Reclaiming the crone: The rise of witchcraft in New Zealand

Friday, 26 December 2025

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As more New Zealanders identify as Pagan or Wiccan, modern witches are quietly reclaiming a once-feared label. Mildred Armah reports.

On a warm afternoon just north of Christchurch, Dawn Maley stands in a circle of women and calls herself what generations of patriarchy have used as an insult: a crone.

“I class myself as a crone,” the 64-year-old says. “So I look at the three stages of being a woman; the maiden, the mother and the crone. I'm entering my crone years, which is the elder-hood really.”

For Maley, witchcraft is an earth-based spiritual practice shaped by seasonal ritual; one that brings people together and fosters community, connection and a sense of belonging.

Speaking to Stuff, Maley said that in her 30s she turned away from the traditional religion she was raised in and went looking for something that felt more aligned to how she understood the world.

“Witchcraft and spells, to me, are like manifestation or prayer. It’s just a different way of doing it,” she said.

A course called Awaken the Goddess Within opened the door to witchcraft, and then cycles of solstices, equinoxes and seasonal festivals, gave her a framework to follow. She honours the land and the turning of the seasons with simple rituals.

“Spell-casting is only a small part of it,” Maley said. “To me it's being aware of the cycles. This year in particular, I've ended up teaching or sharing my practice with other women.

“We meet on the Sabbats, which is the winter solstice, the autumn and spring equinoxes, but also the Cross-Quarters, so it works out roughly about every eight weeks, but we're going with the seasonal festivals that have been practised for hundreds of thousands of years by pagan people.”

Maley said these ceremonies might involve celebrating the harvest, eating seasonal fruits and vegetables and working with nature.

“We'll sit in circle, share whatever's on our minds, then usually break into a bit of craft… I'll take the women through a meditation, and it's always seasonally based.”

Last year, Maley said she said she performed a ritual while hunting for a new house.

“We had a certain criteria we put down that we wanted for a house and we sat there and we did a little spell around it. I did it on a full moon, and within 28 days, and by the next full moon, we had that house.”

‘Healing the witch wound’

Maley has heard all the stereotypes - the devil worship, the “evil witch” trope, the idea that witchcraft is inherently dangerous. She laughs.

“One of the things [I hear] is, ‘you’re doing devil’s work’. No, that concept doesn’t really exist within paganism,” she said.

“It’s all about intention. Some people do things with good intention, some with bad - but that's like anything.”

Maley said many of those fears and misconceptions have deep historical roots. In the circles she teaches, discussions often touch on “healing the witch wound” - the lingering trauma from the centuries referred to as “the Burning Times”, when people, often women, were accused of being witches and subsequently persecuted.

That legacy, she said, still shapes how the word witch is perceived today, and still fuels the stereotypes she and others push back against.

“They tried to vilify women,” Maley said. “It wasn't witches who were burnt - it was women who owned land, women who were healers, women who were burned because they upset some guy in the community.”

Maley now shares her practice more openly. She posts about it on Facebook, teaches seasonal workshops and runs “silver tent” circles for older women. But the hesitation many witches feel, she said, is real.

“There’s a fear of being seen. A fear of stepping forward,” she said.

For Maley, sharing her practice is about creating safe, grounded spaces where women can explore their spirituality in their own way, free from judgement or persecution.

‘I find this really empowering’

Dr Amy Whitehead, a senior lecturer in social anthropology at Massey University, has spent decades studying contemporary paganism, witchcraft and ritual.

She said many of today’s stereotypes come from centuries-old biases, including periods when people - especially healers, midwives and those living on the margins - became targets during the witch trials. She sees the modern use of the word witch as a form of reclamation.

“People say, ‘OK, I find this really empowering,’ ” Whitehead said.

That sense of empowerment appears to be spreading, with census data showing the total number of people identifying as Pagan or Wiccan - which can include witchcraft practitioners - increased from 4212 in 2018 to 5742 in 2023.

Whitehead sees the current resurgence of interest - especially among Gen Z and middle-aged women - as linked to ecological anxiety and spiritual disillusionment and development.

She said much of the appeal lies in paganism’s focus on nature and natural cycles, describing a cosmology in which “everything around you is alive and living, and everything needs and deserves respect”.

“They want something to fill the hole… the more traditional religions aren't really doing it for them and so they are turning to these kind of alternatives.”

Practitioners form communities online or local covens, often privately, with many choosing to remain low-key, out of concern about misunderstanding or stigma.

“They don't advertise where they are and they gate-keep - and rightly so - about who they let in and who they talk to because they're so used to either being derogatorily referred to or seen as ridiculous.”

In reality, ritual can be quiet and intuitive, she said - people “feeling into the earth,” reading “signs, portents, birds flying in strange directions,” or tending home altars with candles, feathers or stones.

‘A little bit of magic’

For Christchurch witch Sarah-Jane, that quiet, intuitive practice is exactly what witchcraft looks like. She has been practising for about five years and describes herself as “eclectic” - a mix of green witch, cottage witch and kitchen witch, grounded in gardening, cooking and small rituals woven into daily life.

The 33-year-old said part of her path began years earlier, when she learned that her great-great-grandmother, who grew up in England’s Lincolnshire, was considered a witch.

She then came across a YouTube documentary on the trials of the Pendle witches in 1612, when 10 people in the area surrounding Pendle Hill in Lancashire were charged with witchcraft and executed. That sparked something within her that felt both ancestral and new.

“It took me back to the stories my nana would tell about my great-great-nana who did grow up to be quite superstitious,” Sarah-Jane said. “She was very eclectic and she sort of taught my great-nana, who taught my nana, who taught me. So it's sort of been in the family.”

Sarah-Jane, who lives with chronic fatigue syndrome, describes her rituals as smaller, slower and shaped by what her body can manage on any given day.

“Some days it’s just making a cup of chamomile tea and stirring words of intention into it,” she said. Other days it might be placing an aquamarine crystal in her bathroom for cleansing, or adding protective charms to her jewellery. “Little things, nothing elaborate.”

She runs an online shop, The Witches’ Cottage, selling spell bags, “witchy books” and witchcraft tools, “basically things you’d find in my home.”

Like many practitioners, she rejects the language of white and black magic, saying, “magic is magic, it’s your intention behind it”.

That emphasis on intention also shapes how she views media portrayals of witchcraft.

Pop-culture depictions, she said, often exaggerate what witches can do. Shows like The Vampire Diaries can be entertaining, “but we can’t bring people back from the dead”.

She wishes more creators would consult real practitioners so portrayals feel “a little bit more realistic”.

“It’s not as scary as you think it is. We just go about living our daily lives like everyone else - we just add a little bit of magic to it.”

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