ABSTRACT
The threads of religion and popular culture have been woven together by a number of scholars drawing on the role of ritual, belief and the sacred as present within fandoms. The correspondences between the two phenomena are so frequently pointed out that Sean McCloud has called it a case of “parallelomania”, and has suggested a focus on identity formation rather than religiosity as a more fruitful endeavour (McCloud 2003: 188). Indeed, Adam Possamai, discussing the creation of “hyper-real religions” through the infusion of cultural products with religious meaning, emphasises that we should concentrate on “why and how some social actors nd a spiritual/religious meaning in a popular piece of work and what they do with it” (Possamai 2007: 22). This chapter aims to add one more thread to this rich tapestry by investigating how the personal spiritual narratives of certain women have been formed through their descriptions of metaphysical yet sensual encounters with their supernatural idols. Case studies will be drawn from two distinct contexts – medieval Christendom and modern fandom – both in vastly different circumstances, yet with some striking similarities. How women from each have confronted the patriarchal norms of the male-dominated arenas of Christian theology and the geek subculture respectively, and articulated through confessional, autobiographical writing (historically, a man’s technology) a sense of sacred selfhood, is the focus of this discussion. The effectiveness, even perhaps the necessity, of creative engagements with cultural products, from Jesus mythology to videogame worlds, for marginalised gures like women to craft a meaningful ontological and theological understanding of the world and their place in it will be demonstrated.1
