Witches Run Amok: The Oral History of Disney’s Hocus Pocus

Author: Shannon Carlin

In July 1993, Disney’s Hocus Pocus, starring Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimy, did not immediately find success, with box office numbers falling far below what was envisioned. Yet somehow the Halloween movie released in the middle of the summer to little fanfare has become an enduring and widely loved classic. Nearly three decades after the film’s initial release, it’s a yearly holiday viewing tradition in households around the world, becoming a not-so-scary rite of passage for kids and their parents, many of whom grew up watching the film about the resurrected witchy trio with their own parents.

Hocus Pocus is a movie that has few if any equals; it manages to span a generational divide, uniting boomers and zoomers in their nostalgic love for the boundary-pushing supernatural comedy that in some ways seemed a little too risqué for the millennial kids it was originally intended for. So how did a movie that didn’t catch an initial spark end up casting such a spell on mainstream culture? Witches Run Amok answers that question and more, using interviews from the cast and creative team behind the heartwarming Halloween staple. The book is a love letter to Hocus Pocus’s millions of devoted fans and a fascinating read for anyone who wants to understand how the Disney movie became a pop culture phenomenon.

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Tarot Every Witch Way: Unlock the Power of the Cards for Spellcraft & Magic

Author: Lilith Dorsey

This comprehensive guide to making magick with the tarot is a must-have for witches everywhere, no matter their specialty or level of familiarity. Lilith Dorsey draws from decades of experience as a diviner and magickal practitioner to offer up countless ways to weave the energies and wisdom of the cards into your life.

Tarot Every Witch Way provides an extensive array of magical correspondences witches can use to connect with the cards, including animals, astrology, crystals, herbs, musical notes, and more. You will also receive step-by-step instructions for deeper workings with the tarot, such as making altars, shrines, and crystal grids to help awaken your deck. Featuring a dozen illustrations of tarot spreads as well as recipes for crafts, charms, and tasty foods, this book brings the magic of the arcana into your life.

Includes a foreword by Silver Ravenwolf and words of wisdom from Courtney Alexander, Bernadette Montana, Dorothy Morrison, Mat Auryn, Deborah Lipp, and Andrieh Vitimus.

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Real Life Intuition: Extraordinary Stories from People Who Listen to Their Inner Voice

Author: Melanie Barnum

Featuring empowering and sometimes surprising experiences from real people and exercises for developing your natural gifts, this book teaches you how to use intuition to get ahead in life. Discover inspiring stories from doctors, lawyers, musicians, therapists, and other professionals who tapped into their intuition and experienced a positive life shift. Through these vignettes you will gain a deeper understanding and working knowledge of your five clairs: clairsentience, claircognizance, clairvoyance, clairaudience, and clairalience. Melanie Barnum also reveals how to interpret dreams, intuitive flashes, and signs and synchronicities. With this book, you will tune in to the universal energy that connects us all and use it to help move toward greater success and joy.

Featuring numerous stories from real people and exercises for developing your natural gifts, this book teaches you how to use intuition to get ahead in life. Melanie Barnum provides inspiring stories from people in a variety of fields. These diverse examples from doctors, lawyers, musicians, therapists, and other professionals show how intuition helped them experience an “aha” moment that led to a positive shift in their life.

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The Witch’s Name: Crafting Identities of Magical Power

Author: Storm Faerywolf

The magical name is one of the most powerful tools in Witchcraft. It’s a spell you cast each time you use it, and your moniker helps transform you into the kind of Witch you want to be. With meditation, rituals, journaling, and magic, The Witch’s Name helps you explore your own strengths and weaknesses as you create a magical persona, that part of your deep self that is the root of your magical power.

Storm Faerywolf is the perfect guide through the history and mythology of magical names, sharing fascinating ideas for how animals, plants, astrology, and tarot can help you form your magical identity. You will also learn how to engage numerology and ritual practices to claim the name of your choosing more fully. These tips and techniques will support the naming of a group or coven as well. With twenty-four hands-on exercises and rituals for awakening your spirit, cultivating the spiritual impact of your dreams, and developing a unique and powerful personal emblem, this book supports and inspires you to step more fully into our true magical self.

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Witchcraft. The Library of Esoterica

Authors: Jessica Hundley & Pam Grossman

Initiating readers in the fascinating and complex history of witchcraft, from the goddess mythologies of ancient cultures to the contemporary embrace of the craft by modern artists and activists, this expansive tome conjures up a breathtaking overview of an age-old tradition. Rooted in legend, folklore, and myth, the archetype of the witch has evolved from the tales of Odysseus and Circe, the Celtic seductress Cerridwen, and the myth of Hecate, fierce ruler of the moonlit night. In Witchcraft we survey her many incarnations since, as she shape-shifts through the centuries, alternately transforming into mother, nymph, and crone―seductress and destroyer.

Edited by Jessica Hundley, and co-edited by author, scholar, and practitioner Pam Grossman, this enthralling visual chronicle is the first of its kind, a deep dive into the complex symbologies behind witchcraft traditions, as explored through the history of art itself. The witch has played muse to great artists throughout time, from the dark seductions of Francisco José de Goya and Albrecht Dürer to the elegant paean to the magickal feminine as re-imagined by the Surrealist circle of Remedios Varo, Leonora Carrington, and Leonor Fini. The witch has spellbound through folktales and dramatic literature as well, from the poison apples of The Brothers Grimm, to the Weird Sisters gathered at their black cauldron in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, to L. Frank Baum’s iconic Wicked Witch of the West, cackling over the fate of Dorothy.

Throughout this entrancing visual voyage, we’ll also bear witness to the witch as she endures persecution and evolves into empowerment, a contemporary symbol of bold defiance and potent nonconformity. Featuring enlightening essays by modern practitioners like Kristen J. Sollée, Mat Auryn, and Judika Illes, as well interviews with authors and scholars such as Madeline Miller and Juliet Diaz, Witchcraft includes a vast range of cultural traditions that embrace magick as spiritual exploration and creative catharsis.

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Intuitive Witchcraft: How to Use Intuition to Elevate Your Craft

Author: Astrea Taylor

Featuring extensive exercises, examples, and rituals, this amazing book reveals how to embrace the wisdom of your inner voice as you explore the endless possibilities of witchcraft. With Astrea Taylor’s guidance, you can unlock your intuitive magical potential and celebrate the truth of who you are.

Intuitive Witchcraft also offers insights from some of the best writers, thinkers, and leaders in their fields, helping you become your most empowered self. Discover how to work with energy, interact with deities and spirits, and create a personal practice that fits your beliefs and lifestyles. Learn to face your shadow side, make the mundane magical, use divination tools, and much more. Whether you’re a beginner or advanced practitioner, this incredible book illuminates the path to manifesting your greatest desires in an intuitive way.

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The New Aradia: A Witch’s Handbook to Magical Resistance

Author: Laura Tempest Zakroff

Aradia or The Gospel of the Witches, as it was collected by Charles Godfrey Leland, brings us a folkloric mixture of myth, poetry, and magical instructions.  Wrapped within those pages is the truth that Witchcraft is a revolutionary practice – a means for fighting against social injustices, shifting the balance of power, freeing people from oppression, breaking down political and financial systems that work against the people and nature itself. Witchcraft has long been the tool of the disenfranchised and the marginal. Calling oneself a Witch is in itself an act of defiance, a statement of going against the grain and the status quo of society.

Right now, Witchcraft is experiencing another revival that’s far-reaching across the social spectrum – and the story of Aradia streams forth like light amongst the shadows. How do we interpret Aradia today for the times that we are living in? As modern Witches, we can take inspiration from Aradia and add to the story with our own experiences, lore, and spellcraft.  The #WeAreAradia movement says we don’t need to look to or watch for a savior – we are the ones we have been waiting for. These are the times that we are made for. Magical resistance happens both through physical means and metaphysical works – mind, body, and spirit. We seek not only to survive, but to thrive and craft new possibilities for tomorrow – for humanity, for the planet, for all.

The New Aradia is a handbook is designed to serve as a collection of ideas to teach, share, inspire, empower, protect, and guide.  Within its pages are sigils, spells, recipes, essays, invocations, rituals, and more, all gathered from experienced magical practitioners. At your fingertips is an arsenal of tools to aid you on your path.

With contributions by: Aidan Wachter, Amanda Bell, Annalun, Annwyn Avalon, Aradia The Rose, H. Byron Ballard, Casandra Johns, Christopher Penczak, Deborah Castellano, Devin Hunter, Gwendolyn Reece, Irina Xara, Irisanya Moon, Ivo Dominguez Jr., Jay Logan, Jenn Zahrt, Kelden, Laura Tempest Zakroff, Lisa Bland, Lyssa Heartsong, Mat Auryn, Misha Magdalene, Patti Wigington, Phoenix LeFae, Raye Schwarz, Stephen Pocock & Storm Faerywolf.

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Seven Ages of the Goddess

With contributions from best-selling authors such as Mat Auryn, Morgan Daimler, Elen Sentier and Jhenah Telyndru, as well as a new generation of up-coming writers, Seven Ages of the Goddess uncovers the history of the Goddess, from prehistoric origins through to the present day and beyond. Edited by Trevor Greenfield, publisher of Moon Books and editor of Naming the Goddess and Goddess in America.

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Arcane Perfection: An Anthology by Queer, Trans and Intersex Witches

ARCANE PERFECTION is a collection of essays, poetry, art, rage, love, rituals, spells, and musings by, for, and about Queer, Trans, and Intersex Witches. The book began as a coven project to further curate the Witchery of our Queer, Trans, and Intersex members, the project was expanded to encompass Queer, Trans, or Intersex people from around the world.

Contributors answer questions like: How have you overcome discrimination? How have you encountered the Divine? What are your experiences with magic as a Queer person? How has Witchcraft empowered your life as a Queer person? Can you tell the story of your transition through the Tarot? What is your relationship to the world, to Pagan community, to Queer community? Do you have a rant that needs to be screamed into publication? How are you uprooting heterocisnormativity in the Pagan community and beyond? How have you dealt with loss, invisibility, violence, disability, racism, power, capitalism, jealousy, change, and love?

Arcane Perfection mixes personal stories with mythology, spiritual and political visions, and actual witchcraft, including rituals and spells such as the “Queer Sovereignty Spell for Pride, Power and Protection,” and the “Deadname Decoy Spell.” Articles like “Queer Bears & Berserkers,” “Candles for Queer Magic,” “The Transgender Body as Holy and Liminal Witchcraft,” and “A Trans Positive Ritual Space” are some of the explorations of queer- and trans-centric magickal practice.

We want Queer, Trans, and Intersex Witches to be able to pick up this book, find their experiences reflected within, and feel surrounded by the magic of others like them.

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Interview With The Magus

Author : Nathan Dube / Julian Crane

“Prior to the writing of this book “Interview with the Magus” was a series of interviews I wrote for the now defunct disinfo.com over it’s last two years of existence on the internet. While I had been planning on eventually turning the series into a book, its sudden removal from the web lit a fire under my ass to retrieve the two years of writing I had produced for the website via web.archive.org.

I was relieved to find that I was able to retrieve about 90% of the content I had written and have subsequently published in the book you are now reading.
The original inspiration for the series was twofold. One, I simply wanted to know the answers to certain questions about magic(k) and what better way to get said answers than to ask those who were actively practicing and or studying magic(k)?

I have to admit, I really did not think the series would take off because I was unsure that any of the magicians, occultists, esoteric seekers, psychonauts, psychedelic explorers and deep thinkers that I very much admired would give me the time of day… I mean, at the time, I was a nobody in the occult scene.
To my great surprise, almost every single one of them were more than happy to give me their time of day!

I attribute this primarily to the fact that while disinfo had really gone downhill prior to Thad McKraken taking over as manager and editor of the site, the name still had pull and for many magicians, it still resonated as a worthy name of esoteric and paranormal journalism. Considering this in the context of a world where there was not the renaissance that Grant Morrison had famously envisioned at the disinfo.con, apparently the disinfo brand still had something to offer.

While the reception of the newly reconfigured disinfo generally had mixed results, I was extremely pleased to find that my “Interview with the Magus” series was one of the most popular new dynamics of the ultimately doomed website. I was so grateful for the opportunity to interview legends of the occult community while also bringing lesser known voices of modern esoteric technologies to the forefront of occulture.

While this book boasts interviews with some of the worlds most renowned living magicians and esoteric practitioners/seekers/scholars such as Mitch Harrowitz, Jason Miller, Jake Stratton-Kent, Ramsey Dukes, Phil Hine, Taylor Ellwood, and a whole plethora of amazing minds and souls, I also point to new shining stars in the occult scene who deserve attention such as Tommie Kelly, Bill Nemo Trumpler, Sara Mastros, Felix Warren, Scarlet Magdalene, Katelan Foisy, Manuel Ignacio Martínez and others who embody the search for spiritual truth and power.”

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