Witches in Folklore & Literature

This Course First Ran in Fall 2017

This course includes recordings from a past live version.
These recordings may have references to materials (like the course Facebook group) that are no longer available.

Want a broad survey course on witches? How about a course that shows the incredible richness and complexity of witches in folklore, history, and the everyday? 

Part of why we love witches so much is the impossibility of summing them up simply and tidily. 

Witches are characters in fairy tales. 

They’re also victims of a historical label AND a chosen identity, both in the past and the present. 

They are romanticized and commodified and ultimately reduced by neither. 

Witches are metaphors for the marginalized, and symbols of transgression and rebellion for activists and dreamers.

Witches are imagined to navigate issues like poverty, charity, and isolation.

Witches are a powerful idea.

Witches are real people.

Witches are all of these things and so much more.

If you like the sound of this, you will love this course. It’s absolutely packed with research, spanning the European witch trials to contemporary traditions in Canada to pop culture to (of course) fairy tales. It’s more academic (but still super accessible) in tone.

If you’re more interested in literary witches and an approach that prioritizes reflection and engagement with your own life, check out our other witch course "Seeking the Witch".

Or better yet, click here to get both for a super reduced price, plus a BONUS! (Seriously, they’re both awesome.)

Come and check out our very first course all about witches! This course includes 5 modules - The Witch in Folklore, The Witch in Grimms' Fairy Tales, Witch Tales Around the World, Witch Hunts, and Modern Witches. Each module includes readings, a grimoire page, and a video lecture!

Fun Fact: This is the course that inspired the book club!

We guarantee access to these materials for at least a year, probably much longer!

Please Note:

These courses are about witches in folklore - how witches have been used and claimed in different cultural contexts and how they appear in literature. This is not an instructional course about Wicca or spiritual practice - though people of all faiths are very welcome!