John Alden Junior: What do they want, these terrible witches?

Cotton Mather: The same thing we all want: a country of their own. 

Wow, speaking of Witchsploitation: a new TV series, set (you guessed it) in Salem, Mass, 1692.

Magic is real. Witches are real. There's a real coven that meets out in the woods wearing animal masks. (Sounds like our kind of people.) There's even a real Horned Man out in the woods that you and you and you can have sex with. And guess what: the witches themselves are the ones fomenting the big witch-hunt.

Say what?

Ah, but you see, these witches are very clever: they're using the Puritans' fears against them. (Goethe suggests this same technique in Die Erste Walpurgisnacht: sound strategy for persecuted minorities, actually.) Set those cowans at each others' throats and eventually they'll all kill each other off and then (rubs hands together, cackles gleefully) the country will be...ours!

Witch City, Paganistan. Now why didn't we think of that?

Say there actually were witches of our sort, paganish folk, back in the Old Country in the Old Days. Say they came to America for freedom to worship in the Old Way in the New Land across the sea. (All the old stories tell of the Land-to-the-West.) And then when we get there, lo and behold, out in the forest—and such a forest!—the Horned Man is already right there waiting for us, just as he always has been. “Red Champion” we call him, because he fights for the people. The Indians know him too: they call him “Red Horn”, and for the same reason.

Revisionist Witch-American history. In this particular instance it's not, I'll admit, compelling television: the language and ideas make no pretense of being anything but 21st century. The literal use of the supernatural leaves no room for dramatic tension. (Once admitted, no holds are barred: anything can happen. There is no science of miracles.) There aren't nearly enough good-looking guys (Cotton Mather's the only one, ugh), and of course there's the usual tiresome male/female nudity imbalance, sigh.

Salem is Old Style witchery for sure: toad familiars sucking supernumerary witches' tits, vengeful whammies, the works. (No osculum infame yet, but one lives in hope.) Interestingly, there does seem to be something of a Wiccan aesthetic throughout: lots of (female) skyclad with necklaces. Hey, it's good for publicity. It sure worked for Uncle Gerald.

Compelling viewing, no. But as part of the larger, ongoing magical act of collectively re-envisioning ourselves back into history: well, our authors have been doing this for several centuries, since back before there was a New Paganism, really. Richard Carpenter's Robin of Sherwood series changed the Robin Hood mythos forever by repaganizing it, Herne protect us.

Revisionist Witch-American history.

Witches are the new vampires, I hear and, as Frebur Moore has observed, anything they say about us becomes our possession, to be used as we see fit.

Hang onto those broomsticks, folks: it's gonna be a wild ride.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2963254/