The rise of the modern witch

ON a rain-sodden and sluggish Thursday morning it’s hard to image that Glasgow Cross – the site of the Tolbooth Steeple – was once the bustling centre of the city, teeming with residents, hawkers and traders. But it was also its dark heart, where the undesirable – criminals and women accused of witchcraft – met the most grisly of ends.

Just up the High Street, yet a whole world away, is 23 Enigma, a shop selling supplies for those interested in new-age “magick” and the occult. Owner Samantha Cooper says it chills her to think of the women executed at the clock tower. But although she has one eye firmly on the past, this is a shop for the modern witch. Here you’ll find birch and willow wands, crystals used by Pagans for healing rituals and pentangle pendants. There are ceremonial swords for casting sacred circles, idols and cups for Wiccan altars and books on Paganism galore. Halloween – or Samhain – is her busiest time.

“All of our senses are inverted at this time of the year,” she says. “When it’s dark we’re focusing on senses other than sight, on hearing, on smell. The dark half of the year explains what witchcraft’s real purpose is.”

In 22 years of trading in the historic High Street, Cooper claims the explosion of interest in neo-Paganism – a set of nature-worshipping beliefs that rose to prominence in the mid-20th century – has been staggering. “We get all sorts of people coming here,” she says. They include millennials, she claims, perhaps attracted by the gender-fluid nature of witchcraft – both men and women are witches and deities include gods and goddesses.

Witches in mainstream culture, she admits, have always had an image problem, even after the repeal of the Scottish Witchcraft Act in 1735 that saw women burned at the stake. Since then, thanks to fictional creations by everyone from the Brothers Grimm to Disney, witches have been portrayed as cackling hags on broomsticks or child-catching crones.

Cooper says “softer” terms like “spey wife” have been adopted to describe “wise women” who dabbled in charms. Wiccan is the religious term now used instead of witchcraft by neo-Pagans. According to the last national census, neo-Paganism is now the sixth-largest non-Christian faith in Scotland with 5,194 people ascribing to the beliefs.

For an increasing num- ber there is a growing pride in “reclaiming” the word “witch”. Kristen Solle, author of Witches, Sluts, Feminists: Conjuring The Sex Positive, claims there is a tradition of using the word as a form of rebellion. Her book charts the way women, from the Suffragettes to the feminist covens of 1960s and 70s America, have attempted to harness its power.

“The word is being taken back by women who see the witch as an icon of female power and persecution, a beacon in black that stands out on the path to power beyond patriarchy,” she adds.

CLOAKS, CAULDRONS & FULL MOONS

FEE is a Wiccan high priestess who the Sunday Herald has agreed not to name. She turned to Paganism after growing disillusioned with mainstream religion. “I grew up in the Christian church but found that it was prescriptive and didn’t reflect my beliefs adequately,” she says. When she discovered Paganism while rummaging in a bookshop, she found its rituals comforting. Months of training included meditation “to build a relationship with the deity” after which she was initiated as a Wiccan.

The new full moon brings her out to the woods, complete with cloak, cauldron and broom (to “cleanse” the sacred circle where magic is performed) with her husband and other coven members. Spells are concerned with healing and good fortune. Self-defence is permissible but curses that do harm are against the moral code.

She says: “There is something in every season to celebrate – that might be the harvest, or Lammas, or Yule (the Pagan version of Christmas) when the sun is reborn.”

WITCHCRAFT AND MAGIC

PAULINE Reid, who runs Bewitched Beauty Therapy and is the high priestess of the Hearth coven, is open about her belief in witchcraft. Now 45 and based between Glasgow and Arran, she first knew she was “different” at about eight years old.

She explains: “We [her coven] are Wiccans and see ourselves as witches. There is the saying ‘all Wiccans are witches but not all witches are Wiccan’ – this means for us witchcraft and magic are part of our religion, but you do not need to be Wiccan to practise magic. We do have a positive morality: if it does not harm anybody, do as you will,” she says. “This definitely encourages us to evaluate all our actions for ourselves instead of following strict rules written in a book.”

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