Fire and magic: 10 witch series for St. John's Eve

BarcelonaThe night of San Juan is a night of fire, but also of witches, characters who in the most traditional conception were evil, unattractive, and dangerous (and who flew on broomsticks). After centuries of being feared and persecuted, the feminist movement has for years appropriated the concept of the witch and redefined it as a symbol of empowered and wise women. Witches have long appeared in literature and film, but also on television, where there are many series starring witches who often escape the most stereotypical portrayals.

For centuries, witches were portrayed as fearsome figures, but in the 1960s, television showed us that they could be adorable and fun. The witch Samantha, blonde and adorable,She married the mortal Darrin and accepted her husband's wish to become a traditional, suburban American housewife. Despite her efforts not to use her powers, in each episode of the sitcom Samantha had to resort to spells by moving her adorable nose. Often, it was the interference of her mother, Endora, who was totally against her daughter giving up her gifts, that caused her to succumb to magic. A year before the series premiered, writer Betty Friedan published The mystique of femininity, a key work of second-wave feminism, focusing on the "nameless malaise" of American housewives. Some analysts have seen the series as a metaphor for what the American woman described in her book.

Marvel was directly inspired by Bewitched, and in many others sitcoms classics to which he explicitly pays homage, when he made WandaVision, a series about the so-called Scarlet Witch, or, in other words, Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen). At the beginning of the series, she and her partner, Vision, live an idyllic life in Westview, a residential area in New Jersey, and try to hide their powers. As the years go by, they begin to realize that something is not right. In WandaVision There are two witches for the price of one: the couple's nosy neighbor is Agatha Harkness, who has infiltrated the neighborhood to try to discover how Wanda's abilities work. Agatha, who else?, which delves deeply into the iconography of the occult and shows how Agatha, who has lost her powers, creates a new coven of witches.

Bewitched planted the seed for another sitcom sorceress, Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, which years later had a new, more terrifying version, The Chilling Adventures of SabrinaNetflix revived the character, which emerged from the Archie Comics factory in the 1960s, to surround her with a terrifying air and turn her into an empowered teenager. Goodbye to the aesthetic kitsch and the white humor of the 90s comedy: the new Sabrina Spellman, daughter of a mortal and a sorcerer, had no time to make jokes because she had to decide whether she wanted to give her life to the occult forces or not. The person in charge of giving life to the teenage witch was Kiernan Shipka, an actress who became known for being Don Draper's daughter in Mad Men.

There were years in which audiovisual media—whether film or television—was infested with vampire stories that opened the door to other supernatural creatures. True Blood is a good example: it started as the love story between a telekinetic waitress and a vampire, but it was a cocktail that included everything: mediums, werewolves, and also witches, of course. The latter made an appearance starting in the fourth season, when Lafayette, the gay cook and medium, tried to delve deeper into his magical powers with the help of a coven. The leader of the group is Marnie (Fiona Shaw), who is possessed by Antonia Gavilán de Logroño, a powerful 17th-century witch condemned by the vampires of the Catholic Church during the Spanish Inquisition and who swore revenge against the bloodsuckers. An excessive and morbid series that played with the occult traditions of the southern United States.

While some series use witches and magic as a metaphor for higher matters, others simply exploit the more traditional and conventional image of these characters. The story revolves around a woman who finds a haunted manuscript in the Bodleian Library at Oxford University. The discovery forces her to use her powers once again to uncover the secrets hidden within the manuscript. She's also a woman who loves magic, and, incidentally, falls in love. Charmed.

In an anthology series dedicated to horror, it seemed imperative to have a season centered on the figure of the witch. Ryan Murphy's Witches aren't old or have warts on their noses; they're young women who form a coven of descendants of the Salem witches. They all live at Miss Robichaux's academy in New Orleans, and each has a unique story very much in the realm of pop culture. Zoe arrives at the academy after causing her boyfriend to have a brain hemorrhage while having sex. Her classmates are Madison, a former child actress with telekinesis; Queenie, who is a human voodoo doll because she can hurt others by hurting herself without feeling pain; and Nan, an enigmatic clairvoyant.

One of Netflix's strangest miniseries also has supernatural connections. Set in the 90s and very much a heir to the cinema of David Lynch, New cherry flavor follows Lisa (Rosa Salazar), a young filmmaker who arrives in Hollywood to meet with a producer interested in her following a horror short film she directed. The series' symbols are the cats: the sorceress Boro must always have one nearby and, through her magic, makes Lisa vomit up kittens, which she ends up keeping.

The Addams Family is one of the great emblems of gothic pop culture, and Wednesday is one of the most imitated characters in television history. Gloomy, sarcastic, and impenetrable, the Addams daughter isn't strictly a witch, although she does have special powers, as we discover in Tim Burton's series. Wednesday has psychic visions of the present and past that she can't control and that appear to her when she touches an object that awakens them. These are powers she inherited from her mother, Morticia, and that are part of her family lineage: one of her ancestors is Goody Addams, a 17th-century woman accused of witchcraft and who serves as Wednesday's spiritual (and supernatural) guide.

In this fantasy series there was everything, including a witch. Technically, and according to the vocabulary of Game of Thunder, Melisandre was a priestess of the Lord of Light, but her duties and attributes brought her very close to what we understand as a witch in the most pejorative sense of the word, since, beyond her ointments and powers, she was a terrible person. Called the Red Woman for her mahogany hair and clothes, Melisandre lived an eternal youth thanks to the magic necklace she always wore. The witch is responsible for one of the most terrifying scenes in the entire series: to everyone's astonishment, she convinces Stannis Baratheon to sacrifice his daughter, the young (and innocent) Shireen Baratheon, to save his army.

Sometimes witches do not respond to the traditional image, but are evolved. Copenhagen cowboyIn Nicolas Winding Refn's film, Miu (Angela Bundalovic) is a Balkan immigrant with a supernatural gift that has made her both coveted and feared by those around her. Petite and always dressed in a blue tracksuit, she wanders through Copenhagen's underworld, where she encounters all sorts of adversaries, some supernatural. Among them are Nicklas, the son of a wealthy and mysterious family, and Rakel, whose powers are very similar to Miu's.