Toil & Trouble: 15 Tales of Women & Witchcraft

by Jessica Spotswood

Destroying a girl is one of the easiest things in the world. I would have said differently, once. It’s such a simple form of denial, and it goes like this: bad things happen to those girls. Other girls. Not this girl. Not me. I’m different. You’re only different until the day you’re not.

Then I think of witches, and understand that there are too many people in this world who would rather see a woman burn than wield power.

This is what witchcraft looks like: It is women holding hands, harnessing power, and changing their fate. If every woman practiced such a thing, we would learn what Eve did after she ate that apple. When she held knowledge in her hands. We would upend the world.