World and witchcraft: Revaluation or trivialization of the esoteric?

By Emilia Holstein and Victoria Eger

Argentina and Mexico. Second match of the National Team in the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. The tri stood in front of the albiceleste on the pitch. After 2-1 against Saudi Arabia, the Argentine players could not afford another mistake if they wanted to get past the first round. It was at that moment that a call to all witches, wiccas, mais and healers began to circulate on Twitter: Messi had to be cured of the evil eye —or rather the entire Argentine team— to win that match.

The idea spread on social networks a bit as a certainty and a bit as a joke. In the next match against Poland, photos of people putting goalkeeper Wojciech Szczęsny’s name in the freezer kept coming during halftime. From one day to the next, thousands of people thanked the witches for their work in saving the Selection. “It served to freeze it, huh,” Paloma confirmed to her aunt when the referee gave the final whistle.

Facing the dispute between Argentina and Australia today, from Feminacide we interviewed fans, astrologers and tarot readers to think about this phenomenon from a feminist perspective. How does the football present dialogue with magic, rituals and the tradition of witches? Why is all the trust suddenly placed in these historically denied and violated femininities? Is it about the vindication of this figure at a social level? Or is it a trivialization of spirituality? Is it believe or bust?

We are witches and we are fans

Mariel Tellechea is a communicator and future teacher in Communication and Culture. The thesis she is working on focuses on the figure of the witch and her link with feminism. Faced with this phenomenon of cabals and rituals, she warns that they are part of cultural practices that have been with us since the beginning of humanity: some more mundane and others more magical or religious. And in this sense, “soccer is one of the privileged sports for rituals because it summons the massive and the popular and in those crosses there are various traditions that coexist and are stressed.”

Mel Knarik is a writer, tarot reader and author of the book witch club along with Ayelen Romano. For her, a witch is a person who practices spirituality outside of accepted dogmas. They appeal to different spiritual and material forces that are outside of the socially established.

“Many centuries ago abortionists, for example, were called witches, people who had a sexual practice outside of what was accepted, women who owned property without having a husband or without having a family. And in fact, the accusation of witchcraft was always a practice that today we could call cancellation, social exclusion ”, he explains. In this line, Mariel Tellechea redoubles the bet: “With the movement Not one less In 2015, in Argentina, witches also reappeared in their different versions: midwives, healers, ecofeminists, women of ancestral peoples”.

However, in recent years there has been a resurgence of this type of practice and a reappropriation of the figure of the witch. And also of women in soccer. “I think we need to think about this phenomenon as part of the process of making women visible in soccer, as well as the growth of esotericism in society in recent years. All of this is linked to the different feminisms: that of sport and that of witches,” says Lu Gaitán, a feminist astrologer and political scientist.

Women and dissidents have always liked football, that’s nothing new. What is a revelation is the acceptance at a social level that we are fans, that we can sit at the table and shout the goals with the same power as all the men. The scene of the wife who stays in the kitchen and appears only to bring the beer and the snack is gone.

We were heretics, we are great-granddaughters of rebellion

In parallel, esoteric practices also gained relevance. For Mariel Tellechea, the visibility of the symbolic universe of witches has been gaining ground for some years thanks to two contexts. In the first place, the feminist struggles were in charge of rescuing the figure of the witch from demonology manuals to tell the stories of persecution of women who represented a threat to the system. Secondly, a contrary tendency emerges linked to the discourses that propose magical changes, but do not consider structural inequalities. That is, the positive philosophies and spiritualities called “new age” with an individualistic bias.

People who practiced witchcraft were and are persecuted for centuries. Leaders of their communities, they were accused of “heretics”, convicted and set on fire. The witch hunt took place in Europe between the second half of the 15th century and the middle of the 18th century, at the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of Modernity. The Italian writer Silvia Federici, author of The Caliban and the Witchpoints out that currently in African countries such as India, Nepal and Papua New Guinea, disciplinary practices against women continue to be common: they are murdered under the excuse of witchcraft.

We recommend you read: Witches, witch hunts and women

Since the 1960s and 1970s, feminisms have claimed and rescued the witch of silence to restore its complexity. According to Mariel Tellechea, the intention was and is “to mark differences with the imaginaries of evil and terror that the inquisitors built and that were later disseminated through literature, painting and cinema.”

The annihilation of rebellion, embodied in feminized bodies, was the condition for the rise of modern capitalism. “This persecution spread to our continent with colonization. There are several lines that connect the witches of Europe and those of the original peoples of America who were considered savage, unruly and irrational. Following this current of thought, we can say that the witch is a figure loaded with stigma that meant the death of thousands of women”, develops the communicator and teacher.

For his part, Lu Gaitán understands that because of all this, many people live their esoteric side in secret. “The covens were the meeting space for witches. There not only tree and animal worship practices were carried out, there were also records of transvestism, lesbianism and homosexuality as part of the ritual. For this reason, I say that many people these days were coming out of the esoteric closet thanks to something as mobilizing for Argentine society as the World Cup ”, he affirms.

Those who are witches today are claiming an identity and belonging to a lineage always associated with the negative. In this sense, Mel Knarik contributes: “Instead of taking it as an accusation that intends to exclude the person, trying to appropriate the term is also a way to re-include oneself in at least another type of social circles.”

There are, there are

Mexico and Poland finished 0-0 in their debut match. Given Argentina’s defeat in their first game against Saudi Arabia, there was no better possible outcome than a goalless draw. “I turned it on at 1:00 p.m. and crossed out the m * fa,” Martina writes to her partner and attaches a photo of a candle next to a Gilda stamp. He, who was always skeptical and disbelieving, clung to that ritual like he had never done before: “You’re going to have to do that magic from here to the end of the World Cup, I’m sorry.” In exchange, they had to put on a song by the dancer’s standard-bearer. Because Gilda is asked, but he is also thanked.

You can also read: Gilda, a true love

For those who engage in witchcraft, esoteric practices are not something to be trifled with. Freezing someone without knowing how to do it or taking “the mufa” out of a player without his consent can be, for witches, something that harms those of us who do it.

In the tweets, memes and viral videos that circulated since the match against Mexico, the messages of believers in these energies are mixed with those of fans who would do anything to see Argentina win. There were also those people who just had a good laugh at the next trend on Twitter.

But why is it allowed to mock these practices and not an institutionalized religion? Is this phenomenon a trivialization of witchcraft or a possibility of making visible a hidden world?

Knarik thinks that what is happening, like everything that happens at a social level, is complex. There is a simplification of what the world of ritual and magic implies, because to begin with it is very difficult to be able to transmit this hidden knowledge (which is not only one, but there are multiple currents) through a reel on social networks.

But also, she wonders what will happen when the world cup ends: “After having lit a candle for the saint or having cleaned Messi’s eyes, they will surely say that astrology is a lie or that yoga is a sect. When it suits us to influence what interests us, we all ask the witch to do her thing, but later, when it comes to including the witch and her practices again, she will be excluded ”.

If this event demonstrates anything, it is that “rituals have no gender either,” insists Mariel Tellechea after a conversation she had with a male friend. Are witches irrational and emotional? “Don’t the fans cry, kick, pray, have catharsis, stop eating in the preview because of nerves, make promises to the saints and deify popular idols?”, inquires the communicator and teacher.

There is no magic that is not collective

They say that in the world there is no fan equal to that of our country. That the Argentines have to be dragged out of the stadium when the game ends is well known news. That the crowds traveling by subway to the rhythm of La Mosca or Calamaro mobilize even the most insensitive person. But how to explain it if it’s better to feel it?

“I have no doubt that many people focused on the same issue and at the same time have a lot of strength. We know it in our bodies when we go to a football game, a recital or a march: we get goosebumps, we get excited, sounds and colors are perceived differently. It is really very powerful and I think we look for those spaces because they are moments of collective meeting, but they are also moments of connection with something bigger than the Human”, says Lu Gaitán.

Agustina Gallo is a communicator, secondary school teacher and astrological consultant. She is currently studying a master’s degree where she studies the biographical narratives of women and dissidents who play soccer professionally. According to her, “just as the mysticism of soccer exceeds the cabal and infects and revives personal and collective energy, it is also capable of absorbing it and lowering all mental barriers.”

The teacher agrees with the other interviewees. And it is that with the energies one does not play. Being aware of what we do and understanding the responsibility assumed is essential. “The work with one’s own energy, the rituals of gratitude and cleansing are far from those that seek to overshadow the party of others, hurt or interfere with the energy of others. Not losing sight of this north could be the key to maintaining confidence in magic and the relevance that witches have gained in these weeks, once the whistle marks the end of the game. It is necessary to stop the ball so as not to ignore the care and respect that the rituals require because the energy does stain ”, she declares.

According to Lu Gaitán, the possible outcomes after this wave of magic are complex: “I believe that several things can happen (and probably all of them do): one is that anyone starts doing rituals and is not aware of the energetic dangers of magic. The other is that we witches are a little more respected and less ridiculed, especially if Argentina does well in the World Cup”. We choose to believe: that divine and feminist justice does the latter.

So be it.