Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explains paint Maltese Paganism in its cultural context, relating it both to the local mainstream culture in which it is situated and to contemporary Paganism globally. It introduces the wider socio-cultural context of Malta and explains how came to be studying Witches in the most Catholic of societies. The syncretism of pre-Christian and Christian traditions in both countries has continued through to the present in the celebration of local festivals, and there is a fairly comfortable slippage between Pagans gods and goddesses and Catholic saints. Most studies of contemporary Paganism have been conducted in societies which are predominantly Protestant and increasingly secular and the ways in which Pagan identities are constructed in these contexts have come to be taken implicitly as normative. Jenny Butler's study of Neo-Paganism in Ireland, also a strongly Catholic society.