ABSTRACT
When the Sociology Department at the University of Chicago fired a radical feminist professor in 1969, the department was showered with hair-cuttings and nail-clippings by local Chicago witches (Spretnak 1982: 428). On Hallowe’en, the year before, a coven of wand-waving, masked and costumed New York witches converged on Wall Street on the stroke of noon ‘to pit their ancient magic against the evil powers of the Financial District – the center of the Imperialist Phallic Society’ (Morgan 1978: 75). First they danced to the Federal Reserve Treasury Bank led by a high priestess carrying a papier-mâché pig’s head on a golden platter. On the steps of the building they surrounded the statue of George Washington and got told off for defacing the ‘Father of our country’ with WITCH stickers by Nixon campaigners who did not understand ‘that this was a necessary ritual against a symbol of patriarchal, slave-holding power’ (ibid.).
