Modern Witchcraft Combines Self-Love, Feminism, Self-Help With A Dazzling Array Of Crystals And Spell Casting
Darling kicks off the “Radical Self-Love Workshop” with an exercise in
“connecting to our intuitive selves” that requires dabbing her coveted
“gratitude oil” on our wrists (“it has tiny crystals inside and smells
am-a-zing”) and telling each other what we’re thankful for. Next she
hands out “Witchling Oracle Cards”—a whimsical take on tarot cards—and
encourages us to decipher some personal message from cutesie
illustrations of Witchlings like “Dreams” and “Abundance.”
by Geoffrey Grider July 4, 2017 Modern
witchcraft combines feminism, self-help, and wellness. But is there
more to it than pretty crystals, stunning Instagram pictures, and
lucrative business opportunities?
“There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an
observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, Or a charmer, or a
consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all
that do these things are an abomination unto the LORD: and because of these abominations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee.” Deuteronomy 18:10-12 (KJV)
EDITOR’S NOTE: Over
the past year, I have noticed on my Instagram feed a seeming explosion
in women posting pictures promoting topics like “self love”, “wellness”,
“be good to yourself”, “praying to the Universe” and “boss babe”.
Harmless fun, right? Just motivating women to succeed, right? Wrong.
Every one of those things I just mentioned are part and parcel of
modern-day witchcraft practiced by modern-day witches. You’ve been
pulled into witchcraft and don’t even know it. Or maybe you do.
Gala Darling reveals that her “spiritual awakening” was like the moment in
The Wizard of Oz when
Dorothy wakes up, miraculously transported from the sepia world of rural Kansas to the technicolor land of Oz.
Darling is standing beside her altar—a round, pink table laid with energy-charged crystals and magic candles—at
The Wing, an all-women social club in Manhattan where 60 members and guests have signed up for her “
Radical Self-Love Workshop.”
Gala Darling says how witchcraft changed her life:
Think
twice the next time you use the #bossbabe hashtag, it comes from the
witchcraft world. And in particular, it comes from Gala Darling,
resident witch and spell caster.
A 33-year-old writer and self-help guru,
she explains how her years-long fog of depression lifted when she
discovered “tapping,” an ancient Eastern healing technique that she
describes as “a combination of acupuncture and cosmic psychology.”
The
audience is rapt because Darling isn’t just a self-help guru but a
stylish, sassy witch who swears often and radiates cool-girl vibes. She
used to be “really goth and cynical” and thought tapping was
“bull****”—until, she says, it worked. Now she casts spells on Donald
Trump.
Darling is tall and striking, with alabaster skin and
kohl-rimmed green eyes. She wears a rainbow sherbet-colored maxi skirt, a
grey tee knotted above her navel, and a silver pentagon ring. Her black
hair is dip-dyed a raspberry, purpley pink shade that almost matches
her lipstick. All of this makes for a punk rock-meets-My Little Pony
aesthetic, complete with bicep sleeve tattoos and glittering
fingernails.
Gala Darling looks every bit the
Instagram-famous modern witch,
with nearly 60,000 followers. Being a professional witch and self-love
priestess is her full-time job. (She declined to say how much she earns
through her practice.)
At a time when millennial women are
embracing wellness fads and are bent on toppling the patriarchy, the
contemporary witch is their enlightened, rebellious role model.
She has seen a resurgence in pop culture over the last few years, from the campy and wildly popular 2013 TV series
American Horror Story: Coven to Robert Eggers’ 2015 film
The Witch. Gwyneth Paltrow’s website
Goop sells
tools for female-oriented practical magic like jade and rose quartz
“yoni” eggs that purport to do more than just exercise your kegels.
Celebrities like Katy Perry, Victoria Beckham, Cara Delevingne, and Lena Dunham are hooked on crystals’ alleged healing powers and positive vibes (it doesn’t hurt that they’re also pretty). Adele chalked up her lackluster Grammy’s performance last year to misplacing hers.
The ’90s were another heyday of witchiness—of the benign, Hollywood variety—that saw films like
Hocus Pocus and
The Craft become cult classics,
Charmed become a TV smash, while J.K. Rowling’s
Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone and Gregory Maguire’s
Wicked were instant bestsellers (Rowling’s
Potter books went on to become the second-highest-grossing film franchise of all time, and a musical adaptation of
Wicked was named one of Broadway’s top-grossing shows ever last year).
Today’s
witchy sweet spot lies somewhere between the mind-body wellness
movement and intersectional feminism. Embracing all things witchy and
“magical”—believing that visualization rituals can help you manifest
your dreams; that tarot cards can tell you something about your life
which your logical brain might otherwise ignore; that wearing a crystal
pendant necklace will protect you from negative energy—has become a way
for women to feel empowered and trust their instincts.
The Wing is an appropriate setting for a witchy workshop on self-love and empowerment. The club
describes itself as
a “coven not a sorority,” and many of its 650 members—a politically
progressive group of women, most of them in their twenties and
thirties—work in creative industries.
Darling kicks off the
“Radical Self-Love Workshop” with an exercise in “connecting to our
intuitive selves” that requires dabbing her coveted “gratitude oil” on
our wrists (“it has tiny crystals inside and smells am-a-zing”) and
telling each other what we’re thankful for.
Next she hands out “
Witchling Oracle Cards”—a
whimsical take on tarot cards—and encourages us to decipher some
personal message from cutesie illustrations of Witchlings like “Dreams”
and “Abundance.”
Later, we write down what “spirituality” means to
us (I’m tempted by Darling’s reassurance that “it’s OK to draw three
big question marks!”).
We whip up “happiness recipes,” or lists of
feel-good rituals that fall under “mental, physical, emotional, and
spiritual” categories. “I’d like everyone to write ‘orgasm’ under the
physical category, because sex magic is the best magic,” Darling says to
whoops and cheers.
We also make note of things we want to “leave
behind,” in the metaphysical sense, post-Summer Solstice—which, per
Darling’s instructions, we must “ceremoniously burn” when we get home.
Finally,
we break off in groups to create “wishing circles,” an exhausting
exercise that involves blowing a wish into your hands, vigorously
rubbing them together for several agonizing minutes (the witch’s
equivalent of Tracy Anderson’s arm workout), then joining scalding palms
with your circle neighbors and, per Darling, blowing your wish “up to
the sky like a little baby birdie.”
Admittedly, I expected
something called a “Radical Self-Love Workshop” to be ripe for parody: a
hipster witch rhapsodizing about the healing powers of crystals to a
group of spellbound, modern-day Stevie Nicks impersonators. But
Darling’s tactics for cultivating self-love are relatively practical, as
these things go, and dispensed with casual humor. (On reliable ways to
achieve an orgasm: “While you’re working up to that moment—you know, the
moment—visualize yourself beaming it out into the universe because that
stuff works! Try it this week and then tag me on Instagram. Don’t make
me a video, but tell me what happened because I want to know.”)
She’s
not excessively moony or self-serious about the spiritual stuff (“I
define spirituality as whatever makes me feel alive, thankful, and
connected”). And the witchcraft-lite she weaves into her
teachings—feminine power, sexuality, creative enrichment, astrology—is
broadly appealing to many young women.
The Babe Collective movement is firmly rooted in witchcraft
My
introduction to the occult scene in New York City was in 2015, when I
attended a “goddess circle for curating extraordinary confidence”
organized by three women in Brooklyn who called themselves
the BABE Collective; “BABE” being an acronym for “Badass Beauties Elevating Society.”
It
was a workshoppy event similar to Darling’s at The Wing: a description
advertised “bringing a heightened awareness to what being confident
means in the spiritual, practical and personal sense.”
It was part
coven and part 12-step program: Roughly a dozen women gathered in a
teepee in Williamsburg and meditated while eating expensive, organic
dark chocolate—an “offering to ourselves” and an exercise in “taking
time to savor something.” We prayed to Kali, the Hindu goddess who is
worshipped as the Mother of the Universe.
“I haven’t focused
exclusively on creating a community of witches, though that’s kind of
happened indirectly,” said Robin Lee, 28, who has grown the BABE
Collective into a global community with $47-a-month membership rates.
“Tons of women from all over the world are just awake and curious about
understanding themselves on a deeper level. When you get down to the
route of witchcraft, magic, alchemy—all these things are about the Wild
Feminine and using your own energy and power to change your
consciousness at will.”
In a moment when feminism has escaped the
academy and captivated the popular imagination, it’s fitting that the
witch—a radical and dangerous figure who can’t be controlled by stuffy
and uptight men—has been recast as a symbol of resistance.
“The
timing makes perfect sense: Spiritual hunger, environmental concerns,
and gender politics all combine here,” Stacy Schiff, author of
The Witches: Salem, 1692,
told The Daily Beast of the witch’s trendy resurgence. “Plus witches
are subversive, something which our political times demand. We’ve little
vocabulary for female power, or at least few words of which we can be
proud. It’s all the more enticing to reclaim imagery and nomenclature
that has been used against you for hundreds of years.”
The witch’s
taboo appeal is a double-edged sword, and Schiff suggested it could be
more empowering for women to identify with real women, or at least a
mythological figure who didn’t have such a fraught history.
“In a
perfect world it would be lovely if women could reach to more
nonfictional role models, as boys are able to. If we’re in the world of
myth, why witches rather than Athena? I suppose she’s part of the
establishment, and she doesn’t come down to us with a long list of
martyred forebears. Plus, we know that Athena is wholly mythical. It
seems at least some men are still concerned there might be sorcerers
among us.”
Indeed, the witch remains a threatening figure, particularly to the
Alex Jones’
and Rush Limbaugh’s of the world. Days before the 2016 election, Jones
ran a story on his alt-right website, Infowars, claiming Hillary Clinton
“‘regularly’ attended witch’s church,” and citing a “Clinton insider” as his source. After the first presidential debate,
Limbaugh called Clinton a “witch with a capital B.”
Right-wingers
wielded rhetorical pitchforks at rapper Azealia Banks when she came out
of the broom closet in January 2015 (“The truth is I’m a witch”) in one
of her infamous Twitter rants.
“The most magical people are the ones who have to deal with oppression, because the non-magical are jealous,” Banks
wrote. “That’s
why Jews and Blacks have been persecuted over and over again throughout
history… all I’m trying to say is that black people are naturally born
SEERS, DIVINERS, WITCHES AND WIZARDS.”
Witches band together to cast a binding spell on President Trump
Last February, Lana Del Ray
took to Twitter to
promote dates for a series of online “binding spells” to prevent
President Trump and his administration from doing harm. Gala Darling was
among the self-identifying witches who orchestrated an anti-Trump
binding spell on Facebook live, though hers wished harm on the
president.
“120,000 people from around the world signed on with
pictures of Trump and wrapped them in string while I said an
incantation,” she told me, speaking on the phone the day after the
workshop. Most of the online participants were women between the ages of
25 and 34, according to Darling (geographically, California, Texas,
England, and New York saw the highest volume of participants).
The
hex wasn’t as harmful as participants hoped. Indeed, casting spells can
seem hokey and ineffective—even to other patriarchy-defying witches.
“People
always assume I do that stuff, but I just help women who want to have
their witch awakening, which is just an awakening to their feminine
energy and the cause of healing Mother Earth,” said Sarah Wilson, 37,
who lives in Martha’s Vineyard and organizes online covens.
But for others, channeling their feminine energy in massive online spells offers a sense of community.
“There
was some pushback on Facebook from people saying things like, ‘The most
effective thing you can do is vote,’” Darling said of her Trump binding
spell. “But why not do both? I believe in marrying the physical and the
metaphysical. Obviously the spell didn’t work in the sense that he’s
still alive. But have you looked at his life right now?”
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Modern Witchcraft Combines Self-Love, Feminism, Self-Help With A Dazzling Array Of Crystals And Spell Casting • Now The End Begins
