Bohemian Witches Beau and Bernard

Witches are having a major moment. As well as this weekend’s release of the witchy horror movie Suspiria, a slew of witch-themed TV reboots are in the works (see: Charmed, Sabrina the Teenage Witch,and Bewitched). Starbuck’s unveiled its “Witch’s Brew” Halloween frappucino this Halloweeen week. The population of practicing witches and Wiccans in the US has seen an astronomical rise. And social media has conjured up a kind of Instagrammable witchiness that has been identified by market trend-spotters as “mysticore” or “chaos magic.”

The modern incarnation of witch culture in the #MeToo era has a kind of feminist, liberal sheen to it—with millennial women gravitating to witchcraft’s focus on women’s power and sisterhood, inclusivity, and adjacency to broader interests like yoga, meditation, and mindfulness. Followers of Wiccan or Pagan traditions gather in covens, practice moon ceremonies, and occasionally cast hexes on people such as US president Donald Trump andSupreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Beautiful Beau Bernard

Edmund Zagorski has chosen the electric chair over lethal injection ...