From the Women’s March that rose up in response to Donald Trump’s inauguration in the USA, to international protests for  #metoo and #Black Lives Matter, the potent presence of magical acts as forms of ritualised protest are bringing about a re-enchantment of the contemporary political landscape.

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For many women, LGBTQ+ persons, and BIPOC, appropriating the power to conjure change through the so called ‘dark arts’ has come to represent a defiant challenge to sexism, homophobia and racism. By celebrating the countercultural rebellion represented by the figure of the Witch, oppressed groups across the globe are making magic work for them. In doing so, this generation’s witches are finding ways to change the present, whilst simultaneously rewriting the past.

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But what precisely are the troubling legacies that are woven into the background of #hexingthepatriarchy? How have texts and objects produced through the ages sought to define transgressive knowledge, heresy and magic as essentially feminine? Why, since the biblical story of Adam and Eve, has Western culture been obsessed with myths of women falling for the Devil, all of which have shaped notions of females as desirous of forbidden wisdom, as practitioners of magic, and as living embodiments ‘her-esy’? And how can political witches today appropriate and subvert this her-esy, conjuring it into a now defining element of contemporary intersectional, anti-capitalist, anti-fascist feminism in order to develop a new realm of enchanted politics....

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Her-esy is a research project by Dr Holly Morse, Lecturer in Bible, Gender and Culture at the University of Manchester