- Witch drama is like no other drama
because people curse each other when there's witch drama.
(spooky instrumental music)
Hello, my name is Sarah Lyons.
I'm a witch, as you can tell, and I'm a Tarot card reader.
I've been practicing witchcraft for about 10 years now,
and I normally don't wear hats like this.
Today I'm gonna be watching clips
from several movies and TV show that feature witches
and setting the record straight on just how accurate
some of those depictions are.
(Wicked Witch screaming)
- You cursed brat!
Look what you've done!
I'm melting, melting!
- This movie freaked me out so much when I was a kid.
I mean, that is how I melt in the summer
when I'm wearing all black.
Obviously this is a little bit done up for Hollywood.
It was one of the first colorized movies
that people got to see on the big screen,
so one of the things that they did
to kind of make Oz so much more beautiful, odd, and surreal,
is make the witch green in it.
Every time you see a green witch
in a Halloween store, or you see people
dressing up in costumes of witches wearing
green paint on their face,
it all goes back to the Wizard of Oz.
There's no previous lore about that.
(laughing)
- I'm doing that right now.
- How?
- I'm a witch.
I have powers.
I can make these kind of things happen.
- I'm sorry, I can't with the sparkles.
I've never made sparkles appear in the air.
I don't know what the point of that is,
just to walk in and have like, glitter everywhere.
It is a little accurate though
when you're on a date with someone,
whenever the witchcraft thing comes up,
the date either gets a lot more fun
or just kind of dies right there.
Well, what do you do?
And, I read Tarot cards and do witchcraft.
Uh, what do you do?
You know.
- Ooooooooooh.
Come to mommy.
- Afraid not.
- Thackery Binx, thou mangy feline.
Still alive?
- And waiting for you.
- Oh, thou hast waited in vain.
And thou will fail to save thy friends,
just as thou failed to save thy sister.
- This is one of my favorite movies.
I watch it every October.
And one of the main tropes throughout Hocus Pocus
is Winifred's spell book,
and how she needs that spell book
to make them young and beautiful again.
Witches having spell books,
that's a pretty accurate idea.
Nowadays, witches might call the place
where they keep their spells a book of shadows.
Flying on broomsticks is a really common trope
in a lot of old witch lore.
A lot of what people associate with witches
comes from the old wood cuts that we would see in Europe,
the women flying with other witches
on a broomstick to the sabbath.
The sabbath is the gathering place of witches.
No, I don't literally ride a broomstick,
but the sabbath isn't really a physical place.
The way that a lot of witches were said to fly
to the sabbath was by rubbing a flying ointment
on themselves, and the flying ointment
contained herbs that we now know to be
hallucinogenic in nature,
so things like belladonna, mugwort
Flying on a broom stick is the early modern equivalent
of just tripping out.
Rubbing on skin is fine, but you shouldn't ingest it
or put it on your naughty bits.
Little safety advice for all those
little witches out there watching this.
Yes, I love this movie.
- Hail to the guardians of the watchtowers of the East.
Powers of air and invention, hear me.
- Us. - Hear us.
- Hail to the guardians of the watchtowers of the South.
- The ritual that they do at the beach
is actually a very common ritual
that you do in witchcraft called calling the corners,
or drawing a circle.
So in a lot of witchcraft, sort of create
a circle of protection around yourself
before you engage in magic
and just sort of create what's called a cone of power,
wherein your magic becomes stronger,
especially if you're doing it with a group of people,
which they were doing.
You have to first call the four corners
of the cardinal directions.
So north, south, east, and west.
Every witch practices their craft a little bit differently.
No two witches are gonna have the same way
that they practice their craft.
You could use that as a template for a ritual.
- What are you cooking?
Something smells (sniffs) handsome?
- Sabrina, you're gonna love it.
We're making you a dream date.
- You know, it's not an uncommon thing
for witches to cook up a date for someone
to use magic as a form of attraction.
Inevitably, when you tell someone
that you're a witch, the first thing that
somebody asks you is if you can do a love spell for them.
There's some controversy, actually,
in the witchcraft community over love spells
and over the ethics of love spells.
Some people think that they are coercive
and then therefore shouldn't be used.
But some people also think that it's just
the equivalent of maybe putting on a little bit of makeup
and wearing some nice perfume,
that it's not so much about making someone
fall in love with you, but it's more just about
opening up the doors and allowing
something like that to come into your life, perhaps.
I have done a love spell, yeah.
I've done kind of attraction spells for myself.
I'm going out on a date and I really want it to go well,
I might light a candle, I might say a spell,
I might do something of that sort.
Personally, if I want someone to fall in love with me,
I want it to be because of me
and not be necessarily wondering if it's because of a spell.
♪ I've been the wrong place ♪
♪ But it must have been the right time ♪
- The soundtrack for this show is so good.
My God, I want all their outfits.
This is just a Vogue photo shoot.
Oh, Jessica Lang.
I mean, is there anyone cooler?
(witch screaming)
- The idea that modern witches would
burn one another alive if one transgressed
sort of the rules of a community or coven isn't accurate.
That's murder.
And I don't know anybody who's really down for that.
Having a ritual sacrifice of someone
isn't something that I know about anybody doing,
but hey, maybe I'm getting invited
to the wrong parties, right?
(heavy rock music)
- I have cursed people.
It is not something I do often,
because the couple of times I've done it,
I've really (beep) up some lives.
There's a lot of ways to go about
laying a curse on someone or laying a hex on someone.
What a binding spell is is kind of just
keeping someone exactly where they are,
stopping someone in their tracks
so that they can't bring harm to you anymore.
A really common way to do this is to
take a photo of someone and wrap them up in like black tape
and then put them in the back of your freezer,
because you're freezing them, right, where they stand.
Oh, I'm so excited for this show.
I love the comics.
- [Man] Are you willing to forsake the path of light
and follow the path of night?
(voices chanting)
- Oh, I'm so excited.
- [Sabrina] I can't do this.
- That's like everything I want in a TV show.
I've read the comics, so I know a little bit about
what nefarious things that she gets up to, poor girl.
In this one, Sabrina's having her freaking birthday
with the devil, you know?
He's invited to the party, right?
In Wicca, which is a religion that uses
witchcraft as a part of it, there really isn't
a figure called a devil.
Most Wiccans don't believe in the devil.
They worship a god and a goddess,
and often the god is depicted as sort of a horned god,
so maybe looking kind of devilish.
But a lot of witches do worship the devil,
or do use the devil in their craft.
But when they're talking about the devil,
it's sort of the figure at the crossroads
who's an initiatory figure into the world of witchcraft,
if they decide to pull on any real dark lore.
- With pleasure.
- But it kind of seems like they're doing here.
If we can really do things with our minds, that's scary.
So I like now that depictions of witchcraft
are actually embracing more of the kind of
darkness that was associated with witchcraft
for a long time.
The witch is an archetype and a symbol
that's been with us for a millennia.
But maybe don't believe everything you see in the movies.
When it comes to magic and especially witchcraft,
truth truly is stranger than fiction.
(spooky instrumental music)