This time of year pushes us to start hard focus on what needs to be done. After the break from the holidays. However now we must start the hard work of the new spring. So that we can get much of what we need.
Category Archives: Business
She brought magic to Salem. Now she has mixed feelings about it
SALEM — It is not her fault, Laurie Cabot declared.
Then she thought for a moment and revised her statement.
“OK, it is kind of my fault,” she said, referring to what has happened to October in Salem since she arrived nearly five decades ago and began the modern witch era in the “Witch City.”
But really, if anyone is to blame for kicking off the events that somehow led to the spooktacular charade that dominates the Halloween season in the city, Cabot argues, it was Molly Boo.
Molly Boo was her cat.
Her black cat.
Had she not gotten stuck up in that tree, Cabot said, none of this might have happened.
Let’s rewind.
Laurie Cabot is a witch. She has been studying witchcraft since she was a child growing up in Boston, and today, at age 84, is easily the most famous practicing witch in the country, the grande dame of witchcraft.
But back then, when she was first beginning her study of the ancient practice of magic, people did not come out and say they were a witch. That kinda thing could lead to trouble.
Eventually, she did take to dressing the part — black robes, pentagram necklace — but by then it was the late ’60s and people just thought she was a hippie.
She was living in the North End at the time, divorced, struggling to raise two children, and another single mom suggested they pool their money and move to the suburbs.
Great, Cabot said. Anywhere but Salem.
“Salem seemed like a bad idea because I didn’t know how anyone would take me because of the witch trials,” she said.
Sure enough, the friend came back with a listing for an apartment on Salem’s Chestnut Street, a broad boulevard filled with stunningly gorgeous homes and postcard-perfect trees, and Cabot could not resist.
But the witch thing, she kept under wraps. Then her cat changed all that.
She had two black cats at the time — “they were given to me by someone who knew I was a witch,” she said with an eye roll — and one of them, Molly Boo, climbed the tree outside her apartment, got stuck about 50 feet up, and would not come down. Her other cat, Sabrina, would climb up and try to show Molly Boo how to get down, but Molly Boo would not follow.
Cabot said she called everyone — animal control, the police, the fire department — and they all told her the cat would eventually come down on its own. That’s what cats do.
But after three days of awful weather and no movement from Molly Boo, Cabot made a move she knew would get attention. She called the local newspaper, the Salem News, and gave them a story they couldn’t resist.
“My cat is stuck in a tree,” she said she told the person who answered the phone. “I am a witch. That cat is my familiar (a witch term for an animal-shaped spirit that serves as a psychically connected servant, companion, and spy). And I want someone to come get my cat out of the tree.”
A photographer came, as did the mayor and several rescue vehicles.
Molly Boo was helped down. And after the photos of a real-life Salem witch hit the wire services, Laurie Cabot’s secret was out.
Plenty of media followed, and soon after, in 1970, Cabot opened the city’s first “witch shop.” She sold wands and potions and other tools of the trade, but she said her real goal was to educate the public about witchcraft — and especially to dispel all the incorrect rumors about evil intentions and devil-worshipping.
In retrospect, she said, she was very naïve to think it would be that easy, and she sees what has happened in the 47 years that have followed as being both incredibly positive and incredibly confusing.
She is proud of the fact that her witch shop and openness turned Salem into something of a safe space for practicing witches, and many began flocking to the city, to live openly, to perform rituals with other witches, and to celebrate the witches’ New Year, what they know as Samhain and everyone else calls Halloween.
More witch shops opened, but so too did all the other stuff that has come to be associated with Halloween but has little to do with witchcraft — the haunted houses and the ghost tours and the zombie walks.
“I’m still not sure what a guy with an ax in his head and blood dripping down his face has to do with witchcraft,” she said. “Some of it is offensive. The fun house. The scary murderous stuff. It brings bad vibes. It’s projecting the wrong kinds of things.”
It is a question of intent, which is a huge part of being a witch. Intent is how witches manipulate environmental energy. And when it comes to dressing up for Samhain, the intent of a costume is to cast a spell projecting the kind of person they want to be for the New Year. “We don’t allow any devil costumes into our parties,” she said.
And intent is something Cabot is thinking about lately, as she looks back through the long lens of all that has happened in Salem since her cat went up that tree.
It is late in her story, and she knows this. She has been suffering significant health problems of late, including a recent bout of dizziness and nausea that lasted for so many weeks that she thought she was ready to go. (Doctors eventually found an ulcer, and medication has curbed the symptoms.)
But she is proud that she helped transform the city, and in some ways became its face. (And what a face it is — with an elaborate tattoo on her left cheek and huge black-framed glasses, all surrounded by a magnificent mane of black hair ringed with white.)
She has trouble walking, and spends most of her time in her apartment, seated at a dining room table covered in jewels and deer antlers and potions and other bits and bobs that she and her daughter, Penny, use to make potions and broomsticks and other tools that are sold at a store just around the corner called Enchanted. Witches from near and far make daily pilgrimages to visit her — one, earlier this week, arrived carrying a gift of a crystal that was nearly two feet long — and she is now at work on her eighth book, a memoir.
But with Halloween just around the corner, and the streets below a chaos of tourists, there is a lot of talk of all it has become.
“It’s not my fault that people practice such silliness. I didn’t set out to make Halloween such a big deal in Salem.”
No, that all started with a black cat.
Gloucester witches are being persecuted, but there’s a deeper component.
The staff at Spellbound say they have received death threats
Witches who run an occult shop in the shadow of a famous Cathedral claim they are victims of a hate campaign and say the police are doing nothing about it.
“I have reported such incidents on numerous occasions but when the police arrive they tell me that people are just expressing opinions,” she said. If we were members any other religion or group it would be treated as hate crime and dealt with appropriately.”
By “Any other religion or group” she would be referring to the massive influx of Muslims into the UK who have been given special religious protections by authorities to the point that even discussing rapist who is a Muslim can land one in prison for a hate crime.
Toni Hunt and her staff at ‘Spellbound’ in College Green, Gloucester, say they have been called terrorists and devil worshippers and have received death threats. According to them no matter how many of these incidents they have reported, the police just blow it off because of their beliefs. While this is a real problem, there’s an underlying problem that shows how the Witch community made matters worse.
Ms. Hunt says they have been targeted for abuse for about two years, This is normal for any Witch shop, but she says things got worse in recent months when they received a threat to burn down the premises – with the staff still inside. This surge in hate and aggression towards the shop seems to coincide with the #BindTrump event four months ago where a group of liberals hijacked Wicca for a despicable public hexing of President Trump which was nothing but another method of public protest at the expense of the entire Pagan community. This single act set back Pagan public relations 30 years by vindicating the christian extremist’s claim that we are all evil devil worshippers of the Ult-left because it was a religious attack on a leader they view as a champion of their religion. And while most UK conservatives are not too concerned with Trump as a president, Christians all over the world were abuzz with the news that Witches were casting spells against a president and it was viewed as pure unadulterated persecution.
Ms. Hunt continues
“Persecution of witches did not end centuries ago – it is still very prominent in the 21st century and we are being subjected to it regularly. We have been called all sorts – Black Magic Badger Killers, Spawn of Satan and in the same league as ISIS.”
It should also be stated that part of the intent of #BindTrump was to also bind him from issuing military orders needed to protect the country. The only reason one would support this is because they sympathize with the enemy. So it is only a logical step that an association with ISIS would quickly form. While we fully agree what is happening to these women is wrong, we must not ignore that actions have consequences. In no way are we stating that these women had any involvement with #BindTrump, but this is no doubt a problem made worse by the narcissistic and selfish act of a vocal minority abusing Paganism for political gain.
Warner Bros. may have to pay $900 million if they can’t prove ghosts are real
The studio and filmmakers behind the successful “Conjuring” franchise are being sued by the author Gerald Brittle for $900 Million. Brittle wrote a book in 1980 called “The Demonologist.” which is based on a husband and wife team of world renown ghost hunters Ed and Lorraine Warren.
The three films in under the studio’s name grossed $886 Million at the global box office, and two more films are on the way. The movie franchise is a dramatization of the Warren’s case files.
Brittle claims that he had an exclusive agreement with Ed and Lorraine Warren that gave him exclusive and sole use of their case files for any works, books, movies, comics, so on.
Warner Brothers Pictures made its own deal with the Warrens, which lead to the production of “The Conjuring,” “The Conjuring 2,” and “Annabelle.” Brittle launched his lawsuit on the grounds their franchise violated his contract with the Warrens. Why he’s suing the studio instead of the Warrens who’s names are on the contract is anyone’s guess.
So in a slick lawyer’s play Warner Bros countered with the claim that the Conjuring movies weren’t based on Brittle’s book but instead are based on historical facts putting the Warren’s stories under common use laws. For those who don’t understand, No one can claim the rights to Lincoln’s assassination and anyone can make any story they want based on that event. But a person can not write a story about a man escaping prison by digging a hole through a wall with a jeweler’s hammer and hiding it behind a poster, because that entire story was created by an author and anyone else who uses that is deriving from their work.
Brittle says that can’t be possible because he (and other skeptics) have concluded that the Warrens’ case files about paranormal and supernatural activity are complete fabrications. This puts the studio between a rock and a hard place as they now have two options. Hand over $900 Million dollars or prove in a court of law that ghost are in fact real.