Ritual Authority in the Digital Age: Proof Regimes, Legitimacy, and the Recomposition of Wiccan Practice

This study tracks how ritual authority is recomposed when the conditions of its recognition shift. Wiccan practice in Montréal provides the empirical site: a community whose legitimacy structures were built on embodied co-presence, lineage, and initiatory transmission, now operating under digital circulation conditions that reward visibility over verified practice.

The governance dimension is not incidental. When proof regimes shift, the criteria for who counts as authoritative, what counts as evidence, and who controls the classification become contested and unstable. That instability is the object of analysis here — and the connection point to the broader governance method.