I think that’s what she’s doing. I don’t think she’s saying that all witches in all of history practiced just like modern Wiccans do…
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OTOH… it does seem that even today, the only qualification for being cast as a witch is being intelligent and not sufficiently subservient to men…
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That’s true - it’s often connected to women’s empowerment, but also in some cases, it’s still connected with evil in some way, so it can also be seen as reinforcing that notion that embracing feminism is upending the natural order… I guess it depends on the depiction?
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Do we know of any groups before the modern Wicca movement who self-identified as “witches?” I was under the impression that “witch,” like “devil worshipper,” was mostly a phrase used to accuse others of evil (i.e. non-Christian) mystical practices.
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You know, I don’t know that? Plenty of people were accused of being witches, of course, but it seems far more likely to me that was a thing people got accused of being (especially in medieval/early modern Europe). It’s a good question that I don’t know the answer to. I do know that people have been talking about witches since ancient times.
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Except the “witches” of the show have absolutely nothing to do with Wicca, so there’s an added layer of absurdity at play here. It would have been more appropriate to have, say, Catholics review the show for accuracy.
Quite the opposite - the “witches” are the historical, Christian fantasy version. I.e. they’re supernatural beings, with magic powers, who worship the Devil. They’re not even particularly internally consistent, either - they went for this approach where they have a sort of inverted cosmology (holy/unholy, heaven/hell swapped references), with Lucifer as a symbol of freedom rather than evil (like modern Satanic religions), misunderstood and free from Christian hypocrisies, but undercut that by having witches be immortal, murderous cannibals, for instance.
Not… really? They make a lot of (superficial) references to a lot of real religions, but it’s all more (inverted) Christianity than paganism, and more fantasy than reality. They did an explicit (Haitian) Voudou reference in the latest season, but it had zero to do with actual Voudou.
I have no idea why the fuck they got a Wiccan to review the show for accuracy and why the fuck they agreed.
I’ve never seen any evidence of it. It always seemed pretty obvious to me that that whole “Wicca”/“Witch” [meaning “wise”] thing was some folk etymology trying to create a history for Gardnerian Wicca, a modern attempt at a reconstruction of pagan practices that pretended it was part of a long tradition.
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The show is a direct descendent of Archie comics. I’m not sure that witch-accuracy is high on the list of priorities.
I for one binged S3 without seeing 1 or 2, and it seems towards the end there’s a character working over time to come up with ass pulls. Like, the writer wrote themselves into a corner.
I’m impressed on how the actress for Sabrina can cry on queue. I don’t see how they could fake it 
S4 seems like they’ll spend the better half retconing somethings though, time travel occured. I’ll watch it only if I watch it with my sister again.
I watched the first season and I would be surprised if it’s accurate Wicca since the mythology seemed to be more “mirror Christianity” than something derived from pre-Christian beliefs. The kind of thing where instead of saying “God Bless You” when someone sneezes they might go “Satan Curse You” or something. A silly kind of witchcraft you see from Jack Chick comics and The Church of Satan–the kind you get from Christians projecting on what they assume other people believe.
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I saw the first two or three episodes and was like pass. Dark, gritty, gloomy Sabrina just isn’t fun.
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I’m also an atheist and philosophical materialist, but I have a definite interest in those who use ceremonial magic as a consciousness-raising, or even consciousness-hacking, tool. Like Robert Anton Wilson, for example:
For forty days and forty nights, begin each day by invoking and praising the world in itself as an expression of the Egyptian deities. Recite at dawn:
I bless Ra, the fierce sun burning bright
I bless Isis-Luna in the night
I bless the air, the Horus-hawk
I bless the earth on which I walkRepeat at moonrise. Continue for the full forty days and forty nights. We say without reservations that, at a minimum, you will feel happier and more at home in this part of the galaxy (and you will also understand better Uncle John Feather’s attitude toward our planet); at maximum, you may find rewards beyond your expectations, and you will be converted to using this mantra for the rest of your life. (If the results are exceptionally good, you just might start believing in ancient Egyptian gods.)
— Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, The Illuminatus! Trilogy, “Appendix Lamed: The Tactics of Magick”
Also Alan Moore, who reports success with rituals invoking the Roman god Glycon, even though he knows Glycon was exposed as a sock puppet in the second century.
Everything that people talk about with regard to magic is all absolutely true as long as you understand that it is happening inside people’s minds.
— Alan Moore, interviewed by Stewart Lee
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The original premise of Sabrina back in 1964 was to get fundamentalist heat off of teen girls who might want to play around with spellcraft or who might have parents who were on the Dark Side, and she was part of the Archie, Veronica, and Jughead comix crew. The IP was stolen in a divorce case and two reallllly dark side families split the revenue.
Wiccans get wiretapped and hacked by this gruesome gang. One of the worst of the bunch at Netflix was responsible for not just the new incarnation of Almost Satanist Sabrina but gave the world the Santa Clarita Diet, reputedly to cover up a relative caught with a freezer full of long pig.
Unfortunately, as long as The Bad Guys can pay off their enemies with stolen Sabrina money, we will have the series for good or ill. If you can find it in your generous and good hearts to boycott the advertisers, the daughters of the original owners, two cousins, would appreciate it greatly.
Netflix doesn’t have advertisers.
Also, I know your name is skiptheBS, but do you have a source for that story? It sounds a bit fantastical.
Oooh that sounds interesting. Do you have a source for that story? I love reading about behind the scenes shenanigans.
Mangochin-
Source came from local gossip with relatives in entertainment. The word I got is that the real estate agent was in CA but not anywhere near Santa Clarita and was a man, not a woman. Santa Clarita was picked as a location because someone on the team had a bad experience with the place.
Jason–
Thanks. It’s been two years since I cancelled Netflix and embraced the antenna.
The sources for the story are within my family. The originators were two cousins who shared a common ancestor, the brother of executed “witch” Sarah Goode. One originator had all daughters, the son of the second was a cartoonist who did contract work for several comics publishers. The father of the girls lost his share to a crooked attorney. The attorney lost his to a fire and police commissioner who had a nephew in private school around the corner. The attorney blackmailed the commissioner into a 50% share. The commissioner’s nephew invested his share and got truly, filthy rich but not rich enough to avoid Alzheimer’s.
The second originator got one payment out of Sabrina, and then his bank account was cleaned out and no other payments were received. The cartoonist died young from a disease and one of the two girls died at noon in broad daylight from a suspicious single-car accident on a slow corner. The oldest girl married a man with a familial link to the Capones and will not be getting a divorce.
Hack and tap is a cottage industry in SE TN and N GA, homeplace of the witch-related family. Those who come up with ideas sellthem to the attorney or one of his family. The owner of satellites, TV networks, and a sports team has his own surveillance network. Witch hunts abound in the undereducated area, and small franchises are purchased from Sabrina and lost from idiocy and/or drugs.
So much for two families’ college money. The full story is far more complex than this and involves fraudulent guardianships, heroin, and employer hostage-taking. I’ve had a front-row seat for just over 55 years. I wish I was bullshitting, but it is all regrettably true.
No link? That is disappointing. 
Not because of Magic Mountain?
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