All language subtitles for all-of-them-witches-english

♪

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 kill 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?

100.

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 killed
as a witch then.

You're killed if you're ugly.

You're killed
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 kill
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
executed 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 killed, 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 killed
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 torture,

we know that
they often tell lies.

They'll say anything.

And so she was killed 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 killed
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 slavery,

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 fuck,
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 tías,my primas,

and how protective
they are of me.

You don't know the women
in my lineage.

Like, we don't fuck around,
and they're not gonna

let their gay grandkid, like,
go through some shit, 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 War,

for gay 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
Terrorist 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?

♪