I'm Anthony Padilla and I spent a day with Wiccan high priestesses
to learn the truth about the highly controversial beliefs and
bizarre rituals of this occultist religion.
Today I'm gonna put their words to the test by allowing them to
use me as a vessel to cast a spell, but what I
really wanna know is—
Is this religion so controversial because it commonly empowers women, or
is it because of something much more nefarious, like worshiping Satan?
- Hello, Phyllis! - Hi!
- Thorn! - Hey!
This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp Online Therapy.
Visit betterhelp.com/padilla because sometimes existing is exhausting.
Now—
How would you describe yourself?
Wiccan, what kind of words would you use?
- Generally speaking, I refer to myself as a Wiccan priestess.
- Most of the time I just reach for "witch."
- "Witch."
- "Witch" is such a broad term these days that, when I'm in the company of
other practitioners, it's more helpful to define myself as Wiccan.
- What is the biggest misconception about Wiccans?
- I guess it's still the old one, that we're involved
with Satan or something.
But, I'm sorry to say to those who believe that, they are completely wrong.
- There's some watching right now.
- Yeah, well—
I'm sorry, darling, but you're completely wrong.
Satan is an Abrahamic figure.
He exists within the pages of the Bible.
He is their projection of evil, and
they need to deal with him instead of projecting him onto other people,
especially us.
- You are one of America's first public witches.
- I am.
Now the whole world is composed of witches.
I was one of their first.
There were very few of us that had the guts to come out,
and I was a lawyer at the time on top of it all,
In the very early eighties.
- People were nervous about coming out as witches after the Salem witch trials in America.
That makes no sense.
Why would people be concerned about coming out as a witch?
- I know, "Why are you so stressed," right?
So, the witch craze was five hundred years ago.
Just the mere accusation of being a witch was enough to have you
thrown in jail, tortured, murdered—
- What do Wiccans believe?
- We don't necessarily have a unified moral code, for example,
or a unified belief about what happens when we die,
or what gods are like.
What we share tends to be ritual stuff—
what our tools are, how we frame our liturgy.
What you do is more important to us, and
what you do reflects your beliefs.
- When people hear "Wicca," they think "witchcraft,"
they think "Satanic rituals."
- There are no devils and demons, and there's definitely no Satan.
He is entirely a Christian character.
He's their figure who personifies evil.
- Can you tell us about the history of Wicca, where it came from,
how long it's been around?
- The 1940s in England.
There is this popular movement to start looking toward magic
and the magical traditions of that area.
There's this guy named Gerald Gardner who comes out and
he starts writing popular books.
He has a tabloid presence, and basically he comes out and tells people,
"Hey, I was initiated into this surviving witch cult.
I've gotten permission to write about it and share it with the world."
People start seeking him and various associates of his out for initiation.
Eventually, he initiates folks in the US, his books make it over there, and
people begin spreading his tradition in the United States.
The particular tradition that I follow goes back to that dude.
He brought people in, they brought people in,
they brought people in, I'm down here somewhere.
- Like a pyramid scheme.
- Yes!
Exactly.
[laughs]
No, I'm stopping there.
Absolutely not.
[laughs]
- Is Wicca a modern religion or is it ancestral?
- It wasn't called Wicca, but it existed more than five thousand years ago.
It was the indigenous wisdom tradition of Europe.
- Wicca tends to be the spirituality.
It developed as a modern rebirth.
- Would you say that the ritual that was done to initiate you
changed you or the way you perceive the world or made you feel differently?
Was there some kind of value placed on that initiation?
- I know some folks who will say that
their initiations felt like a culmination of something.
For other people, the moment itself is that transitory,
explosive moment where suddenly you're different.
- If I were a skeptic, I might hear things like,
"There's a guy at this point some time within recent history
that found this thing and started spreading his word,
and then people started becoming initiated into it,"
I would think [snaps] cult.
- Yeah.
That word was used.
I think "cult" is one of those words where we use it
to mean, "This religion over here that we don't like."
People used to write about the cult of democracy in the United States,
this idea of devotion to something, adherence to something.
It's really only in very recent decades the word "cult"
has come to have this blanket negative connotation.
But, amongst my coven mates, yeah, we use the word "cult."
- Most people when they hear "cult" assume that it means
unquestioning devotion to a belief system that was taught.
- That definitely is not who we are.
If we could be said to have a central virtue, it would be
autonomy and personal authority.
My devotion is to my tradition and to my gods.
It's not to other witches, and certainly not to a founder.
- Do you cast spells?
Do you use magic?
- Oh yeah, from the very beginning.
If you ask most young witches, they'll tell you that
magic is the art of manipulating supernatural forces
to manifest what you want.
Hmm—
Not so much, I mean that's an old model.
- What is the magic, actually?
- Magic is the flow of the sacred from energy into embodiment.
Everything's interconnected, and that flow of connection,
that relationship, that energy that moves back and forth between us
and the plant—
which could use a little more water—
[grumbles]
- We try not to talk about that.
[laughs]
- Physicists now talk about 13, 14 different dimensions of reality—
In fact, we operate mostly in three—
but the mind has a capacity to experience much more.
When you open your mind and your heart, the sacred comes to you.
You ask, and the energy flows into you.
It changes you, and you work with it, and
working with it is casting a spell.
- [dreamy music] I thought it was you had to find five very rare herbs,
mix them together in a concoction of your own blood and
the blood of some random person, then you have to mix it up and
mash it together and drink it six times—
- Yeah?
Where did you hear this?
[record scratch, music stops] Stop going on "WitchTok!"
- Then all your dreams will manifest.
- A good spell opens your heart,
asks for what you need,
and then—if you wish to—
to enhance the asking, you can add herbs and oils.
There's an artistry to it and it can be very beautiful,
but it doesn't have to be anything other than breathing,
or drinking water,
or making an offering.
- Magic potentially involved a lot of things.
People will tell you that if you make a wish on your birthday candles
and you blow those out, that's a type of spell.
Lots of people have different perspectives.
All of that potentially is magic.
To me, magic can be a useful tool for controlling those things
that we might think of as coincidence or luck.
It's not gonna fix everything.
It puts enough things into play where the thing that
I am hoping will happen has a better chance of happening.
There are people who are very bookish, and there are ancient traditions of magic
that we can study and can potentially master.
There are recipe books out there.
- Do they work?
- They can, yeah.
I know that sounds very coy.
- Very up for interpretation.
- Some people are in this camp that says,
"Here's a spell, and the elements of it by themselves are powerful."
There are other people who—
It's a creative act.
It's something that is born in the same way you might write a song or
make a piece of visual art.
- So it's a piece of art—
- Yeah.
- And it makes you feel a certain way, and
it might change your actions.
- Totally.
- So there isn't a general sense of, "here's a recipe
or an equation for you to follow, and what works for me
will work for you," it really is individual by individual.
- I can give you a recipe, but if you've got no heart in that recipe
I don't think it's gonna work as well for you.
- An example of magic—
I was in law school and I started having dreams that came true.
One of the dreams that I kept having was a woman
who would appear in the dream.
She was bare-chested and she had a crown on her head
and a light at her throat
and she was holding a book.
A friend of mine took me to have my tarot cards read
by a woman who she said was a witch.
There's a spread, she sees things that I've discussed with nobody.
I'm impressed.
When we're all done, she says,
I have a women's circle. I think you might be interested.
You might find what you're looking for there."
I shake her hand politely.
I say, "Thank you, that's very kind."
I pay her. I'm out the door.
These are witches, I'm—
Witches? Circles? No.
Well, you should think about it.
I go back to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York,
and I'm walking into a new wing of sculptures.
Suddenly, like you're seated next to me,
in front of me is the woman in my dreams.
It was a statue carved out of marble.
Instead of a book, she's holding a rolled-up sheaf of papers.
I looked at the little plaque next to her toes and it said,
"The Libyan Sibyl."
I looked up Sibyl and it said,
'an ancient prophetess, a witch.'
The universe is speaking to you.
The sacred is showing itself to you.
- So it's more of a question of if you are listening.
- You have to listen, you have to look,
you have to open, and you have to ask the question.
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Now, back to the world of Wiccans.
- I think we're gonna have you do your very own spell.
- What would those spells look like?
Are you allowed to say, or is that a secret?
- I'll share it with YOU.
- There's no cameras rolling so don't worry.
- It's good. It's all—
- It's just you and me here.
- I believe you.
- I totally turned off the cameras.
- And I am very gullible, so let's go.
- Good, let's go.
- I'm gonna ask you to think about prosperity and success,
whatever that looks like for you.
- I already got prosperity and success, you see?
Look around me.
- I mean, I see some things that could be improved upon.
- I'm in this seven million dollar studio with 45 associates
who help me at every single moment.
I couldn't ask for more. I mean, you've got me here, so
with you, so that's pretty—
- And you are a hefty penny.
- I am.
[giggles]
- So, fundamentally, what you're gonna do,
you're gonna make yourself a little bag.
We're gonna put some stuff in it.
We're going to decide that it's magical.
- So it's a decision, it's an internal belief?
- I think so, yeah.
So here's what you're gonna do first.
I brought a bunch of little pouches, they're in different colors.
I want you to think like if you were gonna bring
success or prosperity into your life, give me a color association.
- I am gonna go with the green bag.
It's got multiple different textures and
the fact that it's made handmade,
to me, it feels like more connection to the Earth.
- Okay, so now I wanna think about these herbs.
What might you pick as our base?
- I think the base would be spearmint.
I feel like this is most associated with taking care of yourself,
associated with brushing your teeth and having a minty mouth.
- Yeah, your day's gonna go better if you brush your teeth.
Okay.
Now I want to look at some of these other objects we have here.
Some of this was in a little cup on my desk of interesting stones.
- I see three objects—
- What is it?
- that I immediately would be gravitated toward.
- What are they?
- First off would be this shiny little [bleep].
- That's pyrite.
- It's beautiful.
I think the color goes really well with the bag that we have here.
- It's also called fool's gold.
Again, we have that association with wealth and prosperity.
- And then the amethyst, I have a connection with this from when
I was younger because I used to like to collect rocks.
I was a really cool kid that liked to collect rocks.
And then this one here, I think the light traveling through it
is really beautiful.
- I love that you're putting yourself on there, too.
The last thing you're going to do is write what is often called a petition.
I'm not gonna read it, and you don't have to share it with anybody else.
You don't even have to write words.
You can draw a symbol that's important to you,
if you've got song lyrics that are meaningful to you,
something that just speaks to the prosperity you want to bring into your life.
- I drew a waterfall.
I feel like it's a reminder to go with the flow,
and how even when it feels like you are falling,
you'll still end up back in the water on your journey, flowing forward.
- I like it.
Great.
That's what you're doing now.
- And should I be popping it in here?
- Yeah.
- Okay, that feels good.
- That's yours.
You're gonna keep that forever and ever, or
until you feel like it's done it's job with you
and place it wherever.
- And that could have a huge, profound effect
on the way that I go about my life,
but is it all—
Is it all here?
- Even if you've finished your spell, whatever it is,
and you feel like it hasn't worked,
I think that there's still value just in the fact that you performed it at all.
If we think that magic is art, it's equally valuable
to sit down and create and not worry about the outcome.
Let's say it is all in my head.
Let's say that it's a placebo, and
I'm casting some kind of spell because I'm anxious about a school test
or I'm anxious about whatever.
Just the process of sitting down and going through something like this
I find calms my anxiety, and at that point, who cares?
- Who cares if it's a placebo, because placebos work.
The belief in something working is enough to make it work.
- And that's something else that I think makes Wicca weird and
and why I kind of hesitate around the idea of belief because, to me,
belief may not be the most important thing.
Sometimes just the doing it is important.
- Well thank you for this, and I will leave it up to my interpretations
what comes from this.
- Magic!
- Thank you.
- Anthony's a witch now.
- I am a witch.
Do you find that people tend to be skeptical when they hear about
you being a witch, when they hear about what types of benefits
and things this brings you?
- The first reaction, [shocked gasps]
even now amongst too many people
that either you're wacky or Satanic.
It's just tedious, but as soon as you explain,
"Look, it's an ancestral indigineous wisdom tradition."
Totally has nothing to do with any of those stereotypes.
Those were visited upon people because of the church,
because of its hostility, because it wanted complete
political and religious control.
I mean, I've tried to engage with fundamentalists of various stripes.
Generally speaking, it doesn't matter what your faith is.
If it's not theirs, they're not listening.
- I mean, I've been Wiccan for my entire adult life.
I was exploring it as a teenager, and I wasn't raised in a religious household.
When I started going to college, particularly in the Southeast,
most of the people I know were raised in some kind of Christian household,
and that stuff isn't less weird than what I do.
Believing in bodily resurrection is not more reasonable
than what you and I just did.
Personally, I just wish that we all could appreciate that
if it's weird, at least we're all weird.
- What I find interesting is that so many religions
are accepted as faith in this religion, we should not question it,
but with something like Wiccans,
people immediately have assumptions about what it means
even if these beliefs have been around for potentially
thousands of years longer than the widespread accepted religions of today.
- Unfortunately a lot of religious institutions, they become institutions
and they become political institutions as a result.
There are always people who practice their faiths who are made better by them,
but there are a lot of people who are not, and they are very often in the hierarchies.
Power and control, fear of women,
it hangs on, so we have to work very hard to disabuse people
of all those negative stereotypes and lies.
I never really thought about how the terms "magic" and
"spellcasting" can mean something entirely different based on
your previous exposure to the words.
What if magic really is just a matter of setting your intentions
and opening yourself up for interpretations that align with that intention?
If I cast a spell to have a good day,
am I more likely to have a good day because of that,
because of my intention to do so?
Whether it's a placebo or something more,
does it matter if it actually works?
I went home, pulled out my annotated Oxford English dictionary
and the magnifying glass—
[laughs]
- You're describing a world before the Internet.
- I know you don't know what I'm talking about, but like this.
It's the physical version of doing this.
- Okay, now I understand.
Thank you.
- You're welcome.