Modern-day witchcraft is on the rise in Australia as support for organised religion plummets
Today, tens of thousands of Australians identify as witches and globally, we’re in the midst of a bona fide witchcraft boom.
While a fascination with the occult is nothing new, witchcraft has never been as big, or as mainstream. But why? And why now?
“A huge part of the rising popularity is social media and the internet,” said Owlvine.
“It’s so easy to jump online and find information. Once upon a time, it was really difficult to find a willing teacher, or even get your hands on the few occult books available – now we have abundant information at our finger tips.”
The image of the witch has been a staple in pop culture for the last century, but it’s only in the last few decades that we’ve seen a major PR job done on the witch archetype.
Beautiful, political and environmentally-minded feminists, today’s witches are as far away from the clichéd old broomstick-riding hook-nosed hags of our childhood storybooks as you can get. And they can be found on big and small screens alike with ever-increasing frequency, with the likes of Sabrina, A Discovery of Witches and Mayfair Witches adding to the swag of older shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Harry Potter, Charmed and The Vampire Diaries.
There’s clearly a direct correlation between the increasing presence of fictional witches and the rise of real life ones.
In the past, movies and TV shows often cast the witch as hugely unsavoury characters. Now we’re seeing witches depicted as young, modern people we can relate to.
https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-l...ab3f780f38
Today, tens of thousands of Australians identify as witches and globally, we’re in the midst of a bona fide witchcraft boom.
While a fascination with the occult is nothing new, witchcraft has never been as big, or as mainstream. But why? And why now?
“A huge part of the rising popularity is social media and the internet,” said Owlvine.
“It’s so easy to jump online and find information. Once upon a time, it was really difficult to find a willing teacher, or even get your hands on the few occult books available – now we have abundant information at our finger tips.”
The image of the witch has been a staple in pop culture for the last century, but it’s only in the last few decades that we’ve seen a major PR job done on the witch archetype.
Beautiful, political and environmentally-minded feminists, today’s witches are as far away from the clichéd old broomstick-riding hook-nosed hags of our childhood storybooks as you can get. And they can be found on big and small screens alike with ever-increasing frequency, with the likes of Sabrina, A Discovery of Witches and Mayfair Witches adding to the swag of older shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Harry Potter, Charmed and The Vampire Diaries.
There’s clearly a direct correlation between the increasing presence of fictional witches and the rise of real life ones.
In the past, movies and TV shows often cast the witch as hugely unsavoury characters. Now we’re seeing witches depicted as young, modern people we can relate to.
https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-l...ab3f780f38
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
