Inside the trend that’s casting its spell over the culture

Laura Bolt, Salon, Aug. 22, 2016

Welcome to the season of the witch. Recently, the Brooklyn Academy of Music hosted a Witches Brew film festival, which included the acclaimed new film “The Witch.” Lately it isn’t uncommon to see glossy magazines like Nylon with headlines that start “The Witches’ Guide to…”, while new publications like Sabat, an aesthetically driven magazine that explores contemporary witchcraft, are attracting attention from readers and design snobs alike.

Stores specializing in metaphysical sundries (think ritual candles, blended oils, sacred herbs) are suddenly crowded. In Brooklyn, Witches of Bushwick has evolved from a venue on the underground party circuit to a social collective that celebrates witchcraft as a feminist art and collaborates with fashion companies like Chromat. Of course, for those who prefer whipping up potions at home, several new witch- and occult-themed subscription boxes deliver the magical arts to the doorstep.

Not just witches are enjoying a cultural renaissance, though. All manner of magic is in the air, as the New Age movement’s lighter granola-and-Zen fare has given way to the practice of a more modern mysticism, where conversations about conjuring, personal shamans and powerful potions can be intense as they are ubiquitous. While social media and feminism have brought witchcraft to the fore, the new kaleidoscopic array of spell casting, ritual observing (from pagan holidays to full moons) and crystal charging draws from traditional mysticism, magic and paganism. Served buffet style to an eager audience of open-minded converts, it’s shining a white light on everything from fashion and health to politics.

Last fall the folks at trend-forecasting firm K-Hole–which coined the term “normcore”–looked into the cultural crystal ball to release a paper dubbed “A Report on Doubt.” K-Hole’s new prediction was that logic and “sameness” were becoming relics and people were about to head into the mystic.

Dubbing this new philosophy “Chaos Magic,” a term that’s been bantered about in the postmodern Magick community for decades), K-Hole prophesied, “The fundamental element of magic is the ability to manifest or sublimate things.”

Plus, K-Hole observed, “Chaos Magic lives in the same realm as the cult of positive thinking. But it goes beyond making mood boards of high end apartments you’d like to will into your possession… . You opt into whatever belief system you think will help you reach your intended goals.”

Check social media: A search for #witch on Instagram yields about 2,375,000 posts–whereas one for #kardashian scores only 1,630,000. K-Hole was right, “mysticore” is the new norm.

But why? Consider the simple maxim: In uncertain times, people turn to religion to make sense of the world around them.

Today, however, as traditional Western religion loses some of its appeal, mysticism, witchcraft and magic are stepping in to fill the spiritual void.

The current surge of mystical thought is also directly tied to the sense of personal empowerment that modern feminism works toward. “The witch as an icon is resonating right now because we’ve entered a fourth wave of feminism,” said Pam Grossman, author of What Is a Witch and co-founder of the Occult Humanities Conference at New York University. “We are redefining what power, leadership, beauty and value look like on our own terms. And the witch is the ultimate symbol of female power. Doing witchcraft is a way to connect to that energy, which is so needed right now, as we’re beginning to collectively course correct thousands of years of sexism and oppression.”

A visit to the temple of Instagram (and Tumblr and Snapchat) makes it easy to see how mysticore appeals to the generation of internet autodidacts that grew up on Harry Potter. In social media, the idea of tapping into something ancient is suddenly accessible, personal and highly individualized.

Grossman, for one, doesn’t see mysticore going away anytime soon.