In a sun-drenched room of a 200-year-old Irish estate, fifteen women gather to speak with the dead. Some wear long black capes. Others wear Columbia fleeces and Adidas sneakers. They arrange crystals on divination maps, asking questions of ancestors, forest fairies, and spirits from lifetimes past. One woman's pendulum circles wildly. "Isabella, do I stop this? Someone really wants to talk to me," she cries out. Later, she learns her archangel Michael was telling her yes, her parents are still proud. Yes, they still love her.
Isabella Ferrari, known professionally as Penny the Witch, runs these retreats regularly across continents. Her April dates in Ireland sold out within days. She added more sessions. Those sold out too, with tickets ranging from 1,900 to 3,000 euros. More than half her Irish cohort traveled from the United States, drawn by word of mouth and her Instagram following of over 180,000.
The retreat lasts two and a half days. Women make candles together. They confront ancestral trauma. They chant in unison: "I am so angry. I am so angry. I am so angry." For many, Ferrari says, it is the first time they have screamed those words in a room that wanted to hear them.
"We are so used to not trusting ourselves, to second-guessing our intuition, especially women who have been taught to disconnect from their inner wisdom," Ferrari tells her students. The divination practice is less about summoning spirits than summoning belief in yourself, learning to regard your own instincts as sacred.
Witchcraft retreats have proliferated across the US and Europe over the last decade. They occupy an expanding market. Etsy shops sell spell kits. Universities offer PhDs in magic. A British academy teaches practitioners how to monetize their craft. What remains alternative is not the practice itself but the philosophical framework: witchcraft offers what organized religion no longer does for many women.
Helen Berger, a sociologist of religion at Harvard Divinity School and a leading scholar of contemporary paganism, notes that interest in alternative spirituality spikes during periods of anti-authoritarianism. In 1968, feminist groups adopted the acronym WITCH (Womens International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell) and marched on Wall Street to hex the stock exchange. The Dow Jones dropped 13 points that day.
Today, over 30 percent of Americans identify as spiritual but not religious, a distinction pointing not to rejection of the divine but rejection of the institutions that mediate it. "That rejection stems from the structure of religion, the lack of independence and individualization offered within it," Berger explains. "Especially because the hierarchy of power is particularly male-dominated."
Tara Monte, 55, spent years searching for belonging. She grew up in a devout Irish-Italian Catholic family in South Philadelphia but experienced a spiritual crisis at 23 when she was raped. "I just thought, I'm a good Catholic girl, how could this happen to me?" she recalls. Her faith dissolved. When she eventually joined a coven in Los Angeles, the unconditional acceptance felt radical. But that community scattered when she moved to North Carolina. "You can't go around the Bible Belt and explain why you have a pentagram on your neck," she says.
Those years were lonely. Monte went through divorce. A partner killed himself in front of her. Both parents died. She moved back to Philadelphia. Most recently, an ex-boyfriend began stalking her, pasting bumper stickers to her car at night. She felt watched and unprotected.
When Ferrari announced new Ireland dates, Monte acted fast. She obtained an expedited passport on April 2 and caught a flight from Philadelphia two weeks later. The stress and expense were worth it. "We take care of our own," she says of her coven. On their WhatsApp group, the witches ply her with protection spells, recommended oils and crystals, places to position her pentagram to keep her safe. They believe these rituals will protect her. For Monte, that belief is enough to restore a sense of control.
Alyse Benjamin, 42, came all the way from Florida. She had recently dropped her son at college and lost her job. Now working as an interior designer by day and oracle reader by weekend, she felt caught between chapters. She came seeking sisterhood. Benjamin grew up with a Pentecostal pastor grandmother and practiced non-denominational Christianity into her twenties before the oppressiveness of rules-based religion became unbearable. She prefers a philosophy where nobody is purely anything: not entirely gay or straight, good or bad, Christian or Wiccan.
"The poles of anything don't really exist, everybody is somewhere in between," she says. She is done with 40-plus hour work weeks, with buying things to prove value, with seeking God in buildings instead of nature, with broken healthcare and education systems.
Ferrari has heard countless versions of these stories. Women resisting rote categorization. Women whose faith was shattered by grief or violence. Women who arrived at the edges of religion and found nothing waiting. In them, she recognized a hunger for spaces built intentionally for women, by women.
Ashley Clauré, a self-described psychic medium and practicing witch, hosts at least two retreats yearly in Savannah and Salem, with prices ranging from $2,700 to $5,200. She argues that every woman is a witch, and every woman knows how it feels to be called crazy. "The patriarchy is not good for anybody, men or women," Clauré says. "Women have been inherently drawn to these spaces after being demonized or called hysterical. We're so sick of it that we're gonna do things our way, whether you call it crazy or not."
Author James Rodriguez: "The real story here isn't spirits or spells, it's American women voting with their wallets for community and permission to be angry that they can't find elsewhere."
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