the witchcraft diaries

“We have a child who’s a devil-worshipper.” Those were the words that came out of my mother’s mouth. Many witches in the pagan community faced backlash because of the mindset that witchcraft is satanic or demonic, but this allowed us to resonate from our experiences with each other. I myself have faced backlash, mostly from my own parents. They had their suspicions and believed it was just a phase, but they didn’t know that I was a witch, not until they found my pagan/witch calendar.

It was Tuesday, August 30, 2022. Exactly one year and two days of me being a witch. My parents usually didn’t work on Tuesdays, and they liked to clean the whole house, including my room. That’s when they found it. My pagan witch calendar. I’m really oblivious when it comes to missing things so I didn’t notice that my calendar was no longer hanging up until they showed me that they had it.

I was in my room, about to open my computer on my desk to work on my history homework until I heard my mom holler my name from the kitchen. “Sophie! Come here!”

Oh god, what is it this time? I sighed and walked to the kitchen.

She pointed to my calendar sitting on top of the leather cushion on one of our black rectangular kitchen stools. It was folded over so the artistic detailed cover of a woman on a horse holding on to the branch of the tree with the words: LLEWELLYN’S WITCHES’ CALENDAR 2022 was showing.

“Tapon mo na yan, ha?” Throw that away, okay?

Oh my god. I didn’t even know they had it. I should’ve hidden it before I left for school. I thought about lying and acting stupid that I didn’t know it was for witches or pagans, but it was too late. They’ve seen the cover, and they probably thought it was impossible that I could’ve not known after having it for a while. They’ve been sus about me being a witch and this calendar was evidence. I couldn’t lie anymore. Plus, I’ve tried acting stupid before by pretending like I didn’t believe in witches, but even my mom argued and said that witches were real and that there were a lot of witches before in the Philippines since it used to be the primary religion before Ferdinand Magellan introduced Catholicism.

My 13-year-old little brother was in the kitchen too. He knew I was a pagan witch. He walked over to the chair where the calendar was sitting on and actually tried defending me. “Mom, it’s not bad, it’s just fairies,”

“It’s pagan. It’s the number one pagan calendar and you’re saying ‘mom, it’s not bad, it’s just fairies’?! You don’t even know what pagan is!”

She then turned to me as I stood next to the fridge. “I don’t care who gave you that, but just throw it away. I don’t even want you donating it because you’re gonna influence whoever’s gonna buy that.”

My dad looked at me, shaking his head. “Throw it away, Sophia, it’s not good.” But what constituted whether someone’s religion was good or bad? He fixed the stools in in front of me then looked at me. “Do you still even believe in God?”

I answered quietly and looked down at the kitchen floor. “Yeah,”

“Kasi parang hindi na,” Because it’s like you don’t anymore.

I just agreed to throw it away so they’d shut up about it, but my mom had more to say and ended up giving me a whole ass Jesus lecture. She took a seat at our countertop and looked straight at me. “Do you even know what pagan means?”

“Yeah, anti-Christ,”

“See? You know. Against Christ, against Jesus.” It really only meant not Christian, but of course she thought of it so negatively. “You’re a smart girl. You know what’s right and wrong and that pagan isn’t good. I know sometimes you can question and I questioned when I was younger too, but if you look outside, look at the sky, the trees, you just know that there really is a God. I know Joce and Eric probably don’t believe in God, but you have already heard the word of God. You’re guilty. You can’t try to hide from God. Do you think that things just happen for no reason? That you became friends with them for no reason? No! God planned it from the very start. It says that in the Bible. You have a purpose. There’s a reason why you’re friends with them, so you can influence them with the word of God, not them influencing you. We’re just telling you this because we care about you and we know we’re all gonna go somewhere after we die and we don’t want you to face punishment from God because of disobedience.”

So yeah, in summary, she basically kind of just told me that I was gonna go to Hell for being pagan. She might’ve not outwardly said it, but she sure as hell implied it with the “we’re all gonna go somewhere after we die.”

In her head, we were all satan-worshipping atheists. And no. I was not gonna influence my best friends to be all Jesus-y especially when I was not. I was glad they influenced me. I was glad we became a gay coven together. None of us were even atheists. We all believed in God, and gods and goddesses. Everything she said, I did believe, just in a different way. I did believe in an afterlife; I just didn’t believe that you were gonna go to Hell just because you were pagan. I also believed that we have a purpose. I believed that the universe aligned certain things to happen and that some of it was fated in the stars. But I just didn’t bother arguing because I knew there was no point. They just wouldn’t understand.

Moments after that, I took the calendar from the chair, stomped to my room, rolled it up, and put it in the small black trash bin next to my door. They saw that the calendar was missing from the chair and pestered me. I told them it was in the trash bin in my room and they told me to just make sure I threw it away later.

Later that day, I started to doubt. I looked at my altar, my spell jars, and my pentacle wreath, and contemplated a lot on giving up my practice and reverting back to Christianity. I felt like I was living in some kind of modern witch trials where witches were condemned for who they were, being called a devil-worshipper, and having to hide in fear of who I was, just like the witches in the 1600s. It wasn’t the 1600s anymore. Witches today shouldn’t have to hide and fear and be condemned for who they are. I wondered if I really was gonna go to Hell for being pagan. I decided to do a tarot reading since I needed insight on my current situation. I opened my German storage box where I keep my cards and crystals that had Weilburg an der Lahn written in cursive and a painting of the location.

I took the cards out of the yellow Victorian Fairy Tarot box and began to shuffle. The cards told me that I shouldn’t just give up my practice because it’s something I really found for myself, but that I needed to be more careful when it came to being open about witchcraft. I took the calendar back out from the trash bin, ripped off the cover, and put it in a plastic bag so it looked like I threw it away, but I kept the rest and hid it behind my sister’s bed. I realized I couldn’t just throw it away and give up my practice. I didn’t want to and I shouldn’t have to just because people told me to. That whole experience made me develop religious trauma. It made me feel really shitty about myself. It triggered a lot of self-hatred that I already had. Ever since I started my practice, I’ve always felt crazy for doing witchcraft, that there was something wrong with me and I shouldn’t be doing it. They just brought that thought back out.

Days after during that following week, I slowly started doing witchcraft again and tried to accept that part of me, but exactly a week later, my mom decided to give me another Jesus lecture and repeated the same thing she did last week.

This time, she was sitting on our brown cushioned recliner in our living room in front of the TV. “You know, instead of doing rituals in your room, you should pray. Just try it. I actually believe that working with nature is good and that the plants and stones have energy, but God is above all the stones and plants. I just hope and pray that one day you will understand,”

Again, I also believed that. I did believe that the gods were above crystals and herbs, and I did pray. I prayed and worshipped to the gods, goddesses, and the universe.

“Alam mo, pumupunta ako sa kwarto mo at dinadasalan kita,” I did not need to know that. She did not need to tell me that she went into my room and prayed over it and prayed for me.

Well, that further traumatized me and contributed to my religious trauma and the declining of my mental health because it caused me to feel bad about myself again and I ended up feeling really depressed that night. It also made me feel more targeted at church, fearing that my parents were gonna tell my pastor that I was pagan which would lead to everyone in the church trying to pray for me, especially that my church always made it clear that pagans and homosexuals were “ungodly sinful people.”

I knew I wasn’t the only pagan witch who faced religious trauma and backlash. There had to be more than just me with very religious, Christian, and Evangelical parents. So, I went to my witch friends for support. I told my gay coven best friends Eric and J in our little Snapchat group chat, the r/witch community on Reddit, and my witch friends Layne and Abbie, who related and empathized with me. It was good to have support from other witches. That’s what we had to remember; that there were people like us to be there for support and to validate us that there was nothing wrong in what we were doing and what we practiced. We must continue and grow spiritually because it was something that helped us, and it was something that has significantly changed my life and made me happy. I remembered watching witchtoks whenever I felt crazy for being a witch and watching so many witches like me share their practice in such a positive, fun, and creative way, made me feel better and made me feel like part of a community.

Backlash made us feel crazy, that what we were doing was wrong, but we couldn’t just give up our practice and our own beliefs to please other people. We must remind ourselves the good things that came out of our practice and what positive impacts we made in other people’s lives despite everyone else who told us that it was wrong. Witchcraft seemed demonic and satanic to many people, but I have worked so much against evil.

So many evil spirits entered my home and tried to harm my family and me and I was the one who helped banish all of them. I’ve protected my home, my family, and my friends through spells and rituals. I prevented a car from crashing into us with my car protection spell jar. I’ve made my friends feel better with an emotional healing spell. I’ve done motivation spells to help me do my schoolwork when I felt too depressed to. I’ve healed my friends’ headaches with spells. I was the one my friends came to when they needed protection or insight from a tarot reading. Never have I worked with Satan or any demonic entity, only against them.

Throughout my whole practice, I’ve done nothing but to help others and myself. When I faced backlash, it made me question why I was even a witch and made me wish that I never was, but we must all ask ourselves this question; what if I wasn’t a witch? Yes, I have had negative answers like “well, if I wasn’t a witch, I would’ve never had to feel bad about being a witch and I would’ve never had to experience this and develop religious trauma” and that is true, I would have never experienced any of that, but I challenged those negative thoughts and thought about the positive impact we had on people.

If I never was a witch, who would’ve stopped the rain when we were outside not wanting to get soaked? Who would’ve banished all those bad spirits? What could’ve happened? Who could’ve gotten hurt? Who would’ve been there to protect? Who would’ve had the knowledge to?

Once we’ve found that witchcraft and paganism is something that we found for ourselves, we shouldn’t ever give it up. I definitely came close, but I was sure glad I didn’t. Let’s play some witchy tunes, make some moon water, stir our cauldrons, burn some sage, and continue to grow with our practice as witches. We should never change for anyone else, for we shall stay as our magical and authentic selves. Blessed be.

There is an evil portrayal of witches throughout history, influencing the beliefs of people towards modern-day witches. Historical figures that were presumed to be witches have been depicted as having malicious intents. Famously known as the “Black Witch of Salem,” Tituba, a half Native American and half-African slave from Barbados, confessed to signing the Devil’s book (Barillari). With the start of accusations against witches in the 1600s, it is highly likely that the people of Salem based Tituba off past stories of other witches who were portrayed as indulging in black magic. She was also one of the first Salem residents to be charged of witchcraft (History.com Editors). With the factors of the time period during witchcraft trials and slavery as well as the severe poor treatment of Black people, Tituba’s identity as a slave placed her in a vulnerable position to be accused as a witch by society, just as the main character Carmen in the show Always a Witch, who is also an African slave was. Told to a modern audience, the Netflix original series Always a Witch uses characters and a careful dialogue and setting to show a good representation of witches.

The first element most prominent in depicting a good representation of witches is the use of how characters appear and look. The main character, Carmen Eguiluz, is a witch from the year 1646 who was imprisoned in a cell and sentenced to burn at the stake for witchcraft and being accused of bewitching her slaveholder’s son when they became each other’s lovers. One stereotype of witches is that they are green with pointy noses, ugly, unattractive, and social outcasts. Her dark skin color is a comparison to the stereotypical green color of a witch. Although she does not appear to look like a witch and dresses similarly to everyone else, her appearance as an African woman with dark skin makes her an outcast to society that is viewed to be unattractive by the white people around her. Her identity as a slave also plays a factor in her accusation. Slaves were prohibited from reading and writing since slaveholders feared it would allow them to escape. Carmen’s lover, Cristobal taught her how to read and write, leading her slaveholders to make the conclusion that the only reason to why she knows how is because she is a witch that had help from the Devil.

Before her execution, she speaks to a wizard named Aldemar who makes a deal with her. He tells her that he can send her to the future to escape her persecution and be with her lover in the exchange of giving a stone to another witch named Ninibe who lives in the year 2020. She agrees to the deal and travels to the future, in the same location, Cartagena, Columbia.

In 2020, the law for persecuting witches is long gone. She meets many friends who support her as a witch and she learns that people are more accepting of witchcraft in this time period. Strangers in Cartagena also become fascinated by her. She begins reading peoples’ palms, increasing her popularity as a witch. People all over town come to her for help and she gives them advice, potions, and herbs. However, a curse gets placed on her, causing her magic to unintentionally harm people and for her potions to have a different effect than she intended.

There are many characters who give her backlash for being a witch, but showing Carmen’s responses to be a contrast of the stereotypical “mean, angry witch.” Amanda, a girl who doesn’t believe in witchcraft, is dared by her friends to let Carmen read her palm. Her boyfriend Miguel later gets hospitalized after being poisoned by a frog when doing a task with their secret Cold Blood challenge group. When Carmen hears of the news, her professor, Amanda, and the police question her connections with Miguel. She tells them that she gave him an oil with herbs to help ease his panic attacks after he came to her a few days before. They suspect her of being responsible for Miguel’s seizure, giving her shameful and fearful looks. Carmen then attempts to cure Miguel by using a worm that removes a person’s poison from their body, but Amanda accuses her of attempting to murder her boyfriend by using witchcraft and starts a petition against her.

In another extreme form of backlash, Carmen’s slaveholders who order her execution after discovering her secret relationship with their son, as well as the entire society of people during the 1600s, denounce her as a witch while finding the thought of watching her burn at the stake entertaining. The expected reaction from Carmen as a witch would be to seek revenge and place a curse on those that hurt her, but instead, she is helpless and does nothing in response. She attempts to endure those attacks against her, feeling hopeless in her situation.

The second element that highlights these points is the show’s use of dialogue through quotes said by those who accuse her as well as her responses in proving that witchcraft is not evil like people may believe it to be. As shown in the first episode of season one, the townspeople and persecutors of Cartagena in 1646 preparing to watch her burn at the stake yell, “Witch!”, “Burn her!”, and “She’s a friend of the devil!”

In the 21st century, although some witches may still get called “devil-worshippers,” no one actively yells and wishes for her to burn or accuse her of being friends with the devil. However, there are still accusations said against her, giving her backlash for being a witch. In the season two episode two “Leeches,” in accusing Carmen for harming Miguel, Amanda tells her, “Can’t you see the harm your witchcraft does?” The roles in this particular scene are reversed. Carmen is expected to be the angry one, but however, she looks hurt after being told that her witchcraft is harmful and does not bother to fight back, and Amanda, who is not a witch and is not the one experiencing hurt or being threatened, is the one who appears to be angry and attacks Carmen.

When Amanda starts her petition, she gathers students in the university asking, “My only objective is to ask you not to trust Carmen. Please keep signing our petition to ask the authorities to ban any type of practice that ruins our reputation and that of every other biologist.” She is attempting to make more people believe that witchcraft is not real and that witches are bad people that should not be trusted, adding to the stigma against witches and allowing people to turn against Carmen. She later presents her petition to the professor stating, “These are 150 signatures from students demanding the prohibition of any type of witchcraft or any practice considered pseudoscience and it all means that all the students are tired of Carmen’s witchcraft.” In her proposition, she gives off a very defensive and standoffish impression.

In response to Amanda, Carmen tells her professor, “We weren’t doing witchcraft. We were using mother nature’s wisdom to help Miguel.” Though she did use witchcraft with good intentions in attempting to cure Miguel, she replaces the word with “mother nature’s wisdom” because witchcraft has a negative connotation and it is viewed as a practice that causes harm. In other words, she means “we weren’t doing evil or harm.” “Mother nature’s wisdom” has a more positive connotation compared to “witchcraft.” Carmen does not attempt to fight back or cause harm to Amanda. She instead tries to defend herself that witchcraft does not have malicious intents. In this scene with her professor, the background is blurred, showing the importance of their conversation and focuses on their attempts at helping people through witchcraft, disregarding the negative opinions and beliefs of others.

Lastly, the setting remaining at the same location in Cartagena, Columbia shows that although the show occurs in different time periods, the producers still manage to portray good representations of witches in both eras. Each time span also has contrasting filters and saturations to differentiate between the year 1646 and 2020. In the 1600s, the scenes have a low saturation with a darker, washed-out filter to show that it takes place in the past and scenes in 2020, have a brighter and more saturated filter, attempting to show a newer era. The producers include scenes of Carmen helping others through her witchcraft in the 1600s and 21st century, showing good representation of witchcraft through healing and white magic. In 1646, she is shown as a young witch healing a slave’s back after he was whipped. In 2020, she is shown helping her friend by providing him her knowledge of the healing and helpful properties of herbs to satisfy his needs.

The significance of showing two scenes from different time periods is to prove that Carmen has been taught to help and heal people ever since she was a little girl and that she has never intended to harm anyone. These scenes as well as the title of the show Always a Witch present her as someone who has always been a good witch throughout the centuries, disproving the classic definitions of a witch according to the Oxford Language Dictionary as “a person thought to have magic powers, especially evil ones.” The word is also often used as a derogatory insult meaning “an ugly or unpleasant woman” being used synonymously with “hag” or “she-devil,” and as a verb, it means “to cast an evil spell.” Within each scene and throughout the whole series, the producers of Always a Witch were mindful of presenting these visual elements to display a good representation of witches and give viewers a different view, moving away from the inaccurate representations of witches portrayed in most media that adhere to these archetypes.

During the Late Middle Ages, the church approved Old Testament laws against witchcraft, condemning it as evil and being linked to devil worship, leading up to the mass persecution of witches from the 14th to 17th century. In 307-37 AD, Constantine the Great issued anti pagan laws and Christians burned down pagan monuments and those thought to be practicing paganism was denounced as devil worshippers. Many ancient pagans converted to Christianity to save their own lives (Robbins and Greenaway 277). These accusations and persecutions of witches in the early centuries highly influenced people’s attitudes towards modern-day witches. Witches today are working to break the negative stereotypes of their correlation to devil worship by sharing their practice in a positive way.

Witchcraft is not evil; it is just often misunderstood. Many people today who have no knowledge on witchcraft may believe it to be devil-worship. My parents think I worship demons and the Devil because I am a witch. Assumptions like this is due to the negative portrayals of witches in history and the lack of acknowledgement and awareness of modern-day witchcraft. Many do not even know that there is a pagan religion for witches called Wicca. Many Christians today also view the term “pagan” as something intolerable to the church because it goes against their beliefs and differs from their religion, especially that a main Christian belief is believing in one almighty God and paganism is a polytheistic religion. Restoration Church, an Evangelical church in Springfield, Illinois has sermons, several in which I have witnessed, that often preach about condemning certain groups such as pagans, calling them unholy people who have immoral and ungodly practices.

There is also a misconception of the pentagram or pentacle symbol being satanic. I was mistaken for a satanist by three people due to my pentacle wreath and necklace. This is another misunderstanding due to the lack of education and awareness. The symbol has no correlation to Satan, it symbolizes the five elements: earth, air, fire, water, and spirit and serves as a symbol of protection in Wicca. However, I can also attest to being uneducated and unaware of the Wiccan religion before becoming a witch myself. I found the idea of modern witches existing surprising and unsettling and was alarmed at the pentagram symbol, believing it to also be devilish. This was before I had any knowledge of witchcraft, a common initial reaction for most people. As a result of the misconceptions about witchcraft, many witches fear backlash, prompting them to hide and practice in secret and refrain from telling other people in which this “fear of negative backlash is one reason for the lack of awareness about Wicca” (Cyr).

Those who claim they have a full understanding of witchcraft and do not decide to educate themselves and truly learn what the religion is, use past histories and passages in the Bible about pagans and witches being malevolent in nature. One of the first known historical witches was the Witch of Endor shown in the Old Testament in 1 Samuel 28:3-25 of the Hebrew Bible. She was a female sorcerer who conjured a spirit that prophesized the death of Saul and his three sons as well as the fall of the Israelites to the Philistines (“Witch of Endor”). The Witch of Endor became the basis of what many Christians believed witches to be. Another verse from the Bible from God states that no one shall “follow the abominable practices of those [pagan] nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord” (Deuteronomy 18:9-12). This specific verse denounces paganism and witchcraft practices and deems it as abominable, as well as giving an inaccurate representation of pagans burning people as offerings, allowing followers of Christ to believe that God says paganism and witchcraft is an abomination. In addition, the Bible also portrays mystical women or witches as people who take other people’s souls as stated in Ezekiel 13:18, “Thus says the Lord God: ‘Woe to the women who sew magic bands upon all wrists, and make veils for the heads of persons of every stature, in the hunt for souls!” In more extreme cases, some passages in the Bible also claim that pagans and witches shall burn in Hell or face death. In Leviticus 20:27, it states that “a man or a woman who is a medium or a necromancer shall surely be put to death. They shall be stoned with stones; their blood shall be upon them.” Christians who strictly follow the Bible use these verses as arguments and evidence to justify their religion for condemning pagans and witches.

If one takes the time to learn about the Wiccan religion, they could see its good values and beliefs and look past the negative misconceptions. In fact, Wicca and Christianity have similarities in their religions. Though Christianity is a monotheistic religion unlike Wicca, Christians worship three entities; God, Lord, and Jesus Christ as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Many Christian traditions and holidays such as Easter and placing a star on a Christmas tree during Christmas, have roots in paganism, especially because prior to the emergence of Christianity before the fall of Rome, Rome was a predominantly pagan city that practiced polytheism. Christmas, which is celebrated on “the December 25 date was the culmination of a Roman mid-winter festival called the Saturnalia dedicated by human sacrifices to the god of Time Saturn” (“Pagan Origins of Christmas”). Both religions also strive towards good values. Christians strive to resemble the fruit of the Spirit by having love, joy, peace, forbearance kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Galatians 5:22). Wiccans also strive towards good values such as pushing towards gender equality with “the feminine being at least as important as the masculine, the importance of preserving the environment, and moral behavior” (Cyr). There are also Christian Wiccans that exist who “have simply found their own personal way to meld two belief systems” (Robbins and Greenaway 279). Christians and Wiccans share similar beliefs of harming none and showing kindness and receiving blessings from good deeds. In the Wiccan Rede, it states “An ye harm none, do as ye will, and ever mind the Rule of Three: what ye send out, comes back to thee.” A Bible verse shares a similar belief telling Christians to “do unto others what you would have done unto you" (Matthew 7:12).

Wicca is also an official religion and is therefore protected under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution; freedom of religion. In the court case Dettmer v. Landon, Wicca was recognized an as official religion in the United States and was ruled by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals that it was protected under the First Amendment rights of freedom of religion just like any other religion (History.com Editors). In the case, it involved a Wiccan inmate named Herbert Dettmer who asked for incense, candles, sulfur, a hooded white robe, a timer, and a statue used in Wiccan worship services, but prison officials refused, arguing that Wicca did not have protection under the First Amendment and that the items would be dangerous since sulfur could make gunpowder and a robe would act as a disguise for an attempted escape, despite giving candles and incense to Catholic and Hindu inmates (Dettmer v. Landon 1985). The officials who do not consider it as a religion or see it as “the right one” only view it to be immoral. Another argument is that though some parts of witchcraft may be good, some witches still practice black magick and do harm others with magick, however, Wiccans strive to do no harm and typically do not engage in black magick.

Lastly, modern-day witches are not representative of the witches in pop culture. The first common association to a witch is a green, old, ugly, evil hag with a pointy hat and broomstick. This negative stereotype is due to the misrepresentations of witches in pop culture and media. Most shows and movies portray witches to be evil, like the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz who is green, ugly, and vicious. In Hocus Pocus, the witches are also portrayed to be stereotypical and villainous. They have a maniacal laugh, are unattractive with slightly big and pointy noses and buck teeth, and they are shown striking lightning at people and objects to hurt them. There is also media that does portray witches as devil worshippers. In the show The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, witches praise and worship Satan, honoring him as their “Dark Lord.” These negative representations in media contribute to the general belief that people have towards witches. There are good representations of witches in pop culture and media too, but they are portrayed as using white magic and there are rare examples of showing witches as a practicing religion (Cyr). In The Wizard of Oz, there is a good witch, but she only serves as an opponent to the wicked witch and there is no mention of her as a practicing Wiccan.

Modern-day witches are attempting to break these stereotypes and show that witches who do not wear pointy hats or fly on brooms do exist. Witches today are recreating their own image, replacing the green, ugly, hag who places evil curses on people with a beautiful goddess-like woman who indulges in crystal, herbal, candle, and lunar magick. However, despite of this trend of a new witch aesthetic, there are still ignorant people who will base their beliefs off these negative stereotypes, which leads many witches to slowly become more open about their religion and sharing their practice, to let other witches know that they are not alone and for non-witches to see that witchcraft is not as wicked as it may seem.

Barillari, Alyssa. “Tituba.” Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription Project, 1998, https://salem.lib.virginia.edu/people/tituba.html.

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Witch of Endor". Encyclopedia Britannica, 5 Dec. 2021, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Witch-of-Endor.

Cyr, Renee. “Modern Wicca and the Witchcraft Movement.” Colorado Journal, vol. 6, 19 November 2019, pp. 1-6, https://doi.org/10.33011/next.v6i.115.

History.com Editors. “First Salem witch hanging.” HISTORY, A&E Television Networks, 9 February 2010, https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-salem-witch-hanging.

History.com Editors. “Wicca.” HISTORY, A&E Television Networks, 23 March 2018, https://www.history.com/topics/religion/wicca.

“Pagan Origins of Christmas.” Early Church History, https://earlychurchhistory.org/politics/pagan-origins-of-christmas/.

Robbins, Shawn and Leanna Greenaway. The Witch’s Way. Sterling Publishing Co., Inc., 2019.

United States District Court, E.D. Virginia. Dettmer v. Landon. Justia, 1985, Justia US Law,

https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/617/592/2246829/.