Witchcraft not wicked
FORGET Harry Potter's brainiac Hermione or Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Willow: Australian teenage witches are not busy fighting demons like their fictional counterparts.
FORGET Harry Potter's brainiac Hermione or Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Willow: Australian teenage witches are not busy fighting demons like their fictional counterparts.
Two researchers have interviewed 90 teenage witches in Australia, England and the US to find out whether they have a broom in the cupboard, a cloak upstairs or any spells on the boil.
They found that teenage witches, including both girls and boys, use witchcraft positively to help deal with issues that young people face every day while growing up.
Witches who were interviewed used spells, pagan rituals and meditation to pass exams, boost their self-confidence and help get over relationship break-ups.
But love spells for the modern witch were out of bounds.
"Most teenage witches don't practice love spells because it is believed to be morally wrong to manipulate someone else," said co-researcher and University of Tasmania associate professor Douglas Ezzy.
"One or two said they had tried to do love spells but they discovered later on that the person was really horrible and they wouldn't go away because of the love spell."
Professor Ezzy said witchcraft was a form of paganism, which worships nature and celebrated the harvest festivals.
He said that there was a huge increase in witchcraft in the late 1990s when Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Charmed hit television screens. Professor Ezzy said the shows tapped into a need expressed by teenagers to find something more spiritual in life.
He said that he and his co-author Helen Berger found that witchcraft was not seductive but instead empowering and offered personal development for teenagers.
"The overall finding was that teenage witches are engaging in witchcraft for positive life affirming reasons. (It) helps them make sense of the issues they are experiencing," Professor Ezzy said.
"They are not fighting demons, as is sometimes displayed in popular media. Really there is nothing to be afraid of. The amount of witches is now roughly the same size as Mormons."
Self-proclaimed pagan and sometime witch Dominique Wilson said fictional representations of witches differed dramatically to real-life practitioners.
"We don't carry a wand and we don't levitate people. But there are aspects of herbal uses and potions that are more accurate," she said.
The 26-year-old PhD student, studying comparative religion at the University of Sydney, said she had met some amazing people through practising paganism.
"It gives meaning and purpose to my life and ultimately I do it because it is who I am," she said.
Shorten’s new salary revealed as VC at Uni of Canberra
Former Labor frontbencher Bill Shorten has doubled his money by parachuting into an $860,000-a-year job as vice-chancellor of the University of Canberra.
Indigenous academic invokes ‘Black Lives Matter’ in racism row
The Indigenous academic who invited anti-Israel activists as keynote speakers at a racism symposium that mocked ‘Dutton’s Jew’ has likened the public backlash to a ‘Black Lives Matter’ moment.