Spellbound

Courtesy of fonwall.ru
To begin
her daily
practice,
Liz Worth
goes to the
local gym.
Cardio is probably not the kind
of ritual you’d associate with
magic, but for Worth, it’s about
connecting to her physical being
and balancing her mind and body.
“If you spend too much time in those
higher realms,” she says, “you can
lose touch with your body.” Worth,
who is 36 and works as an astrologer
and tarot reader, says witchcraft has
been part of her spiritual path for
most of her life. (She describes herself
as “not not a witch.”) When Worth gets
back from the gym, she spends a few
minutes at her altar, a crate in the corner
of her bedroom covered in candles,
incense, and a small rotating collection
of personal sacred objects. The time she
devotes there is for setting intentions,
for sometimes it’s things she wants to
accomplish that day, other times it’s making
some space for greater goal-setting, and
then she moves on with her day-to-day life.
Worth’s connection to the craft overlaps
significantly with modern wellness culture:
one part mindfulness, one part personal
empowerment, and just a small dash
of supernatural. Some people
From
@gingersoul
on Instagram
write to-do lists, Worth lights
candles or draws from
tarot cards.
“Maybe there’s something behind that
magical process,” she says, “that gives you
an extra push.” Also similar to wellness
culture, witchcraft — both in its religious
and secular forms — focuses on inherent
individualism. It’s a customizable blend
of various forms of ancient spirituality,
mythology, and folklore, which is why there
are so many different types of witches.
And also why witchcraft has found such
a keen cohort in millennials, a group that
appreciates looseness and lack of real
prescription. Even the Wicca creed,
essentially that if you don’t cause harm,
you can practice in whatever way you
want, smacks of a certain ubiquitous
contemporary mantra: You do you.
And as the age of connectivity and instant
gratification leaves a lot of women yearning
to truly connect with a deeper meaning,
witchcraft has emerged as a popular path
to spirituality. Extremely popular.
ICMYI: Witchcraft is in the midst of
a major cultural moment, having bubbled
up steadily over the last several years and
reached its boiling point this fall — perhaps
not surprising given that witchcraft has
seeped into pop culture throughout history
at times of strife. We see it on TV (new
Sabrina! new Charmed!), in politics where
the #MeToo movement has found a fitting
mascot in the original “nasty woman,”
in the increasing number of quirky occult
boutiques, and in the wide variety of witch
swag for sale at mass retailers like H&M
and Urban Outfitters, where healing
crystals and pentagram dream catchers
mingle with flower crowns and ironic
eyewear. This month, thousands of Toronto
witches eagerly participated in the second
annual WitchFestNorth, a meld of speaker
series and markets, that will close
tonight with a Halloween eve
Witch Walk. On social media,
millions use the tag
26 | SPELLBOUND | Summer 2022