On the floor of a sun-drenched room in a 200-year-old Irish estate, a group of 15 witches gather to commune with the spirits. Everyone has someone they want to talk to – dead ancestors, forest fairies, the witches who came before them – and the room has the same expectant charge as the first day of school. Some of the witches wear long black capes and bandannas. Some wear Columbia fleeces, spaghetti-strap tank tops and Adidas sneakers.
‘Demonized, called hysterical’: the rise of witchcraft retreats where US women go to defy man and church
In an age of spiritual isolation, witches are flocking to the woods of Ireland and elsewhere to form covens of ‘sisterhood’
