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News stories and articles featuring pagans and witches of all kinds as well as related topics. Learn about the past, present, and future of witchcraft!

After 329 years, a woman accused of being a witch in Salem has been exonerated

By The Associated Press
NPR
"It took more than three centuries, but the last Salem 'witch' who wasn't has been officially pardoned. Massachusetts lawmakers on Thursday formally exonerated Elizabeth Johnson Jr., clearing her name 329 years after she was convicted of witchcraft in 1693 and sentenced to death at the height of the Salem Witch Trials."
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Little Witch in the Woods is a slightly spooky Stardew Valley

By Hope Bellingham
GamesRadar
"New cozy sim Little Witch in the Woods will let you live out your best spooky life and is now available to play on PC and Xbox Game Pass. Similar to a pixel-art version of Studio Ghibli’s Kiki’s Delivery Service, Little Witch in the Woods sees players take on the role of apprentice witch Ellie as she completes her training..."
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Photos of One of the Last Remaining Pagan Rituals in Europe

By Asher Svidensky
PetaPixel
"In December of 2019, I decided to travel to Bulgaria. I went there to expand my ongoing photography project about the personal journeys of young individuals who will ultimately become the ‘torch carriers’ of ancient cultures and traditions. What caught my attention in Bulgaria was an ancient tradition known as Kukeri. An ancient ritual that many consider being one of the only remaining practiced pagan rituals in Europe today."
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Interest in spirituality, witchcraft on the rise amid COVID-19, TikTok boom

By Kiara Alfonseca
Good Morning America
"I think people go to tarot readings or seek something outside of religion when we're really in that vulnerable state," Vargas said. "When somebody came to me and said, 'you should have a Tarot reading,' I would probably never have done that, had everything been fine and dandy in my life. But because everything was falling apart, I was desperate."
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A Discovery of the Buckland Museum of Witchcraft and Magick

By Lyonel Perabo
The Wild Hunt
"Well known in the US as one of the first, if not the first, individuals to bring Wicca to America, Raymond Buckland, who passed away five years ago, was a figure I was only passingly aware of. Until I set foot in Cleveland, he was but one of the many elder figures I had read about in books about Witchcraft and Paganism, so doing a little family excursion to learn about the man, his world, and his collection of occult memorabilia seemed like the right thing to do."
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Suzy Peltier’s book “Ancient Wisdom for Modern Needs” shows Taoist Wicca

By Page Publishing
PRWeb
"Suzy Peltier, massage therapist, hypnotherapist, Reiki master-teacher, and third-degree Wiccan high priestess dedicated to the principle of holism, brings her thirty years of clinical experience to her new book “Ancient Wisdom for Modern Needs. It’s a life-changing combination of wit and wisdom guiding readers to find balance within themselves, the Universe, and the planet."
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Songs of Glimmerwick, an RPG About Attending a Musical Magic School

By Rebekah Valentine
IGN
"Songs of Glimmerwick is a story-driven RPG where magic is cast through music. Players will attend magic classes, learn to play different songs to cast spells, grow a magical garden, make potions, and take on quests to get to know the various denizens of Glimmerwick. There are moth races, forest expeditions, and festivals to attend, mixing plenty of optional mini-games and side quests alongside a main storyline."
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Witchcraft supply shop in Ypsilanti sells everything from sage to chicken feet

By Jordyn Pair
MLive
"A recently opened metaphysical shop in Ypsilanti(Michigan) is aimed at creating a safe space for practitioners of Wicca, hoodoo, voodoo and similar religions. 'We try to provide a wide variety of items for the spiritual community that’s located in the Ann Arbor and Ypsi area, specifically catering to more the African traditional religion parts of that,' said owner Tanet Jordan-Casey."
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Healing myself the Pagan way: how witchcraft cast a spell on me

By Jennifer Lane
The Guardian
"Witchcraft has always played a large role in my life. While many kids were learning badminton or taking trombone lessons, I was reading up on spellcraft and ways to plant my herb garden. I grew up in the late 1990s when my cultural life became saturated with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Charmed and Sabrina the Teenage Witch... But the draw wasn’t just the empowerment that spells and telekinetic forces threw my way; I was intensely charmed by witchcraft’s connection with the world outside and the earth around me."
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Global Witch Lore Shines in THE WITCHVERSE Animated Series

By Amy Ratcliffe
The Nerdist
"Most of us know some myth about witches. Maybe it’s about warts. Or maybe it’s about dark magic and the rule of three. A new animated series from Baobab Studios and Disney Branded Television will focus on what witch mythology around the globe is like. The Witchverse is an animated anthology series based on Baobab Studios’ award-winning virtual reality experience and short film Baba Yaga. Uh yes, please."
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How Some ‘Jewitches’ Embrace Both Judaism and Witchcraft

By Heather Greene and Emily McFarlan Miller
AP News
"...creator, Alicia Jo Rabins, identifies as a Jewish artist and educator who incorporates elements of witchcraft into her practice of Judaism, an increasingly common, if still controversial, combination. In both the modern witchcraft and Jewish communities, people are bringing together magic — often called witchcraft — and religious ritual. The ways in which these two seemingly distinct practices merge is often highly personal, depending on heritage, education and spiritual calling."
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I'm Proud to Be a Real-Life Witch

By Angie Brown
BBC Scotland News
"Tonks Brown lives on her own in a remote croft in the Scottish Highlands and says she is proud to be a real-life witch. For her, Halloween is not about costumes, pumpkins and trick or treating. 'I think society has a pop culture idea of witches,' says 36-year-old Tonks. 'It is about so much more, it's a big part of my life, it's my religion and faith,' she says...She turned to Paganism when she was 12 and living on the Isle of Mull. 'I was bullied at high school for being different,' she says."
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The Craft Inspired a Generation of Teenage Witches

By Peg Aloi
TIME
"Perhaps no other contemporary film had as great an impact on the modern witchcraft movement as The Craft. Though it premiered to middling reviews, the 1996 movie...captivated both experienced witches and total acolytes with its authentic portrayal of adolescent girls who dabbled in witchcraft to improve their lives and gain power. Enthralled by its dark glamour, countless young girls were compelled to learn more about witchcraft and paganism... "
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Help Name The Best Witch in Pop Culture History

By Michael Walsh
Nerdist
"Something wicked this way comes. Wicked fun, that is. This year we’re celebrating Nerdoween with our first-ever 'Nerdist Witch Week.' During the final days of October, we’re paying tribute to those broom flying, spell-casting, potion brewing denizens of the scariest season. And we’re asking you to be a big part of the festivities. You’re going to help us name the best witch in pop culture history. We’re putting 64 of the scariest, most popular, and most infamous witches up against one another March Madness-style on our Twitter."
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A Spooky, Witchy Reading List to Kick off Scary Season

By Fire Lyte
LitHub
"No matter whether the witch is something more than human or as mortal as the rest of us, for many people, these stories spark an interest in magic that never quite goes away. I’ve gathered together 9 stories of witches, a coven of stories if you will, that encompass the history of the witch through time and how these stories are thriving in the modern era."
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A New Exhibition Gets at the Truth Behind the Salem Witch Trials

By Katie White
ArtNet
"It is among the darker chapters in American colonial history: In the spring of 1692, three girls in Salem, Massachusetts, came forward claiming to be possessed by the devil and accused several local women of witchcraft against them. The accusations unleashed waves of panic in the Puritanical colonial society, and in a few short months, more than 200 people would stand accused."
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What We Know About Women in the Viking Age Is Steeped in Cultural Bias

By Nancy Marie Brown
LitHub
"History books are not 'true.' They do not, and cannot, capture the totality of what happened in any one place or time. Historians choose what to tell and what to leave out. That choice is an interpretation...no matter how many facts a historian recounts in her book, it remains a story—an interpretation. And as such, it reflects her cultural biases. Until very recently, one of those cultural biases was to ignore women."
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The Pandemic Turned Me Into a Witch

By Daniel Zomparelli
The Cut
"We got married and moved into our first home together in L.A., and soon after found ourselves browsing the local mainstay witch store, House of Intuition...Turns out, we’d both been into witchcraft at a young age, even owning versions of the Book of Shadows...Growing up Catholic, I attended Catechism, a weekly religious school where I was constantly in trouble for giggling.... There, I was taught that witchcraft was sinful. Now, in a store dedicated to witches, I felt like I was getting to enjoy, wait for it, a forbidden fruit."
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How King Knight's Director and Cast Made a Comedy for People Who Love Witches

By Matthew Jackson
SyFy
"Armed with a love of witches, a coven of personal friends who happened to be witches, and years' worth of research into modern witchcraft, Bates began working on what would become King Knight, his latest feature... Funny, trippy, and made with a sense of eccentric conviction, the film is Bates' effort to tell a story about witches you might meet in real life, free of not just darkness, but also of judgment..."
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Kerry Katona's Teenage Daughter Lilly Says She Practises Witchcraft

By Jessica Sansome
Manchester Evening News
"Lilly says she started experimenting with spells around the start of the first lockdown last March. She decided to invest more time into it after discovering a pagan symbol on a tree which she took as a sign and now meets fellow witches regularly...'It's so sad because it's so misunderstood. There's such negative connotations around what witchcraft is...but it's actually a wonderfully kind, good religion,' she says."
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Banished 'Witches' Sing Of Their Pain — And Their Dreams

By Aaron Cohen
NPR
"On a brief track called "I Stand Accused," a woman in a remote part of Ghana intones and repeats the title phrase with the intensity of a global town crier...This singer is one of an estimated 1,000 women in northern Ghana who have fled their homes because of witchcraft accusations — and the fear that they will be physically attacked as a result."
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How Metal Embraced Pagan-Folk Mystics Heilung

By Dave Everley
Metal Hammer
"Heilung have materialised in metal’s collective consciousness like a spirit, despite possessing few of the traditional characteristics of a metal band. Their live performances aren’t so much gigs as communal rituals, complete with warriors, bonfires and rune-casting. The two albums they have made to date, 2015’s Ofnir and 2019’s Futha, pulse with mind-altering tribal rhythms and wordless exhortations to long-gone gods – “amplified history”, they call it."
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Shooting the Summer Solstice

By Gill Prince
Gill Prince Photography
"The Summer Solstice is especially relevant in Milton Keynes, as the 'new city' was designed specifically so that the sun will shine straight down Midsummer Boulevard, through the centre of town, on Midsummer's morning. You can draw a straight line from the Light Pyramid in Campbell Park...over the bridge and all the way down Midsummer Boulevard...Quite impressive really. "
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Australian Witches and Druids Optimistic About Post-Pandemic Future

By Nick Baker
ABC News Australia
"Over the past year, the pandemic has meant most pagan rituals and events around the country have either been cancelled or conducted online...But there's optimism among some in the community that pagan groups could emerge from the pandemic stronger than ever."
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The Best Fiction Books About Faeries and their Magickal Worlds

By Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Lavie Tidhar
WashingtonPost.com
"Sometimes — like, maybe, right now — you want to escape to another, better world. But is Fairyland it? Emerging from the mist of British folk tales and beliefs, the Fae did not always resemble the cute winged creatures in Disney’s “Peter Pan”... "

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The US Witch Population has Seen an Astronomical Rise

By Sangeeta Singh-Kurtz & Dan Kopf
QZ.com
"Spirituality is now firmly placed in mainstream culture...Though the data is sparse, what we do know is that the practice of witchcraft has seen major growth in recent decades. As the witch aesthetic has risen, so has the number of people who identify as witches..."
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Major Arcana: Portraits of Witches in America
Frances F. Denny

By Aline Smithson
LenScratch.com
"Major Arcana is an exploration of contemporary witchery told through striking photographs and short, thought-provoking essays in the subjects’ own words...Frances F. Denny is an artist and photographer whose work investigates female identities... From occultists and Neo-pagans, to herbalists and Wiccan High Priestesses..."
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1,800-Year-Old Altar to Pagan God Pan Hidden in a Byzantine Church

By Laura Geggel
LiveScience.com
"The volcanic basalt altar dates to the second or third century, but it was repurposed as a support brick in the fifth-century church... Whoever built the church apparently didn't want worshippers seeing a dedication to the god Pan, so the altar was turned around, possibly to debase and humiliate any pagans who still practiced "old" polytheistic beliefs..."
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Some of the Best Images from the Spectacular Winter Solstice at Newgrange

By Shane O'Brien
IrishCentral.com
"Viewers were treated to a spectacular site on Sunday as the passage tomb filled with light at dawn...The Newgrange passage tomb is Ireland's best-known Neolithic structures and draws tourists from all over the world...Dating back to around 3200 BC, Newgrange is about 500 years older than the pyramids in Egypt and at least 1,000 years older than Stonehenge in England..."
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Eerie Witches’ Marks Found Among Ruins of Medieval English Church

By Isis Davis-Marks
SmithsonianMag.com
"Archaeologists conducting excavations at the abandoned church of St. Mary’s in Stoke Mandeville, England, discovered strange stone carvings and medieval graffiti suspected to be “witches’ marks,” or protective symbols designed to ward off evil spirits...a design perhaps meant to entrap malicious spirits, dooming them to forever wander around an endless line or maze..."
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