The rising wave of witchcraft

The witch is a powerful feminine archetype that through history has been a symbol for the power of nature, magic, mysticism and esotericism.

Witchcraft around the world is still largely taboo and practitioners keep their ideologies and activities to themselves, but increasingly this is changing.

The New York Times recently ran an interesting story on the rise of witchcraft and its association with the rising of a new wave of feminism and female empowerment. The article is an interview with Pam Grossman, who calls herself a witch and runs the popular “The Witch Wave” podcast.

On the online version of Psychology Today, Ariel Gore asks if witchcraft is not the pathway to happiness and a greater sense of self - within the context of a world in radical transition.

'Because of a sense of political emergency fuelled by misogynist lawmakers and a sense of security patched together by generations of feminists, more and more people of all genders are identifying as adherents to magical spiritual traditions from Wicca to Voudoun to Brujaria to Modern Spiritualism. But magic is nothing new. All pre-capitalist societies believed in magic. All indigenous people had magical folk traditions. And all of our ancestors were indigenous to somewhere.'

Witchcraft itself has always been a topic which stirs emotions and our collective understanding of it is heavily influences by centuries of fairytales, folk-law and more recently Hollywood.

'Witchcraft exists in the liminal. Like the archetype of the witch, it is always shapeshifting, neither here nor there, never quite fitting in a box. It’s best defined as an age-old spiritual path rooted in the cycles of the earth and the seasons, in the cycles of the cosmos and in the cycles of the self. It’s entrenched in personal empowerment and impacted by the culture that each witch is surrounded by. The beauty of magick is that it’s most effective and potent when it’s deeply personal.' - via

In the context of identifying a significant shift in the fabric of society, the rise of popularity of witchcraft is fascinating.  It feels like it is the growing evolution of people looking for the next stage of empowerment, which is augmented with spirituality and is closer to nature.