01: “Not your mother’s broomstick,” is the motto of newWitch (http://www.newwitch.com), a magazine “dedicated to, featuring, and partially written by young or beginning Witches, Wiccans, Neo-Pagans, and other earth-based, ethnic, pre-Christian, shamanic, and magical practitioners.”
The quarterly was launched in September 2002; and has a circulation of 10,000 copies. It is a product of BBI Media, which also publishes SageWoman, PanGaia and The Blessed Bee family newsletter. What makes newWitch special is not only that it wants to “kill stereotypes” (admittedly a quite common aspiration among Pagans), but that it deliberately targets a new generation of Pagans, aged between 18 and 34.
In an interview with the Canadian daily La Presse (July 30), newWitch‘s editor Anne Newkirk Niven explains that young Witches are much more attracted by wider cultural trends than the previous Pagan generations: they no longer perceive themselves as “counter-culture.” In the current issue, one can discover an article on “Invoking Buffy: Using Pop Icons In Your Magickal Practice”. The author explains: “I believe that popular culture is an extremely effective magickal medium.”
— By Jean-François Mayer