All of Them Witches (2022)

[bunniefuu]

Charlotte



Deborah



Suzanne



Deidre



Samantha



Rowan



Man: She's different

from the others.





Narrator: Double, double

toil and trouble,

fire burn and cauldron bubble,

filet of a fenny snake,

in the cauldron boil and bake.

Where did you learn

about witches?

Are you a good witch

or a bad witch?

Who me?

I'm not a witch at all.

Well, is that the witch?

Witch.

Tell me, what do you do

with witches?

All: Burn them!

Narrator: Witches have been

known to put fear

in the hearts of men.

I'm not here

to frighten you.

...and devour

little children.

Witches of England...

you're a disgrace!

We k*ll our husbands, too.

Where did you all come up

with these ideas?

Lisa:

If they're really witches,

why don't they use

their powers to escape?

That sounds like witch talk

to me.

I kept trying to tell you.

Narrator: The story is a lot

more complicated.

Witches aren't real,

you guys.

Occulus reparo.

Let me hear you scream

like a witch.

Narrator: We're real,

and we walk among you.



There's a pretty big spectrum

of what a witch can be.

Wife, queen, daughter, mistress.

Grossman:

She can be young and sexy,

but then she will seduce you

to sin.

Dorsey: You've got this image

of the witch as the crone,

wrinkly face.

Rose: I don't have to have

a witch's hat.

You know, I do have cauldrons.

I have many of them.

Yates Garcia:

I do my daily things.

I clean up after my cats.

I hate washing the dishes.

Rose: I have to drop my kids

off at school in the morning

and I, like, attend

parent-teacher meetings.

I'm part of my community

in all these different ways.

This is me.

Yates Garcia: A witch is someone

who stands on her own

and who's powerful.

Who wouldn't want to be one?

Dorsey: People respond to it

with a joke or, you know,

"I know another word

that rhymes with witch,

but it begins with a 'B.'"

Luna: "Are you gonna

put a spell on me?"

Or, "Are you gonna hex me

if we break up?"

And it's like, "Maybe."

Velasquez: Am I at home lighting

candles and burning stuff

so my crush

will fall in love with me?

Grossman:

Witches represent both our fears

and our fantasies

about feminine power.

Anybody that deviates

from this perfect,

maternal, beatific,

obedient woman

can be reframed as a winch.

Narrator:

Our journey has been long,

and the truth

will surprise you.





I was brought up practicing

witchcraft.

My mother is a witch.

She was resisting very

patriarchal culture and society

in the '50s.

She was finding her power

more and more when I was young,

and so I was

very influenced by that.

When I was 13 or, I think,

the first menstruation,

I had a coming-of-age ceremony

where all the women

from the coven came together,

and it was called

the Rite of Roses.

A coven is just

a group of friends

who practice witchcraft

together.

We sit in a circle and say,

all the women

in your family line

back as far as you can remember.

I am Amanda,

daughter of Lucinda,

daughter of Patricia,

daughter of Lila,

daughter of Mariana.

And then say,

"Daughter of she,"

meaning going back

to the beginning of time.

You dip the rose in the water,

and your mother

brushes it on your cheeks,

and then you take a walk in the

moonlight and do some chanting.

It's really about

coming into your power,

your beauty, your authority,

your eroticism,

and connecting with the other

women of your community.



Narrator: The pentacle may not

be what you think.

It represents harmony

with the elements,

a sign of magic and paganism.

Ward: Witchcraft is a form

of paganism,

and paganism, basically,

in its very ancient origins

had two particular aspects,

or forms, of worship.

One is nature and the other

is the divine feminine.

Grossman:

Paganism essentially says

we all have access to divinity

and that we don't

need a mediator.

It doesn't have one central text

or one church or temple

that you have to join.

We can just communicate

with the spirit world ourselves

because the spirit world

is everywhere.

For most witches,

we relate to the gods,

the goddesses, the divine,

more like forces of nature.



There are so many goddesses

in witchcraft --

Medea, Circe,

Melusina, Pythia,

and then you have Hecate,

who is a goddess

that has taken

many different forms

in many different cultures --

a goddess of childbirth,

a protector of women,

goddess of the moon.

One of the reasons

why witches of today love her

is because

she's a goddess of magic.

She finds power in the shadows.

Even in the dark,

she lights the way.

Her symbol is the key.

She is the guardian

of the threshold,

the liminal spaces

between the worlds.



Grossman: The figure

of the witch in literature

and in oral stories

was derived

from goddesses and fairies

and all of these

other mythological beings

who had immense power

and who were feminine

and who were lauded

just as much as the male

or more masculine gods

and figures, too.

But as politics evolved,

as, frankly,

men gained more and more power

in society

and in culture-making overall,

these goddesses, these fairies,

these priestesses

seem to lose status

in their society.

Yates Garcia: When the

Holy Roman empire took over

and Christianity started

to dominate all of Europe,

Hecate was turned into a demon,

a demonic figure,

a goddess of hell.

She was turned into a hag,

a crone, an old woman,

as if that's the worst thing

that could happen to you,

as if that in itself

is horrifying.



Ward: Witchcraft

for most of human history

has been antithetical

to Christianity,

often seen as allied

to some kind of demonic power,

and so the church hierarchy

saw it as a threat

to their position and power.

Grossman: The church popularized

the notion

that anybody who was not

Christian

was going to hell,

that you were

on the path of sin,

that you were diabolical,

and, yes, that can be people who

we might consider to be pagan.

It's Jewish people,

it's Indigenous people,

it's people who are practicing

the religions of Africa.

It's anybody that has not been

converted yet.

The other piece of the witch's

story is around medicine

and specifically around

reproductive care.

Yates Garcia: Giving birth,

you had midwives --

this group of women who learned

about plants and medicine

and healing,

from the common cold

to a heartbreak.

Narrator: Europe sees a new age

in medical science

from the 1400s to the 1700s,

but only men are allowed

into their universities.

Midwives are eyed with mistrust,

and we are about to be hunted.



Grossman: In ancient Greece

and ancient Rome,

there were also always figures,

often women,

who you would go to

and you could procure

some kind of herbal

or botanical magic from them,

and this is what I consider

to be a service magician.

These people sometimes

were respected,

sometimes were considered

a bit dangerous,

but it's kind of

the precursor to chemistry,

to the field of medicine.

Yates Garcia: The word witch

means person of knowledge,

means wise one,

but then over time,

that word transformed

into something

that was an insult.

Grossman:

At the end of the 15th century,

we see the advent

of the printing press,

and one of

the most popular things

for these presses to print

are what we call

witch-hunting manuals.

One of the most famous books

that comes out is called

the "Malleus Maleficarum,"

or the "Witches Hammer."

This book is written by

Jacob Sprenger

and a religious zealot

named Heinrich Kramer.

Kramer is involved

in a witch trial,

which he loses against

a group of women.

And he then writes this book,

the "Hammer of Witches."

Narrator:

The "Malleus Maleficarum"

weaponizes the printed

manuscript against witches...

...and therefore against women.

You're promiscuous

and that's evil,

and you're wicked,

so you're a witch.

So you would be k*lled

as a witch then.

You're k*lled if you're ugly.

You're k*lled

if you're beautiful.

There's no winning.

The "Malleus Maleficarum"

is printed and disseminated

throughout Western Europe.

Berger: And so that book

became essential

in terms of demonology

in the West,

the notion that the devil

is active in the world

and gathering helpers,

and those helpers

are called witches.

Tell how you tempt us

with pretty things.

Tell how you suckle the snake.

-Tell!

-Tell!

When you say the word witchcraft

in the United States,

most people immediately think of

the Salem witch trials in 1692.

Period of about nine months,

there was widespread

moral panic.

Basically, anybody could be

accused of witchcraft --

children accusing their mothers

or their fathers and vice versa.

Grossman: I think

one of the reasons that Salem

has captured

a lot of our imaginations

is that the center

of that story is young girls.

Narrator: Since 1953,

Arthur Miller's

Tony Award-winning play

"The Crucible"...

But they're speaking

of witchcraft.

...has been performed

on stages and screens

by scores of young women.You drank a charm to k*ll

John Proctor's wife!

Miller's play would use

the real Salem witch trials

as the basis of his allegory

about McCarthyism,

but he casts

his Abigail Williams

as a devious home wrecker

when in real life,

Abigail was only 11.

Grossman:

"The Crucible" re-popularized

the Salem witch trials,

but in real life,

what happened in Salem

is a less sensationalist story

than the one that Arthur Miller

told in "The Crucible,"

which is super sexualized.

Witch!

Ward: There were 19 people

that were hung.

14 of those were women

and 5 of them were men.

And two dogs were

ex*cuted for witchcraft.

Burn the witch.

But, in fact,

no one was actually

burned to death in Salem.

People were hung.

People were pressed to death

with heavy stones.

And the loss of life

was horrific,

but we're talking

a couple dozen people,

as opposed to

the tens of thousands of people

that were k*lled, you know,

throughout Western Europe.

The witch hunts are sometimes

called the Burning Times

because many, many people were

burned in the public square

and would often burn to death

or asphyxiate.

Particularly in England,

there are also some tests

if one is accused

of being a witch.

You might prick them with a pin

and see if the wound bleeds.

You might put them in water

with chains or weights

on their body

and see if they drown.

If the person drowns,

"Oh, I guess they weren't

a witch after all,"

so it's a real

lose-lose situation.

Now, were these women

actually witches?

Most of the research suggests

that the women who were k*lled

were innocents.

And it was a crime that was

almost impossible to disprove.

Many of the accusations

had to do with dreams.

There was spectral evidence.

For example, King James --

the first of England,

the sixth of Scotland --

he and his new bride

from Denmark

were hit by a terrible storm.

They were crossing from Denmark

back to Scotland

and almost died in a shipwreck.

He had a dream in which

he thought he had been cursed.

He then became convinced

of witchcraft.

Narrator: King James,

obsessed with witchcraft,

convicts the village's

eldest midwife, Agnes Sampson.

Shaven, tied, and tortured,

the devil's mark

is found on her body.

Agnes confesses.

She tells a lurid tale

of meeting demons

with other witches

on Halloween night

to curse the king in front

of hundreds of spectators.

Berger: When somebody admits

something under t*rture,

we know that

they often tell lies.

They'll say anything.

And so she was k*lled for it.

In Scotland,

witches were burnt on the stake,

so she was burnt.

Grossman:

The witch hunts as we know them

are not one unified event.

Scholars believe between

50,000 and 100,000 people

were k*lled

during the witch hunts,

which is a genocide.

Narrator: The legacy

of the witch trials never dies

and lives on

to take shape in the new world.



Man: Beautiful Haiti --

well made the veil of paradise.

Yet as I penetrated deeper

into the jungle,

I saw that

which few white men ever see,

the cult of the voodoo.



Nwokocha:

The way that we perceive

any African-derived

religious traditions

has a lot to do with

when the U.S. occupied Haiti

from 1915 to 1934.

The Haitian president

was assassinated,

and the U.S. president,

Woodrow Wilson,

wanted to "help"

with the economic and financial

stability of Haiti.

They brought in Marines,

journalists, anthropologists

that came to Haiti

to understand

what the people

and the communities are like.

There were journal articles,

books, early films

that talked about

the religious tradition

from a very voyeuristic,

white-supremacist notion.

Man: The cult of voodoo

embodies the worship

and fear of devil God.

Nwokocha: They basically called

voodoo demonic,

and they demonized

the religious tradition.



The way we think about zombies,

the way that we understand

the Vodou,

stems from this time.



You start to hear

this talk about zombies,

especially from around

the '30s, the '40s,

this kind of

Hollywood conception

with films like "White Zombie."

Man:

Haiti, land of the Voodoo.

Dorsey: ...where you've got

this exoticized other.

Zombie!

Dorsey: I think that

the zombie myth really sort of

grew out of the fact

that there were puffer fish

that were native

to the Haitian waters

that also caused

temporary paralysis.

And when somebody was being

a bad person in society --

somebody who might be

harmful to children,

somebody who might be

stealing from their neighbor --

they couldn't always necessarily

have the recourse

of an honest and just

and helpful police force.

This combination

of animal medicines, of herbs,

would simulate paralysis,

and people would maybe

think they're dead.

And then they would be moved

to a different town

or a different part

of the area,

and then they wouldn't be

an issue anymore.

And it was not

this flesh-eating thing

that it's turned into now.



Ramnes.

Ah!

For the most part,

Hollywood gets everything wrong

about voodoo.

It is vilified.

It's demonized.

I think that a lot of people

associate

the traditional voodoo doll,

or hoodoo doll, with pins in it

as being an integral part

of the religion,

when the reality of it is

it doesn't have anything to do

with the religion.

In other systems of witchcraft,

mainly European witchcraft

where you build a poppet

and then you can perform

sympathetic magic with that --

people took that

and turned it into,

"If I stab someone in the foot

with a pin on their doll,

then maybe their foot

will hurt."

And this isn't something

that came from Africa

or African diasporan people

at all.



I wish people would know

that witchcraft and voodoo

aren't necessarily dark

or shady or shifty.

Out of a need

to protect itself,

not all the secrets

were revealed.

For a lot of us,

it really was a situation

where we were persecuted.

Nwokocha: When we think about

transatlantic sl*very,

this is a forced migration

from west and central Africa,

from Nigeria, from Benin,

from Angola, from the Congo.

They brought with them

their religion.

They brought

with them their beliefs.

Many of our ancestors

were enslaved,

and so we believe

that their survival

was wrapped up

in their knowledge of healing.

Nwokocha:

Haitian Vodou is derived

from many

African indigenous peoples.

Then Hoodoo is another tradition

about root work and conjure.

Voodoo has its origins

in Haitian Vodou,

but is actually practiced

in New Orleans.

But imagine, voodoo is --

it's a worldview.

It's a way of knowing.

Not only is it a belief system,

it is a way of how you orient

yourself in the world.

Dorsey: There are several

wonderful rituals

and ceremonies

that actually are a part

of the practice of voodoo

and hoodoo,

and very often they're

centered around healing,

not just healing an individual,

but healing the community.

My name is Lilith Dorsey,

and I'm a voodoo priestess

and author.

My practice is primarily

New Orleans voodoo-based,

and that involves

honoring the ancestors

and honoring the spirits

of New Orleans.

Her name was Marie.

She did

all that old voodoo stuff

for all them rich folks

down there in New Orleans.

Marie Laveau is the most popular

voodoo queen ever.

Voodoo lady named Marie

Dorsey:

They've been singing that song

for at least 100 years.

I said, Marie Laveau

I said, Marie Laveau,

you lovely witch

Why don't you give me

a little...

It is said

that she died in 1881.

She was a hairdresser,

and she would do the hair

of all these rich people

and learn all their secrets,

be their confidant,

and then

when she wanted something,

leverage that information

to help the disenfranchised

people of the city.

It is said that

she used to visit prisoners

and make them some sort of

spiritual psychedelic gumbo

that she would feed them,

which I think is fantastic.

And she was the first person

that did public magic ritual

in New Orleans at Congo Square,

at the Bayou St. John,

and other sites

around New Orleans,

and those were attended

by people of all races,

people of all classes.

People think of her

as this personification of evil

when, in reality, she used to

go to church every week,

that the reason we know

what we know about her today

is because

a lot of the information

was kept by the archdiocese.

She wasn't the first voodoo

queen and she wasn't the last,

but she was certainly

the most powerful.



Berger: Magic is a power,

like electricity.

It could be used for positive

or negative goals.

It's very real for the people

who experience it.

Whether that experience

is with Christ,

with God, with the goddess,

they've been transformed by it.

Traditionally,

tarot is thought of

as being divination

or being able

to peer into the future.

In my own life,

my tarot practice has been

a way for me

to connect to my intuition.

There's a lot of candle magic

that I do.

There's a lot of spell craft

that I do.

Cauldrons have a whole host

of connections

which are really meaningful

for witches.

It's a place where things mix,

where elements combine,

where things change shape and

change form in a nourishing way.

Velasquez:

There's a lot of shape-shifting

things that you can do.

And, I mean, in my case,

I'm from L.A.

I've had a little bit of work

done as well, like, you know,

on my face here and there,

so I also have shape shifted

in my own way.

You know?

Dorsey: I know a witch

that used to have a cat box

outside the front door,

and she would make people

stand in it

before they entered the house.

I always thought

that was beautiful.

It was like

a decontamination station.

I love roses because

it's such tender,

compassionate, divine,

feminine energy.

It protects the heart

because roses also have thorns.

Gottesdiener:

I have had times when I've

pulled the Five of Cups,

which generally has a person

crying and they're very sad.

And I was depressed as f*ck,

and I was like,

"Thank you, tarot,

for seeing me."

Luna: I love love spells.

I love healing spells.

I like things that make people

feel confident

and feel good about themselves.

I love magic

that has to do with love

and feeling happy,

feeling sexy.

Sometimes it can backfire.

Sometimes it'll absolutely

blow up in your face.

Don't be out here, like,

putting out negative energy

because there's always

that rule, right?

Never mind the Power of Three,

what you do will

come back to thee.

Berger: Magic tends to be

more empowering.

You think of yourself

as not a supplicant,

but as a participant.

Berger: For most witches,

they see themselves

as in connection

with the goddess,

sometimes with

their own ancestors,

and so magic is part

of a spiritual world.

Luna: When we think

about women in witchcraft,

you know,

there's a long history.

Witches have existed

on every continent.

Regardless

of if you call yourself a witch

or a healer or a seer,

this innate power

has been gifted to us.





Dorsey:

Feminine power has always

been an important component,

especially

in New Orleans Voodoo.

They held the tradition --

not only held

the Creole language,

held the knowledge of the herbs,

the cooking, the child rearing,

things that were

very integral to society,

very integral

to everybody succeeding

and remembering

where they came from.

I picture the women

in my family --

my abuelas,

my tas,my primas,

and how protective

they are of me.

You don't know the women

in my lineage.

Like, we don't f*ck around,

and they're not gonna

let their g*y grandkid, like,

go through some sh*t, you know?

Rose: I started to, like,

seek out those people

who had their wisdom

of their grandmothers

and their grandfathers

and say to them,

"Do you remember this plant?

Do you remember how your grandma

used to use this plant?"

And it was like their whole face

would light up.

"Oh, she'd give it to me, like,

when I was having cramps."

"She'd give it to me

when I couldn't sleep."

"She'd give it to me for a bath

for protection.

And I'm like, "My grandmother

did the same thing."

I come from lots of different

facets of spirituality.

I grew up with certain portions

of my family

who practice variations

of folk magic.

I grew up with other portions

of my family

that practiced hoodoo

or conjure.

I've learned a lot

from my grandmothers,

and having magic

within my blood,

within my family,

it's who I am.

It's just my essence.

Ward: Both men and women

have practiced witchcraft

throughout human history,

but women don't get

the same prestige or power

and generally work

in the shadows.

Men have gotten more prestige

and have been given more credit

for what they're doing.



Yates Garcia: If you think about

most of the spiritual traditions

or religious traditions

of the world,

most of them are not

made in the image of women...

...whereas witchcraft,

the people who are making it,

who are writing

the books about it,

who are practicing it,

are literally feminists.

An interesting thing happens

in the 20th century.

Certain scholars, like a woman

named Margaret Murray,

wrote several books positing

that there was a witch cult

that existed in Western Europe

and that during the witch hunts,

she believed,

a lot of the confessions

of those who were accused

of being witches

were actually somewhat true.

Someone who's quoted a lot

is a woman named Isobel Gowdie,

because she has

this very elaborate,

fantastical, fantasmagorical

confession.

She talks about

not only being a witch,

but describes in detail

the sabbats,

or the meetings of witches,

that she would engage in,

and she essentially details

what we now refer to today

as being a coven --

12 people who would meet

and then one person

overseeing the coven

as a priest or a priestess.

Margaret Murray takes

this confession of Isobel Gowdie

to be 100% literal.

As romantic as that idea is,

it has been since kind of

picked apart by scholars.

Margaret Murray is considered

a pretty controversial figure.

However, when her books

came out,

there were many people

who were thrilled by them,

the most prominent one being

a man named Gerald Gardner.

He took a lot of

Margaret Murray's ideas,

and he ran with them.

Narrator:

In England, in 1951,

Gerald Gardner forms his own

coven made of 13 members.

He designs a hierarchy

and creates

secret initiations and rituals.

This new religion

is called Wicca.

There's eight major holidays

within Wicca,

the Wheel of the Year,

or the eight sabbats.

What regularly is celebrated

is death.

It's seen as needed and good

for renewal,

particularly

in Celtic countries.

Samhain was a traditional

holiday prior to Christianity,

and it always involved the dead

returning from the beyond.

The dead were said to come

that night,

and you wanted to appease them

because you don't want, really,

to piss off the dead,

right, who have special powers.

This holiday became known

as Halloween.

Man: Sweeping the crossroads

near his home in Castletown,

we found a self-professed witch,

Dr. G.B. Gardner.

Placing the dust in a shoe

is done to simulate

sweeping away bad luck.



Grossman:

In Gerald Gardner's coven,

he had both a man

who was kind of a stand-in

for the Horned God.

He would also have

a high priestess,

and the high priestess

was actually the one

who was really in charge,

and there was a lot of ritual

around goddess worship,

doing spells, doing rituals,

raising energy.

Berger:

But Gardner was not a feminist.

When the high priestess

started to get old,

Gardner said, "She's out."

The high priestess

has to be young and pretty.

He used ancient witchcraft

beliefs and practices,

but also a lot of the writings

and beliefs

and practices

of Aleister Crowley,

who is considered to be

a magician,

mystic, poet, novelist.

On the one hand, Crowley

was a proponent of witchcraft

and empowerment

of those not in power.

But on the other hand,

he was also into

the black-magic aspect --

revenge, retribution,

consequences, fighting against

the powers that be.

There's an aspect

of youth rebellion.

Amongst Aleister Crowley's

followers, it's a long list --

Black Sabbath, AC/DC,

The Beatles

with "Sergeant Pepper's."

Crowley is on the cover

of the album.

If you want to become a Wiccan

or a witch,

you join a coven,

you join a group.

And there's supposed to be

secrets that no one shares,

and you're supposed to be

initiated into the secrets.

But what happens to the religion

when it comes to America?

It's the 1960s,

and there's a growth

of all sorts of change, right?

There's protest movements

against the Vietnam w*r,

for g*y rights, civil rights

for African Americans...

More power to the people!

Berger:

...and of course feminism.

Man: The women of America

are marching.

Women have caught onto the game.

You have a lot of options.

You can be somebody's wife.

You can be somebody's mother.

You can be somebody's lover.

You can be somebody's anything,

but you can't be somebody.

Grossman: During the second wave

of feminism,

women, of course,

are trying to have autonomy

over their own bodies.

They are trying to get

economic equality.

We see a renewed interest

in the figure of the witch.

Berger:

Forget that the high priestess

has to be

traditionally beautiful.

Forget that the high priestess

has to be young.

Forget all that.

And witchcraft

started to spread.

Ma'am, what is the organization,

W.I.T.C.H., here?

The initials W.I.T.C.H.

stand for

the Women's International

t*rror1st Conspiracy from Hell.

It strides along with

the Women's Liberation Movement.

Woman: Witches materialize at

demonstrations just to harass.

Berger:

This was political theater,

but they started to get out

the word "witch."

Why did they take witch?

It's sort of in your face.

And for many of these women,

in your face

was exactly what they wanted.

Women are reclaiming names

that have been used against them

and they're saying,

"Yes, that's who we are

and we're proud of it."

Grossman:

You have these women

who kind of braid together

the politics of the time

and the spirituality of Wicca.

There starts to be

a feminist witchcraft.

Zsuzanna Budapest,

who's in California --

she changes it,

makes it feminist,

only the goddess,

only the high priestess.

You have an NPR journalist

named Margot Adler,

and she's so entranced

by these groups

and moved by these groups

that she ends up

becoming a Wiccan

high priestess herself.

They're showing that

our spirituality is political,

that the stories we tell,

the rituals that we develop,

the spells we cast,

that they are fluid,

and that if we so choose,

we can elevate the feminine

and kind of remake

our own spiritual systems

into systems that serve us

and honor marginalized people

who often get dishonored

or pushed aside

in a lot of the world's

largest religions.



Grossman: So if you look

at images of witches,

they're often shown

riding broomsticks.

They're also sometimes shown

riding cooking forks

or any simple domestic object

they can fly.

In the '70s,

a writer named Michael Harner

put forth this theory

that perhaps the reason

that we associate witches

and broomsticks

is that these women were taking

these hallucinogenic herbs,

rubbing them on the heads

of broomsticks

and then inserting them

into their orifice

in order to get that

contact high all the quicker.

As you can imagine,

a lot of people love this idea

and have really gotten

carried away with the idea

that witches were just,

you know, ladies

who were masturbating

with hallucinogenic dildos.

Narrator: We are done being

defined and defamed.

We are the only ones

who can call ourselves witch.

A witch is someone who stands

on her own and who's powerful

and who the status quo

is afraid of.

Witchcraft is growing in appeal,

especially now, I believe,

because that it is

all about empowerment.

I absolutely adore Rachel True

in "The Craft."

So many of us didn't get to see

a Black witch

until we saw her face.

In 1986, most witches were in

what they call the broom closet.

What we saw in the 1990s --

"Charmed,"

the "Harry Potter" series --

and directly after that there

was an increase of searches

about witchcraft online.

Along comes the Internet,

and you have people

who are emboldened to start

sharing who they actually are,

and it's really helped

to destigmatize

the practice of witchcraft

and to show us

that there are others like us,

and that there's

a whole community out there

that we can connect to

and plug into.

And absolutely,

witches can be any gender.

Is there a difference between

the masculine and the feminine?

Absolutely.

Is there a mixture

of the non-binary magic

or non-conforming magic?

Absolutely, for sure.

Because we have TikTok,

we have WitchTok.

What you see is this growth

of individuation.

I think they're serious

about their witchcraft.

They're serious

about their practice.

And I think it's very easy

to discount the young,

but I think it's an error.



Grossman: The witch knows

that this is her time,

and the witch knows

that she can truly help

elevate humanity.

Narrator: The world will see

what they wish to see,

and we remain all them witches.

We.



The circle is open,

yet unbroken

May the peace of the goddess

be ever in our hearts

Merry meet and merry part

And merry meet again











Younger woman:

Do you know this place?

Older woman: It's the old

Mayfair house.

Younger woman: What do you

know about it?

Older woman: Murders,

disappearances.

But really, that house is famous

for its witches.

What?

In darkness

Tell me about

Daniel Lemle.

His death had nothing

to do with me.

But you were there.

I don't understand anything

that's happening.

Man: The Talamasca exist to

investigate the, um,

unexplained.

We're assigned to observe

the Mayfairs.

Your gift is the strongest thing

I've ever felt.

Do all the Mayfairs have...

"gifts"?

There is something --

a being --

he's connected

with your family.

Man: He can take

different forms.



He might start to visit you.





You're my lucky charm

Woman:

The devil comes in many forms.

Woman: Redeem her soul from

evil, o, Lord!

Man: Here's the power

that's rightly yours.



Are you frightened

of you?

Shouldn't I be?

He serves you,

not the other way around.



Man: You know you're special,

don't you?

Can you feel it?