The Americans Who Quit the Church to Become Witches—Among Other Things

During colonial times, various
syncretic spiritualities had to “hide their practices behind the mirror of
Catholicism,” notes Odalis Garcia Gorra, a writer and doctoral student at
University of Texas, Austin. “If you think about Santeria,” an Afro-Caribbean
faith that blends Yoruba (West African) and Catholic beliefs, “the saints were
syncretized with the Orishas,” a pantheon of Yoruban deities,
Garcia Gorra notes.

Garcia Gorra studies the rise of
Latinx digital communities, especially brujapreneurs—witches carving out
sacred space on Instagram. Representative among them is Bri Luna, The Hoodwitch
and author of Blood,
Sex, Magic; she has 481,000 followers and blends Tarot, the Virgin
Mary, astrology, and recently, the pagan holiday Beltane. The content is
feminine, gothic, luxurious.

Garcia Gorra notes how often
followers of this sort of witchy aesthetic include young women and gender-nonconforming people, queer people. Often, they are second- or third-generation
children of immigrants, reaching for connection with the beliefs of their
ancestors. They seem to want to get away from a colonizing form of faith they
grew up with and dig for the history underneath that was pushed down by the
church.