“Invoking witchcraft may be politically or spiritually motivated, or both. On the political side, western feminists have long treated witchcraft as symbolic: ‘We’re the granddaughters of the witches you didn’t burn,’ as the slogan goes. Between 50,000 and 100,000 people were executed for witchcraft in European history, mostly in the 16th and 17th centuries (3): 80% of the accused and 85% of those found guilty were women, while men were often only incriminated by association. […]Today’s witches grew up with Harry Potter, and television series such as Charmed, with three witch sisters, and with Willow, the powerful witch in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Magic can seem like a pragmatic response in a world where everything is bent on making your life precarious. The growing sense of environmental catastrophe may have reduced technological society’s prestige and power to intimidate; when the worldview that presents itself as rational destroys the planetary environment, the categories of rational and irrational need to be re-scrutinised.” Mona Chollet