By Sara Faith Alterman
Photo: © Depositphotos.com/aarrttuurr
In 1996 I was 16, ridiculous, and desperate to belong. I didn’t have many friends, I didn’t have many talents, I didn’t have many ideas about who I was, who I wanted to be, or who I could become. Rather than try to figure those things out I just spent hours alone in my bedroom, belting along to the Cats soundtrack and writing forlorn love letters to boyfriends I made up in my head.
Then a little movie called The Craft came out. It starred Fairuza Balk, Neve Campbell, Robin Tunney, and Rachel True as a group of high school girls who become witches. They cast love spells on boys, wreak havoc on basic bitches, and are just mystical gangstas in general.
I went to see it alone (of course) and was inexplicably yet undeniably moved. Perhaps it’s because I myself was so ridiculous, but I failed to see the cheese or the camp of it all. Instead, I heard the siren voice of Manon, the omnipotent and made-up deity of the universe, beckoning for me to enlist in his/her army of megahot teen witches who boasted awesome powers and bitchin’ collections of fashion socks in varying heights.
That night I drove my Ford Taurus home in the pouring rain, smoking bidis through a crack in the window and swearing an oath to the Heavens. I would become a witch! I needed a coven! I’d assemble my own sorority of occult enthusiasts and we’d share each others’ dreams and Manic Panic each others’ hair and just be best best friends and voodoo sisters forever and ever!
These were the pre-Internet days, and information about casting spells and goopy black eyeliner techniques wasn’t readily available. If you wanted to know about something, you went to the local library. At mine there was an infinitesimal collection of books about the Salem witch trials, plus one about Satanism that suggested that I make the sign of the cross backwards as a way to self-initiate. I hid in my bedroom closet with that book and a red Yankee Candle that smelled like cherry jellybeans and I crossed and crossed and crossed, hoping that I’d will my body to swell with sorcery. All I did was accidentally ignite the hem of a TJ Maxx babydoll dress that hung overhead.
But I refused to give up. As luck (or the Goddess?!) would have it, I lived next door to a practicing Wiccan. She was my age, and her family were Hibernophiles and enthusiastic Morris dancers. In the summer they’d invite their dancer friends over to jig around a backyard campfire, bump swords, and party like it was 1499. The girl had created a “magic room” in a crawlspace that adjoined her bedroom, and it was filled with incense burners, pentacle tchotchkes, and, to me, total fucking radness. I wanted in.
She had assembled a coven with a few other misfits from school, and they needed a fourth. JUST LIKE THE MOVIE! Holy shit. Manon heard my prayers. We wore long skirts and long curls and, in hindsight, looked a bit like those cultish Mormon ladies who live on sad sex ranches. Our leader had a bunch of spell books and really knew her witch shit. Together we’d cast circles in the woods and tie twine around tree branches in an effort to “bind” people from “doing harm.” One time I did some varsity-level praktikal womyn magick in the hopes it would nab me the lead in my junior year production of Guys and Dolls. And it did! #blessedbe
Though our enthusiasm was genuine, it was shallow too. We didn’t know or talk much about the Wiccan religion, about its pagan roots or its symbiotic relationship with early Christianity. Mostly we drank Sleepytime tea and had intense conversations about The Mists of Avalon. But still, I belonged somewhere, with a few someones. And for a lost little girl like me that was the true magic of it all.
Eventually I got a boyfriend whose parents went out of town a lot, and my interest in Wicca abracadabra’d out the window. I cut my hair off. I graduated. I grew up. But I never forgot the strange impact a shitty ‘90s movie had on my social development.
A few years ago I went to a screening of The Craft at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco. It was preceded by a drag show, and the audience was encouraged to wear gothy costumes and scream along as full-fish queens bellowed for Manon to take their scars. And, to my shock, they did. We did. An audience of adults dressed like Hot Topic Barbie begged a fictional force to take our scars, bro. Take them. Take them. Take our residual teen angst and insecurities far the fuck away, Manon, and make a theater full of grownup geeks and outcast freaks feel like we belong somewhere, with a few someones, just like you did when we were all desperate and ridiculous and lost.
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Sara Faith Alterman is a writer and producer living in San Francisco. Find her online at sarafaithalterman.com or @TheRealSFA.