{"id":562468,"date":"2026-08-08T04:30:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T04:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/562468\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T04:30:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T04:30:15","slug":"good-witch-author-links-fashions-exploitation-to-historic-witch-hunts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/562468\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Good Witch\u2019 author links fashion\u2019s exploitation to historic witch hunts"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI was in this space and just thinking how witchy it felt,\u201d she explains, describing the meadow of dye plants and circle of stools the staff described as their \u201cweaving circle\u201d. In the shed were cauldrons and vials of powder, hanging herbs and an old wooden broom; a collection of symbols synonymous with witches accumulated not from a fascination with witchcraft but a dedication to environmental and social sensitivity.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t my own epiphany, but what I discovered was that there was a body of anthropological writing by Sylvia Federici and others around this idea that women\u2019s work kind of informed the iconography of witches,\u201d Tonti says.<\/p>\n

A central claim of Good Witch, inspired by Federici, is that the witch hunts were never really about magic, but disenchanting the world so it could be dominated, economically and socially. As a result, women were stripped of their economic and social power.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe economy as we know it has been built on the back of that,\u201d Tonti says.<\/p>\n

The other claim is that the fashion industry\u2019s two great sins, the exploitation of women\u2019s labour and pillaging of the natural world, aren\u2019t separate problems, but share a root that can be tracked to the witch hunts of early modern Europe.<\/p>\n

\"AnAn illustration of Tituba, an enslaved woman who was the first female to be accused of practising witchcraft (1692, Salem). Photo \/ Getty<\/p>\n

While historical accounts differ, roughly 100,000 people were tried for witchcraft across the era Tonti covers (1450\u20131750), and about half were executed, eight in 10 of them women.<\/p>\n

Both men and women in agrarian societies relied on the land, so why were women disproportionately targeted in the attempt to dominate it?<\/p>\n

There are many reasons, Tonti says, but most can be boiled down to the way natural and social forces located women\u2019s power and wisdom in the natural world, more so than men\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\u201cWomen have this sense of how we care for each other and are responsible for providing that care to children and to other members of the community,\u201d Tonti said. \u201cThey were the ones that needed to be oppressed for structures to change.\u201d<\/p>\n

What is a witch?<\/p>\n

Today, the symbols associated with a witch are so deeply embedded in pop culture that the word conjures little beyond pointed hats and black cats, cauldrons and broomsticks. In 1690s Salem, however, a witch looked nothing like Elphaba in Wicked or the Sanderson sisters in Hocus Pocus. \u201cFor the most part, the witch in Salem was a neighbour, a mother, a servant, a friend,\u201d Tonti writes in the book. <\/p>\n

\" Kathy Najimy as Mary Sanderson, Bette Midler as Winifred Sanderson, and Sarah Jessica Parker as Sarah Sanderson in HOCUS POCUS 2. Photo \/ Matt Kennedy, \u00a9 2022 Disney Enterprises, Inc.<\/p>\n

So, after spending years travelling across Salem (US), Pendle (England) and North Berwick (Scotland) investigating witches, how does Tonti define them today?<\/p>\n

After laying down the caveat that there are countless interpretations and present-day spiritual groups with their own definitions, Tonti says she consistently noticed one common denominator. <\/p>\n

\u201cA witch is a powerful woman,\u201d she says. \u201cThat, historically, has gotten you into trouble, that gets you into trouble now.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is one reason why a book about the 17th-century witch trials is relevant today. \u201cThe far right playbook hasn\u2019t changed,\u201d she says, referencing the approach King James and his witch-hunters used in the 1590s\u20131600s: \u201cwomen belong in the home, exploit the environment at all costs, effective propaganda, and scapegoat an imagined enemy.\u201d Certain elements have been modernised or substituted, but the intention stays the same.<\/p>\n

The other is the desire to re-enchant the world, something Tonti believes arises during times of uncertainty.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are looking for something outside themselves, you know, for comfort, for solace, for moments of self-reflection,\u201d she says. \u201cThe witch hunts themselves are politically grounded in something very relevant today, but witches and the idea of these other things, the rise of witch talk and tarot and all of that stuff, really reflects people having an innate sense that there is something bigger and we\u2019re missing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

While this could look like New Age spirituality, religion or even the wellness industry\u2019s invocation of \u201cthe universe\u201d, for Tonti, \u201cthat magic is very simply the power of the natural world\u201d.<\/p>\n

Today, the state of our natural environment and treatment of labour workers is far from ideal, yet Tonti has seedlings of hope.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been indoctrinated to believe that the systems that we\u2019re functioning in are fair and are pretty good,\u201d she says. \u201cNow we\u2019re kind of getting to the point where it\u2019s like, well, the economy doesn\u2019t work for everybody,\u201d she said, adding that she thinks things will get worse before they get better.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe hope is in the fact that we can come back to each other and the hope is still in the natural world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\" Good Witch by Lucianne Tonti. Photo \/ SuppliedGood Witch<\/a>\u00a0by Lucianne Tonti (Simon and Schuster) is out on July 28. RRP $41.99.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI was in this space and just thinking how witchy it felt,\u201d she explains, describing the meadow of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":562469,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1443,253374,13851,32131,2108,276606,138,7748,4510,23966,6286,140737,127424,6101,6628,92479,27705,16099,2442,111,139,69,91211,17216,6967,21533,151867,154038,61,117584,4985,102,1354,26157,110683],"class_list":["post-562468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-about","tag-assuming","tag-author","tag-bold","tag-book","tag-broomsticks","tag-business","tag-crystals","tag-dark","tag-enough","tag-exploitation","tag-fashions","tag-forgiven","tag-good","tag-historic","tag-hunts","tag-instead","tag-kind","tag-links","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-pollok","tag-powerful","tag-sarah","tag-simply","tag-spells","tag-titled","tag-to","tag-witch","tag-witches","tag-with","tag-woman","tag-words","tag-youd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=562468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/562469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=562468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=562468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=562468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}