WAKING THE WITCH

Witch expert, journalist, NYU lecturer, and creator of The Witch Wave podcast, Pam Grossman's WAKING THE WITCH, a manifesto exploring the ascent of the witch in popular culture and its relationship to modern feminism, through the lens of the author's own spiritual journey and development as a witch herself.

Witches are suddenly everywhere it seems. Pop culture is rife with TV shows like American Horror Story and The Worst Witch, films like The VVitch and The Love Witch, and children's books like The Girl Who Drank the Moon and the Lunch Witch series. Musicians like Lana Del Rey and Azealia Banks publically practice witchcraft, and the Tumblr witch community and #witchesofinstagram have millions of followers. Witch imagery has taken over the fashion and art worlds, and more young women are gravitating toward witchy new age practices and products than ever before.

In Waking the Witch, Pam makes the case that this is, in fact, a very good thing, indicative of a new wave of feminism (or The Witch Wave, as Pam calls it), that holds up the witch as the ultimate symbol of freedom, subversion, and feminine power. The witch is arguably the only female archetype who has power on her own terms. She is a character who isn't defined by her relationship to another person -- unlike mothers, daughters, virgins, whoresher bond is between herself and a higher power. Cunning, complicated, controversial, it's no wonder the witch has become a symbol for nasty women everywhere who are seeking to reclaim their place as perfectly imperfect protagonists in their own personal stories.

Pam's personal story is interwoven throughout the text, as she incorporates her own journey that led her to identify with the witch. A practicing Pagan, Pam has parallel public careers in the corporate world as Getty Images' award-winning Director of Visual Trends and in the art world as a sought-after writer, speaker, and curator of magic-oriented projects. Throughout Waking the Witch, she reveals parts of her own path as a woman, an artist, and a practitioner, whose embodiment of the witch has helped her conjure success and deep meaning in her own life.
Equal parts irreverent and reverential, passionate and packed with facts, Waking the Witch is a comprehensive and inspiring meditation on the many historical, artistic, cultural, and political facets of the world's most magical icon. Over the course of the book, Pam will delve into why the witch is resonating now, and where the witch is leading us as we enter a new era of female revolution.

Pam Grossman is one of the world's leading experts on the witch. A writer, curator, and teacher of magical practice and history, Pam is the author of the critically-acclaimed illuminated manifesto, What Is A Witch (Tin Can Forest Press, May 2016), and Associate Editor of Abraxas International Journal of Esoteric Studies. She is also the co-organizer of the Occult Humanities Conference at NYU and co-founder of the Brooklyn arts & lecture space, Observatory. Earlier this year, she launched WitchEmoji, a witch-themed sticker pack for iMessage that became the #1 seller in the App Store. Her podcast, The Witch Wave, launched in October 2017 and hit #2 in the Spirituality category on iTunes. Pam is also the creator of Phantasmaphile, a blog that specializes in art with an esoteric or fantastical bent, which she has maintained since 2005.