Most Wiccans in the U.S. practice alone, though they congregate in large gatherings to conduct rituals and learn from one another.
Sarah Swinford/EyeEm via Getty Images
Interest in Wicca and witchcraft appears to be increasing, but what exactly is Wicca in the first place?
Mr Albinism Kenya Jairus Ongetta (L) and Miss Albinism Kenya Loise Lihanda pose at the Mr and Miss Albinism East Africa pageant.
YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP via Getty Images
Because of their appearance, people with albinism in Tanzania are often socially excluded and frequently (and sometimes violently) discriminated against.
An engraving of the sabbath from Pierre de Lancre’s Tableau de l'inconstance des mauvais anges.
A historian reviews Pablo Agüere’s award-winning Netflix film Akelarre and explains why it is one of the best films around on the early modern witch-hunt.
Rosaleen Norton works in crayon in a converted stable in Kings Cross in Sydney, 1946.
News Ltd/Black Jelly Films
An artist and self-proclaimed witch, Rosaleen Norton defied cultural norms in Menzies-era Australia. Reviled by the media, she was a powerfully unconventional woman.
Cheese and witches: a potent combination.
apolonia via Shutterstock
The role of witches in society relates directly to the role of women in society. And during times of social upheaval and changes, witches represent access to women’s power.
The idea of organized satanic witchcraft was invented in 15th-century Europe by church and state authorities, who at first had a hard time convincing regular folks it was real.
Seventy-eight percent of the people executed for witchcraft in New England in the late 17th and early 18th centuries were women.
Jef Thompson/Shutterstock.com
Yet again sexism rears its ugly head in this portrayal, from Arthurian legend, of a much maligned woman.
An old Canadian law which outlaws magic fraud is about to be eliminated. This print by William Hogarth, ‘Credulity Superstition and Fanaticism,’ from 1762 epitomizes the Enlightenment view that witchcraft and religious fanaticism go hand in hand.
William Hogarth/1762
An antiquated Canadian law against magic and witchcraft is about to be repealed. A close look at its history reveals that it is far less superstitious than it appears.
Kiernan Shipka as Sabrina in the new Netflix series.
Netflix
The history of why witchcraft was seen as a woman’s work.
A medieval engraving of the persecution of witches: historians are increasingly demonstrating that belief in witchcraft survived in Western Europe well into the 18th, 19th and even 20th centuries.
Wikimedia Commons
An upcoming UN meeting on witchcraft and human rights in Geneva is set to focus on the rising attacks on Albinos and the trade of body parts in sub-Saharan African.
Independent, powerful feminist role models or a warning to women not to overstep the mark? Witches have been many things over the years.
FBI Director James Comey and National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers at hearing on allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta
A ‘witch hunt’ is what Trump called investigations into his campaign and Russian interference in the 2016 election. An anthropologist explains the connection between witch hunts and social control.
Associate Professor, TC Beirne School of Law, the University of Queensland; International Distinguished Fellow, the Burton Blatt Institute, Syracuse University., The University of Queensland