The Real Reason Women Love Witches
By Anne Theriault
It’s not about broomsticks or cats. It’s about power.
The sleepovers I attended as a little kid all followed a similar pattern: We would have dinner, retreat to the family room to watch whatever movies had been rented for us, consume enormous amounts of soft drinks, and then, riding that sugar high, stay up into the wee hours of the morning giggling over anything and everything. This routine continued until shortly before we hit puberty, at which point our sleepovers took a darker turn. As soon as the rest of the family was in bed, we would abandon the family room and whatever embarrassingly babyish movie had been provided for our entertainment and instead make a beeline for the basement. There, in the chill darkness lit by a single dangling lightbulb, we would try to do magic.
Our forays into the dark arts never went further than the most standard of supernatural party tricks: daring each other to do Bloody Mary, asking the ouija boards about our futures, taking turns levitating each other using the old light as a feather, stiff as a board game. Sometimes we tried to cast spells or make voodoo dolls of our frenemies; one girl had an older sister who was Wiccan, and we would pore over her books and notes whenever we got the chance. We lit pink candles and chanted the names of boys…
