Quinn & The Witch Hunt

     This week, something that I’ve found myself reflecting on is the idea of looking for and creating meaning in the world around us – for example, in the ways we practice religion, try to connect with the divine, and cherish the objects and trinkets that we decorate our lives with. As I sat in class last week, a train of thought that sparked this reflection was about the concept of transubstantiation taught within the Catholic church. According to the teachings of the Catholic church, during communion, the consecration of the bread and the wine by the priest allows for a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Jesus and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood. In other words, during the Eucharist, Catholics believe that the body of Jesus himself is truly eaten and his blood truly drunk. I think that this is fascinating especially when connected to our discussions of magic and witchcraft because, again, it ...

  Venturing deeper down the rabbit hole of magic, imagination, and belief to be found on TikTok, after my previous discovery of Ella and her practice of energetic medicine, I’ve decided to spend some time exploring WitchTok. My first stop along my journey was at the hashtag, #witchtok. At the very top of the list, there’s a heading almost like a ‘toast’: “Here’s to the entire WitchTok community.” I made a note of the use of friendly and inclusive language concerning ‘community’; it reminded me of a branch of discussion that we explored in Lexi’s and my presentation last week when we discussed the intertwined ideas of sisterhood and feminism in witchcraft and drew upon the importance of belief systems in drawing people closer to one another. It was exciting to see this practice – a practice that has, as we’ve seen, popped up since the beginning of mankind– manifested on social media. Reflecting on this friendly introduction to WitchTok, it was intriguing to think about how these wit...

This week, something that’s caught my eye in the realm of magic, imagination, and belief is the practice of “energetic medicine” on TikTok. One account in particular, @ela_qi, caught my eye. Essentially, the energetic healer – Ella – claims that she’s able to heal us through our screens. She shares videos for many different emotions and conditions, including headaches, coughing, poor concentration, depression, intrusive thoughts, anxiety, ADHD paralysis, and insomnia. She focuses on psychic surgery, aura cleansing, brain massage, toxic energy removal, and evil eye cleanses. She explains to her followers that she’s channeling healing energy called qi to us from her side of the screen to ours; she says that, while qi defies explanation, it is a universal life force energy that runs through all things and all of the meridian pathways in our bodies. She claims to have been taught by an acupuncturist, by someone who does energy healing in conjunction with Chinese medicine. She cla...

As I walked through A History of Magic, Witchcraft & the Occult – and as I’ve begun to pay greater attention to how magic, imagination, and belief are woven throughout our day-to-day activities – a magic "rabbit hole" I’ve gone down is looking into the outlandish and imaginative myths and legends about the Denver International Airport. One afternoon, as I listened to one of my favorite podcasts, Brooke and Connor Make A Podcast (a comedy and relationships podcast that dives into remarkable pop culture events), they talked about the Denver International Airport. Upon further investigation, I stumbled upon a fascinating world of secret societies, underground bunkers, complex tunnel systems, visits from the lizard people, apocalyptic artwork, grinning gargoyles, and a cursed horse. For example, the airport is said to be built by members of an ages-old secret society – potentially the Freemasons, the Illuminati, or the New World Order (or, perhaps, by all three). One of the...