Why was it such people terrified those in power? Why were we not taught more about this dark period of history? Why did the themes feel like they still resonated so strongly today? How the power structure of the day meant that it was near impossible for them to have a voice and to defend themselves. Witch hunts became an area of fascination for me and the more I read the more outraged I became how powerful, outspoken women and men, or people of the pagan faith, or simply outsiders, have time and time again been suppressed, silenced and extinguished from society. After all, if my Great Aunt Mary had been alive a few centuries earlier she may well have been burnt at the stake. In my research, I became just as obsessed with magic’s opposite forces repression, fear, suspicion and prejudice. The old woman in the fairy tale wood, spinning spells, weaving stories, turning keys, threads, mirrors, toads and bones into ingredients of magic.īut let’s not forget that the witch’s hut always sits outside of the village for a reason. While working as a journalist in London in my 20s I would spend my spare time researching magic and the occult in all its forms, slowly weaving together the magic that appealed to me the kind of magic that evokes something ancient, natural, visceral and instinctual, that belongs to the domain of the household witch.

As I grew older my fascination developed. I fear it ended with and then I woke up and it was all a dream but I was young, let’s just hope my series doesn’t follow the same route (spoiler: it doesn’t.)īy the time I was a teenager, I was watching Practical Magic and The Craft and convincing friends to try out spells at sleepovers, and on one occasion in the school classroom at lunchtime. In fact, my very first story was about a witch who descended upon my school and attempted to kill the headmaster. Perhaps it was these early stories seeping into my subconscious, perhaps it was devouring The Worst Witch, or growing up in rural Wales surrounded by myth and fairy tales, or maybe it was just me, but from a young age I developed a fascination for all things witches and magic. Stories about how she could perform spells, tell the future, speak with spirits is there anything more riveting as a child than stories about magic? About a family witch? Not for me.

A fiercely independent, enigmatic woman who was said to be a witch. I remember the old family stories about my Great Aunt Mary. Threadneedle Inspiration: The Freedom and Fear of Magic

Cari thomas books in order