‘It’s still taboo, it’s still dangerous’: How modern day witches in America are reclaiming history for feminism

The latest headlines from our reporters across the US sent straight to your inbox each weekday Your briefing on the latest headlines from across the US Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} At a recent women’s march protesting Texas’s near total abortion ban, a protester held aloft a sign that read, in furious red letters: “We are the great granddaughters of the witches you didn’t burn.” Other messages referencing witch-hunts, and ancestral witches, have appeared at rallies across America as part of the post #metoo protests against a perceived war on women’s rights. “It’s not a coincidence that there’s been a huge rise in the resurgence of interest in witchcraft among young people, at the same time as the resurgence in feminism,” says Frances F Denny, a photographer, whose book Major Arcana: Portraits of Witches in America was published in 2020, is the subject of a current exhibit at Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, the town of the 1692 witch trials. Pam,, 2016, from Major Arcana: Portraits of Witches in America series, archival pigment print “I asked too many questions, I was always raising my hand, I knew how to recite the Adhan, which is never meant to be spoken by a woman; that is shameful, that is a sin.” In her early 20s Blackhawk came to peace with her “wild child” witchcraft, which she describes now as eclectic; part shamanism, part hoodoo but essentially a vivid form of healing. “To have these so-called modern day witches there for all the women whose voices were stolen from them 300 years ago is one of the most important things that I’ve been a part of,” says Blackhawk.