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Consumer witchcraft: are teenage witches a creation of commercial interests?

The production of books, magazines, kits, films, TV programmes and Internet sites aimed at teenagers, especially girls, on witchcraft, Wicca and related topics, has been a growth industry of the late 1990s and 2000s. This article examines whether Ezzy’s distinction between ‘traditional witchcraft’, a serious religious path, and ‘white witchcraft’, an aspect of consumerism, can be used to understand the phenomenon of ‘teenage witchcraft’. An analysis of some of the materials available and of interviews with young women who identify as witches attempts to answer the question of whether young people are being exploited by commercial interests, or whether the ‘teen witch’ phenomenon cannot be so easily dismissed. The author suggests that at least some young people who identify as witches or Pagans are not mere consumers of exploitative materials, but are well‐informed, critical thinkers articulating their own serious spiritual and theological perspectives.