Witchcraft Through The Ages: The 80s

Shoulder pads, MTV, and bad haircuts...these are some things that come to mind when I think of the 80’s. But underneath the surface level of fun and bright colors, there was a darker undercurrent of social and cultural change afoot. The 80’s were a decade of transformation, subsequently prompting an existential fear in much of America despite apparent economic gains for many people. One of the ways this fear manifested was in the strange hysteria now known as the Satanic Panic. This collective freak-out would cast a heavy shadow on witches and witch communities for decades to come. Like the Salem Witch trials centuries before, or the 50’s version of this in McCarthyism, the Satanic Panic was built on false allegations and was grown to a fever pitch by a climate of fear that took hold among the populace. But what was the underlying cause of the Satanic Panic? Why did it take hold in the 80s and not the 70s or the 90s and how did this culture of fear influence the films, tv shows, and books that featured witches during this decade?

The 1980s was a time of rapid change for the American middle class. There was so much cultural anxiety around increased crime, “stranger danger,” and new frightening and misunderstood diseases that contributed to a triggering in the collective unconscious. The nuclear family was also transforming out of the need for a dual-income household. More women started entering the workforce necessitating huge numbers of young children being left in daycares for the first time. I think it’s significant that the Satanic Panic centered around false allegations of child abuse in daycare centers. It makes me wonder if this was in part a manifestation or a hallucination among many mothers who were struggling with this change in the role from child caretaker to economic provider. In previous decades some of the most popular films, such as Rosemary’s Baby, The Omen, and The Exorcist featured children being corrupted by occult influences and I wonder if the Satanic Panic grew in part out of the fear generated by these movies among mothers. But all of this fearful ‘save the children’ rhetoric really just masked the underlying prejudices and hostility to change that proliferated the 1980s.

Additionally, like a black hole, the Satanic Panic pulled many aspects of culture into its orbit. Really anything adults were resistant to began to be attributed to Satan’s growing influence among the young. Famously, Dungeons & Dragons was believed to cause young men to turn away from God and engage in demonic ritualism, with even one child’s death being falsely attributed to DD by their parents. Likewise, the Goth fashion trend and heavy metal music were all thought of as corrupting influences among the “pure” and christian youth of America. Eventually this mass hysteria reached its climax with a series of “Satanic Ritual Abuse” cases that led to dozens of wrongful homicide convictions with many imprisoned until very recently.

The Satanic Panic wasn’t the first and it won’t be the last time that the occult community is scapegoated by society and unfortunately we witches often get wrapped up in the quagmire of negative media attention. So, how did this growing fervor affect the media climate when it came to witches? Witches and witchcraft often get incorrectly intertwined with satanism in news and the media. Though when we look at the popular witchy movies of this decade, we don’t actually find that the S.P. had as much of a significant impact than one would expect.

All of the classic witchy archetypes make an appearance in movies within this decade: We have Cassandra, the seductress witch in Conan the Barbarian; Ursula, the evil spellcaster witch in the Little Mermaid. And we have Alexandra, Jane, and Sukie, representing the female empowerment witch archetype in the Witches of Eastwick. There were also a few wildcards that appeared during this decade. Elvira: Mistress of the Dark showed us that witches can be sexy, goth, and campy all at once.

On the other side of the spectrum, we see a more wholesome side of witchcraft in Kiki’s Delivery Service, where we see that witchcraft could be an avenue for self-growth, community building, and growing maturity. There were several other other witchy children's movies that came out this decade as well. One based on a series of influential books structured around a magical academy, featuring three friends, one of whom is smart and sensible, with another a practical joker. And together the three of them go through school while being plagued by their snobbish, high-born antagonistic classmate. Any of this sound familiar? The Worst Witch was based on the influential book series from the 70’s and may have impacted a future popular series about a magical academy.

You may think that the 90s were really the decade of the Teen Witch, but that emphasis began here in the 80s with the aptly titled movie Teen Witch. This movie helped pave the way for later teen witch movies and tv shows like Sabrina and The Craft. Though it wasn’t all light and fluffy witches that defined this decade. There were several 80s horror movies which featured powerfully terrifying witches, such as Inferno and Devonsville Terror. A peculiar example was Halloween 3: Season of the Witch, which famously used witches instead of featuring the franchise antagonist Michael Myers. Though, despite these few witchy horror movies, overall the 80s films showed us a wider and more nuanced perspective on the roles of the witch in society than we saw in previous decades.

Also, some of the most popular witchcraft books came out during this decade, such as Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner by Scot Cunningham and Buckland’s Complete Book of Witchcraft. These books are still viewed today as foundational to read for modern witches. Of course most of the books published during this decade were about Wicca and western European forms of magic. Unfortunately, you would need to fast forward a few more decades before we begin to see other non-European witchcraft and folk magic traditions being represented on the bookshelves.

Even though the books and movies of this decade tended to not be too dragged down by the Satanic Panic, witches themselves will forever have to contend with the prejudice that resulted from this media storm. Luckily, we witches tend to be strong and capable people and are pretty good at overcoming any prejudice that comes our way. So what came next for the witches of America? I recommend checking out my video Witchcraft Through the Ages - The 90s to see how witchcraft evolved and changed in the following decade.