Another Kind of Witch Trial

Envision a city where the sum of its parts struggle against one another to establish their own uniqueness and variety while remaining harmonized under its many layers of identity and history you will find yourself in New Orleans, more specifically where the battle for novelty is most apparent, the French Quarter. You can stroll past the unmistakable sights of period architecture layered on top of one another in such a way its age could be determined like on the rings of a tree.

You take in the wafting scents of fresh beignets, chicory coffee and the various discards of waste left over from the night before. You can hear street vendors pitching their wears and services, musicians and fortune tellers intermingling all hours of the day and well into the night. New Orleans is vibrant and bizarre, welcoming all, rejecting none and offering endless space to unleash and capitalize on your wildest imaginations. It is a complex city, easily the most complex city in America and It is here, in the bustling French Quarter, a city within a city that our defendant presides. But he did not start there and the story of how he came to be there is no less fantastical and bizarre than the city itself. This is a story of a witch and a warlock, rumored to be engaged in a veritable cage match of hexes and spiritual warfare that started with a grimoire and ended in a courtroom.

Like I mentioned, our story does not begin in New Orleans with a he, it just ends there. No, our story begins in Salem MA, with a she, that she is Laurie Cabot. Lori, now 84 has been a practicing witch since childhood. In the mid 50’s Lori was a struggling single mother and found it increasingly difficult to afford her independence in a big city, so a friend recommended they pool their resources and find a new home in the suburbs. It was an offer Lori couldn’t refuse, but there was one condition. Anywhere but Salem. It is easy for us to think of Salem as it is now as the way it has always been but before Salem known as a witch city it was a city known for witches. The Salem witch trials left a permanent scar on the city of Salem and it was all but assumed a practicing witch would hardly be welcomed. But, as fate would have it, the perfect apartment opened up in Salem and Lori reluctantly relocated there.

At first, she concealed her identity but as time wore on and cultural landscape of America shifted Lori found it easier to express herself. The 60s ushered in a revival of spiritualism and interest in occult practices, a friendlier time to someone like Lori, so she began to wear pentagrams and black shawls, all the finery becoming of a genuine witch.

That all changed the day Molly-Boo, Lori’s black cat got stuck in a tree outside of her apartment. She tried in vain to coax Molly-Boo down but she refused so Lori contacted the fire department, the police, animal control all of which assured her Molly-Boo would come down on her own accord and not to worry. For 3 days Molly-Boo remained in the tree, Lori was frantic, the weather was getting bad and Molly-Boo was likely becoming dehydrated. Desperate to get her down Lori came up with a plan, she would call the local newspaper to tell them she was a witch, her familiar, Molly-Boo was stuck in a tree and it was imperative that she be rescued. Naturally intrigued, a reporter showed up shortly after the call along with the mayor and the fire department. Molly-Boo was saved, and Lori’s identity revealed to the community.

Following the rescue, Lori garnered media attention and saw an opportunity. She opened the first Witch Shop in Salem and set out to educate the public on Wiccan spiritual practices. Lori wanted to dispel the stigmas attached to witches, to legitimize Wicca and enable other witches to practice openly in absence of fear or ridicule.

Scores of witches embarked on pilgrimages to Salem, to meet Lori, to open up their own stores, peddle their own wands and potions, speak openly and freely about their beliefs. Lori was deeply respected and revered, inadvertently breaking ground on Witch City and permanently changing its dynamic, both economic and social. Lori Cabot invented modern Salem, but it wouldn’t be enough to protect her.

The Wiccan community possesses within it, two very distinct sides. One side is open and inclusive, welcoming all with good intentions willing to adhere to simple rules regarding an oath to do no harm, to resist the temptation to manipulate the divine will for destructive purposes and to regard every living thing, plant or animal with the utmost respect. The other side can be wrought with jealousy, competition, and politics. Witch against witch, jockeying for notoriety and position, to prove who is more powerful, more skilled, more capable of influencing the natural elements. The negative attributes are not necessarily inherent in the practice of Wiccan but is however, inherent in human nature and becomes amplified with the introduction of commerce. Because Wicca is often a religion for hire, a trade that is bought and sold and where there is commerce cutthroat competition will follow.

Decades after Laurie became firmly rooted in Salem another area local arrived on the Wiccan scene with a fresh perspective and some revolutionary ideas. According to his website “Christian Day is a modern-day Warlock living in the “Witch City” of Salem, Massachusetts. A practitioner of the ancient arts of Witchcraft—a spiritual path devoted to old world folk magic, healing, and veneration of the dead.

Christian represented the next generation of Wiccan practitioners, one that understood the burgeoning digital age and knew how to capitalize on it. In 1995 Christian founded SalemTarot.com, a site devoted to Tarot and networking within the Wiccan community and showed off Christian’s web marketing skills. It was clear that Christian saw the endless array of business opportunities his passion for the occult held and he was not shy about exercising his considerable skills to build an empire doing it.

The same year he broke digital ground on Salemtarot.com he was initiated into a local coven by his close friend Shawn. Shawn and Christian endeavored to revive Salem’s magical reputation and defend it against what they described “the powers that be” from exorcising the practice from the famous witch city. Together, they created the Festival of the Dead and began offering ghost tours in Salem. The two worked together magnify Salem’s tourism potential and reacquaint the city with the old traditions of witchcraft.

By 2007, Shawn passed away and by 2008 Christian opened his first brick and mortar witch shop in Salem named Hex, branding it as an old-world witchery. There Christian sold his heavily branded candles, apothecary concoctions and other magical supplementals. But Christian did not stop there, in 2010 he opened a second shop named OMEN. By then, Christian was well on his way to franchising witch city, a move that would inevitably create dissention in the ranks.

Christian Day advertises himself as somewhat of a purist. He’s offended by Harry Potter, sparkly vampires and those who generally view Wicca as a toy. Inexplicably, he detests the commercialization of magic even as he, himself commercializes his craft to tourist. Perhaps Christian never intended to create this caricature of witchcraft, perhaps he intended, like Lori Cabot did when she first came to Salem to remove the sharp edges and taboo from it. Or perhaps his intention was to make money but maintain his image as a purist by excoriating the hobbyist. Regardless of Christian Day’s intentions he would draw steep criticism from his peers. His reputation as a serious practitioner would be scrutinized time and time again, the commercial reach his marketing prowess afforded him came at the cost of his reputation in the Wiccan community.

By this time Lori Cabot was the Grand Dame of Witchcraft in Salem and of course Christian, locked in a constant battle to legitimize himself would seek an alliance with Laurie. Any alliance between the two would be mutually beneficial, two legends conjoining forces to work towards a common goal. The pair had once been described as inseparable by mutual friends. When asked about Christian’s authenticity Laurie told the Boston Globe "There's a lot of people who will say he's too commercial, but they said the same thing about me," "But to teach the public, you have to be visible," "Being the most visible witch is the major role."

The witches and warlocks of Salem have an often-misunderstood depth and complexity between them.

Rivalry and intrigue, hex wars and harassment all take place regularly in a small community of witches in Salem. Laurie Cabot was once accused of threatening to shoot a fellow Wiccan, Janet Andrews in a landlord-tenant dispute. Christian Day was accused of making threatening phone calls to Laurie’s daughter, Jody. Other members of the Wiccan community admitted to assaulting one another, sabotaging each other’s businesses through magical and material means. They would fight, make up and continue to conduct business as usual. The bow often bending but rarely breaking, until one day it did.

What went wrong between Laurie and Christian and when is a matter of opinion and a matter of who’s opinion, but one thing is clear, there are no wholly innocent parties. Laurie came to work for Christian at Hex as a tarot reader and with Laurie being the most famous witch in Salem the value of hosting Laurie was surely not lost on Christian’s impeccable business instinct. Sometime after working for Christian, Laurie left to open her own witch shop and according to Day, poached 3 of his employees in the process. It was then, Laurie would accuse Christian of making harassing phone calls in the middle of the night, posting defamatory remarks about her on his social media and attempt to intimidate her through rumors of casting nefarious hexes on her and her business all of which would culminate into a court skirmish wounding the reputations and lives of all involved.

Christian would say it was a business dispute. Laurie called it harassment. The events that led to the moment Laurie Cabot stood at the podium in a small Massachusetts courtroom, dressed all in black and visibly emotional remain unclear. She was seeking a simple injunction against Christian barring him from contacting her. In most instances, for a judge to grant an injunction the petitioner must convince the court they have reason to believe that they are in imminent danger, by 2015 Christian was living in New Orleans, some 1200 miles away. Though the majority of Laurie’s claim relied on the emotional stress this harassment was inducing on her.

Christian admittedly denied the harsher allegations and softened the context of the rest. He was ready to defend himself and his reputation but the day of the hearing, Christian’s attorney fell ill and was unable to attend the proceedings and with no more allowances for a continuance Christian was made to hire an attorney right there at the courthouse. The case had drawn a considerable local media attention, reporters and cameramen spectated while Christian struggled to pivot his strategy and manage the optics of defending himself against an emotional elderly woman as the media anxiously awaited to capture him in a light that would effortlessly enforce Lauri’s case against him. Christian declined to speak in his own defense while his lawyer argued that Lauri was a public figure and did not enjoy the same protections as a private citizen. By the end, Laurie was granted the protection order and the parties adjourned.

On the courtroom steps Christian broke his silence. He said he was disappointed that a simple business dispute came to this while Laurie, feeling vindicated declared victory not only for herself but all women.

The media treated the case as an opportunistic novelty, the hearing was set just 3 days before Halloween, a fact that rang suspicious for some but in reality neither party would have had the opportunity to exhibit a reasonable amount of control over the scheduling. Today, it remains a secret what truly transpired between Laurie and Christian. But to the untrained eye or unfamiliar outsider the Wiccan community may appear as fractured and dysfunctional. And perhaps this is not a totally unreasonable conclusion, the Salem courthouse has weighed in on many of disputes erupting from the Wiccan community over the decades. Claims of harassment, physical violence, business disputes have come before the court seeking resolution time and time again. There is something deeper, something less superficial that demands attention but receives little consideration, they are passionate about their practice and as Catholic Mystic and notable poet Khalil Gibran once said Passion unattended is a flame that burns to its own destruction

Today it would appear that time and distance has healed the wounds between Christian and Laurie. Christian posts fondly about Laurie occasionally on his social media, attributing his development and success to her. Today, he lives in New Orleans, taking on the establishment, holding festivals, and continuing to practice his craft. Laurie Cabot continues to reside in Salem, though her shop has closed and now she is largely confined to her apartment due to health issues she continues to be one of the most notable and celebrated witches of the modern era.