12 September 7 - 13, 2023 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents A Coven of One’s Own How Denton built a modern-day witch community. BY DARBY MURNANE T he witches, or at least those among them who called them- selves that, gathered under tents lining the side streets of Denton’s downtown square selling handcrafted wares — jewelry, paint- ings, homebrewed teas, elixirs and baked goods. Tarot card readers offered spiritual insight through cartomancy or by breaking down astrological charts, while others waited in line for craft cocktails by the Hem- lock Fox mixologist. This was the Beltane celebration at the Every Witch Way (EWW) market, one of the eight Pagan sabbats celebrating the peak of springtime and heralding the coming summer. The market, next scheduled for Oct. 14, prides itself on being “an intersection of all spiritual paths” open to anyone with an interest in the mystical and magical. But you won’t find any pointy hats here, nor broomsticks, bubbling cauldrons or hexes for sale. There was one cauldron at the event, but the only things swirling around inside it were raffle tickets to win a gift bag from EWW’s sponsor and Denton’s resident metaphysical shop, Bewitched. Founder Elizabeth Bernal watched over the raffle cauldron when she wasn’t floating among the vendors’ tents, checking on how they were faring in the heat and helping to hold down tent poles against sudden gales of wind, her close-cropped, electric-blue hair gleaming under the afternoon sun. Nearly two years ago, she put out a call to local practitioners of witchcraft and mystical arts in an attempt to find others like her, or perhaps build a coven, if you will. She thought maybe there would be enough people to fill a shopfront on the sidewalk. Instead, she was flooded with vendor requests, and submissions have held strong for every market since. This is just a small sampling of the growing population of neo-pagans, Wiccans, witches and other revived folk magic tradi- tions. An exact count of self-identified pa- gans and witches is difficult to determine, but Italian Catholic-witch and author Anto- nio Pagliarulo estimates that he is one of over a million Americans practicing the craft, as he wrote in an op-ed for NBC about witchcraft making a comeback. As of last fall, #WitchTok videos on TikTok have ac- cumulated over 30 billion views as creators and users share modern methods of witch- craft and find community among their kind. Pam Grossman, witch, author and host of the Witch Wave podcast, attributes the uptick in mystical and occult interest to people look- ing for alternative sources of empowerment during a period when many are mistrustful of institutional power structures. “Witchcraft is incredibly embodied as much as it’s about spirit and visualization,” she says. “It’s also about connecting with the earth, connecting with the cycles of the seasons, of the body, all of these highly sensory and natu- ral experiences of what it means to be human.” Each new wave of feminism over the last few centuries has brought with it a rise in the occult, as Grossman points out. Witchcraft has ancient, divinely feminine associations dating back to the earliest incarnations of the figure Lilith in the Sumerian civilization and goddesses across other early human mythol- ogies, like Hecate of ancient Greece. Since the women’s marches of 2017, the latest wave of feminists has been rallying around cries, “We are the daughters of witches you couldn’t burn,” and, “Hex the patriarchy.” Powerful as those slogans are, they don’t quite capture the dark underbelly of witch history that still impacts people today. In- cluding my own family. My maternal ancestors were charged and tried as witches during the Salem Witch Tri- als of 1692. Two escaped prison and fled for their lives, eventually returning to Salem once the hysteria had died down. But Bridget Bishop, my ninth great-grand- mother, was the first to be executed by hang- ing on June 10, 1692. Despite the trove of TV shows and books exploring alternative, dra- matized histories and versions of Bridget’s character and her descendants, she was not a witch. She was a woman trying to survive until she couldn’t. The idea of witches can be empowering for those, like me, who have felt othered and outcast. The witch is a powerful and defiant character who stands as a symbol of rebellion against oppressive forces and a manifestation of one’s own internal power. But the word “witch” comes with a massive body count that continues growing to this day. The mysterious, romantic allure of witchcraft in this modern era does not erase the lethality of accusations. Experts esti- mate 40,000–50,000 people were murdered during European witch hunts between 1450 and 1750. In the 20th century alone, the death toll of killings related to accusations of witchcraft is believed to have surpassed that of all the combined 300 years of European hunts. In Tanzania alone, 40,000 accused witches were murdered between 1960 and 2000. In 2021, the United Nations passed a resolution condemning witchcraft accusa- tions around the globe. “When you think of witches, you think of your society’s conception of women,” says Rachel Christ-Doane, education director at the Salem Witch Museum in Massachusetts. She calls witchcraft a “gender-related crime, but not a gender-specific crime.” From 75% to 80% of the victims during the European hunts were women, and the majority of those killed today are women. Still, almost a quarter of victims in the past were men. I traveled to Salem, Massachusetts, two summers ago to see the memorials dedicated to the victims of the trials, the site of the exe- cutions and the graves of the magistrates who signed Bridget’s death warrant. She was ar- rested on April 18, my birthday 306 years later. That might as well have been the day she died, because the moment her arrest war- rant was signed and the irons clapped around her wrists, Bridget was no longer a person to the court, her neighbors and her accusers. She was a heretic, a monster and a blight to be eradicated. Today, Salem makes about $140 million every year off its reputation as “Witch City” and the so-called “dark tourism” industry that’s sprung up around haunted tours and occult shops. There’s a fine line between re- membering the massacre of the trials and ro- manticizing the violence behind the city’s infamy. As a journalist, I ponder the ethics of how the stories of the trials and the victims are told, of embracing the title of “witch” among those who practice the craft. My an- cestress was murdered because of the word, and had my other relatives at that time not es- caped, I would not be here. I don’t want to undercut the innocence Bridget died trying to defend or that of women still shunned as witches in today’s world. Still, I understand the pull to that narra- tive. Part of the appeal of witchcraft is the de- centralized nature of the practice without hierarchy. Grossman is fond of saying that the craft posits that we are all magical beings and anybody has access to this power because it exists inside of all us. But as with most faiths, it also serves to connect practitioners with something greater than themselves, which Grossman calls the “capital S, ‘Spirit.’” “That Spirit is in us and in everything,” she says. “But it’s also something I believe we have a responsibility to.” To understand the positives of what modern witchcraft has to offer and gain in- sight into the local witch community, one need to only turn to the founders and co-or- ganizers of the EWW market. When Natalie Kirby was 7 or 8 years old, she fell on the way to school one morning, shredding her palms and knees. She had al- ready walked almost four blocks away from the house and sat alone and bleeding, drip- ping red all over the white, chalky gravel of the empty country road. But within five minutes, her grandmother found her and patched up Kirby’s wounds. Her grand- mother knew Kirby was hurt, the same way she knew a lot of things, just like Kirby’s mother. The women in her family call it “the knowing.” “We all have it, Kirby says. “I imagine it’s like being dialed on the same radio station.” To the Kirby women, the phenomenon was as a natural and practical as their menstrual cycles syncing up. Kirby’s mother fell in with the New Age cultural movement of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s and raised her daughter with a wide sampling of mythologies and be- liefs from around the world. Kids at school often asked Kirby, “Is your mom a witch or something?” Every time, she and her mother would roll their eyes and say, “What a bunch of dorks.” “We didn’t have these labels, the way ev- erything’s labeled now,” Kirby says ▼ Culture Jesse Bernal The Every Witch Way (EWW) market attracts fans of the occult, magic and the metaphysical in Denton. >> p14
