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“Because witchcraft describes a composite series of practices, rather than a single formalised religion in itself (there are various religions which incorporate witchcraft, such as Wicca and some forms of Paganism) there is space within witchcraft for more diversity of belief and practice,” says Alice Tarbuck, from Edinburgh, who co-teaches a course called ‘Toil and Trouble: Towards a Responsible Witchcraft’. All kinds of love can be viewed as pure and holy!” “As long as you aren’t harming anyone or anything you can live how you want to and I think that’s so important for individuality and freedom of expression. “Sexuality isn’t treated as a taboo, there’s no shame around it as there is in other religions,” she says. She moved to the UK from Bulgaria, where she was raised around Christianity, and finds witchcraft to be a more welcoming form of spirituality, pointing out that you don’t have to be straight, cis, or be part of the gender binary to practise. “What really drew me into witchcraft was how it didn’t focus so much on making everyone live under the same rules,” says Antonina, who is 19-years-old, queer, and a self-labelled witch.

But other than the obvious qualities of witchcraft – like, you know, magic – what is it that specifically draws us LGBTQ+ people in? A true act of sorcery, it converted me into a believer. Just weeks after the hex, she finally became pregnant.

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It reached its supernatural apex for me when we met up under a full moon one night to cast some spells on a lesbian-identified member of the group who had been having trouble conceiving a baby via IVF. Named Sisters Of The Sanitary Cloth (a half-joke of a moniker), it’s basically a Whatsapp-cum-support group for 13 women in London. On Instagram, there are many highly visible LGBTQ+ witches, like Brooklyn Bruja Emilia Ortiz, Dazed Beauty’s very own Wellness Editor, as well as 22-year-old YouTuber Harmony Nice (who identifies as bisexual and Wiccan), and musician Princess Nokia, whose bruja practice seems to be at the heart of all that she does.Īs a queer person myself, despite not being particularly spiritual at all, I have even somehow found my way into a coven. A call out for LGBTQ+ witches on Twitter offers up dozens upon dozens of responses. Recently, however, it seems that an increasing number of LGBTQ+ people are identifying as witches, while more witches are understanding witchcraft as an inherently queer practice. Just look at Buffy The Vampire Slayer – a show that traded off the links between witchcraft and queer sexuality (creator Joss Whedon has admitted that the network wouldn't let them show anything physical between Willow and Tara, so he used magic and spells as a metaphor for sex). Queerness and witchcraft have long been bedfellows.

“Complacency is anti-magic,” they wrote in a poem, “witches of all genders ride now”. Sollée traces this tradition of witchery as political power through to 2017, when a group of witches called the Yerbamala Collective decided to hex Donald Trump. According to Kristen J Sollée – the academic who recounts this history and brilliantly self-describes as an “occulture slut” – the people who created the magazine were part of the women’s liberation movement and were “frustrated with the limitations of patriarchal religion.” They saw witchcraft was a way to build trust with one another in their lesbian separatist pseudo-cult. In the opening of the book Becoming Dangerous: Witchy Femmes, Queer Conjurers and Magical Rebels, there is a story about a group of lesbians in Wolf Creek, Oregon, who in 1974, created a magazine called Womanspirit, which was a witchy combination of spirituality and feminism. Elsewhere, we’ve created four special covers to celebrate the campaign and our one year anniversary – something wicked this way comes. Discover photo stories shot featuring real witches in NYC, a modern reimagining of the witch, and one witch’s mission to get a tan, as well as in-depth features exploring herbology, science and alchemy, and male witches. Welcome to Witch Week, a campaign dedicated to exploring how witchcraft, magick and beauty intersect.

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