day. Peg talks about various instances within popular culture that have shown a shift in the ‘negative’ paradigm. This conversation spans several different areas, ranging from politics and society, education and scholarship, entertainment media, films and series, to magic and other ‘occult’ practices.

I hope you enjoy this as much as I did!

You can find the Full Episode with Peg Aloi at my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/RejectedReligion
The episode is also available for a one-time purchase.

PROGRAM NOTES

Mentioned by Peg:

Documentary Hail, Satan? https://youtu.be/27RtJp-rhHk?si=1IEizfm8d4xCVvV5 (trailer)

Agatha, All Along https://youtu.be/R9pXbNz6Vbw?si=WDEc8Q3Lb-92pNlB (trailer)

AHS: Coven https://youtu.be/ra8aQ-CfKVw?si=J9W74jUct4dNJcPm (trailer)

Film Realm of Satan https://youtu.be/7ANZCk97F7Y?si=L7rC4VStmYo_NkrL (trailer)

Find Peg Aloi here:

https://x.com/themediawitch

https://themediawitch.substack.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7lfIuXsQmI (Podcast)

Works:

https://www.amazon.com/New-Generation-Witches-Witchcraft-Contemporary/dp/0754657841

https://www.amazon.com/Carnivale-American-Grotesque-Critical-Essays/dp/0786448164

The Witching Hour: How Witches Enchanted the World (forthcoming)

Theme Music and Editing: Daniel P. Shea
End Production: Stephanie Shea