Witches aren’t going anywhere after Halloween
After a long, tortured history, society just might finally be ready to embrace them
Witches are having a cultural moment and not just because it’s Halloween.
What is a Witch, an illuminated manifesto on witchcraft, is but one of Toronto’s many occultural offerings that attempts to explain this magic in the air. Illustrated and published by local artists Tin Can Forest and written by Pam Gossman, a curator and teacher of magical practice and history, whose blog Phantasmaphile specializes in esoteric art, it explores the witch in a poetic way, trying to understand that fundamental question.
“The simplest way to describe (a witch) is that she is a powerful female who uses her magic to create change in the world,” says Gossman, 35, who is based in Brooklyn. Society has a complicated relationship with witches, she adds, but as feminine power is being redefined, we need them now more than ever. “She’s very timely.”
The ultimate social justice warrior, the witch is a defender of earth and spirit; the icon of female knowledge and power. And after a long line of tortured history, society just might finally be ready to embrace her.
In early 2015, The Guardian newspaper reported that young women, including American rapper Azealia Banks, were flocking to and reclaiming the ancient crafts. Then Vogue magazine predicted fashion was “entering a year of magical thinking.” Artsy magazine noted witchcraft making a comeback in visual art, while Sabat, a high-fashion, glossy occult magazine (which has only published two issues), was shortlisted for 2016’s Magazine of the Year in the Stack Awards.
The radical possibilities of the witch, it seems, is helping to move magic into the mainstream — meaning witches aren’t likely to disappear when Halloween does.
The concepts of magic and empowerment speak to people right now, says Gillian Goerz a co-organizer of Drunk Feminist Films, a bimonthly event that recently screened the1996 teen-witch classic The Craft in Toronto and Kitchener. Goerz said it was the group’s most popular DFF yet.
“The idea of having more power than you thought and that it’s born out of connections to your ancestors and to other people — that’s lovely,” said Goerz.
While The Craft is problematic —
“The simplest way to describe (a witch) is that she is a powerful female who uses her magic to create change.” PAM GOSSMAN TEACHER OF MAGICAL PRACTICE
rife with sexism and mental-health shaming, which caused the DFF audience to boo, hiss and scream — many of the dozen-or-so witches interviewed for this article say pop culture still acts as an important pointof-entry for those who are seeking. It has a role in exposing us, even stereotypically, to the witchy conversation.
To include some legitimate witchy teaching in the DFF mix, the group invited real-life witch Cassandra Thompson to their party.
Thompson practices Hoodoo folk magic, divination, tarot, spell and root work. This type of magic is centred on love and protection, says Thompson, and her clients mostly request items that increase their own power and strength since “that’s what we’re all fighting for.”
Thompson says witchcraft is about having control over her own life as a black, queer, femme woman. “(Hoodoo gives me) the capabilities to heal myself,” she says. “It may be a lifelong process, but the fact that I am on that path makes me feel better having to live in this world. My waking up is a revolutionary act.”
But being an urban witch is “super awkward sometimes,” admits Thompson. “You have to be in a certain space of understanding of yourself in order to move through the world with this stuff.”
While many claim modern witchcraft is “this cool, reaffirming thing — and as femme women, it is our birthright to engage in this work — just remember that it’s work, it’s a lifestyle,” she says.
Thompson, 26, finds much of her mainstream inspiration from powerful forces such as The Hoodwitch, who, through a burgeoning online occult community, connected her to sister witches and showed her that it’s OK to turn people off, freak them out, be a weirdo and, above all, “to be certain in myself.”
Witches “don’t go around hexing and breaking down people,” Thompson says. “Although I do not throw shade to the witches that got together and hexed (Stanford rapist) Brock Turner. We all knew he would get out way too soon . . .
“Those are the times when we need to do some work, a little something extra, to create balance,” she says. “Justice is not an objective thing. Sometimes you can’t accept things as they are. That’s where I think (witchcraft) is necessary.”
Turner isn’t alone. Early on in the U.S. presidential campaign, witches cast hexes on Donald Trump. And WITCH, a Chicago-based collective, staged a “ritual performance” in February to protest unfair housing practices.
“It makes sense to use (witchcraft) to combat real-day issues and to find power and strength within ourselves and our communities,” says Thompson. “It’s just about being given the opportunity to tap in . . . We can’t have people thinking they don’t have agency in how they heal themselves and the world.”
The witches are also unanimous in that the mainstreaming of practical magic points to more than a passing trend. “Mysticore,” as one SALON article coined it, may be one sign of a society in spiritual crisis. As long as society remains disconnected from indigenous roots and our planet, the witches say, we’re going to need them to restore balance.
Monica Bodirsky, 55, is a Torontobased designer, the leader of a group of witches (also known as a coven), and an expert in tarot The OCAD University design prof also hosts an earth-based artist residency at Artscape Gibraltar Point on Toronto Is- land. She’s been practicing occult magic for more than 40 years now, and recalls a real surge of interest for witchcraft in the ’70s, too.
“In times of uncertainty, which we had then as we have now, people gravitate toward mysticism,” says Bodirsky. “Especially in a world that can be so disenchanting. . .”
Teaching university, Bodirsky says she notices young people feel cut off from traditions in their families and from the earth. “For some people it becomes a fashion statement or an escape, but underneath it people genuinely want to reconnect with very practical ways of survival and spirituality,” Bodirsky says. “They realize what they’re lacking in their own lives.”
Like all of the witches interviewed, Bodirsky makes a fundamental connection between witchcraft and earth, to all our indigenous origins and deep, ancestral energies. The thing about magic, she says, is that “when you use it, you really become aware of responsible use of power and what empowerment is and what, perhaps, it is not.”
The witches also implore we look at the big picture: It’s not about superstition or evil spirits, but harnessing energy, empowerment and healing ourselves and our planet. What could be more magical than that?