why DO teenage girls go through a witch/occult phase? I had tarot cards and a spellbook and I knew a group of girls who messed with ouija boards and another who had ghost hunting equipment. “oh yeah Cindy’s just going through that girly phase where she tries to raise the dead.”
theory – we want power and know our culture doesn’t want to give us any?
Addendum: witches are one of the few cultural figures of female empowerment that don’t derive their power from their relationship to a man.
Plus, most forms of christianity and christian society is full of layers upon layers of contradictory rules and customs that you’re supposed to somehow untangle and balance to work out how to be a Good Person TM.
Witchcraft, at its most elemental, boils down to ‘do no harm but take no shit’, which not only simplifies things a lot, but also puts the weight of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ back on your individual choices and isn’t anchored to some overarching set of benchmarks that most people don’t actually need to follow to the letter to live a happy, productive, and compassionate life.
The true magic is the freedom you carve out for yourself, and I can’t think of anything more appealing to a young woman trying to work out who she is rather than what she’s been told she is her whole life.
knitting in the dark 