Teenage Witches: Magical Youth and the Search for Self. By Helen A. Berger and Douglas Ezzy

Abstract

Teen witches are a favorite stereotype in the contemporary West where they appear either as satanically possessed youth or frivolous girls casting spells to attract favored boys. But the rise in popular films like The Craft (1996) and television shows like Charmed (1998–2006) and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003) occurred alongside an increasing number of real teenagers adopting the religious identity of Witches. The convergence in the 1990s of onscreen teen Witches and their real-life religious counterparts is no accident, argue sociologists Douglas Ezzy and Helen A. Berger, but rather a logical outcome given the context of late modernity, most importantly the globalization of media and community. Drawing on qualitative research methods, including long interviews with 90 British, Australian, and American Witches between the ages of 17 and 23 (all of whom became Witches as younger teens), Ezzy and Berger discover that teen Witchcraft is characterized by “a belief in the supernatural, a connection with nature, and an appreciation of the importance of the feminine” (50). By interspersing the stories of eight teen Witches with scholarly commentary, the authors teach us much about the day-to-day religious lives of teen Witches.