In a sun-drenched room inside Lisnavagh House, a 19th-century estate in County Carlow, Ireland, a group of 15 women gathered in April 2026 around sheets of paper covered with “yeses” and “nos.” Guided by Isabella Ferrari — whose Instagram following exceeds 180,000 — the women used crystal pendulums to receive answers from spirits, fairies, and ancestors. The exercise, Ferrari explained, was less about contacting the dead than about learning to trust one’s own intuition.
“We are so used to not trusting ourselves, to second-guessing our intuition, especially women who have been taught to disconnect from their inner wisdom,” Ferrari told the group, according to the Guardian, which reported on the retreat.
The retreat, called Green Veil, is one of several witchcraft-focused gatherings that have emerged across the US and Europe over the past decade. Ferrari, an Italian-born practitioner, originally sold out her Ireland dates in April and added more, which also sold out. Ticket prices ranged from €1,900 to €3,000, the Guardian reported.
Participants said they were drawn by a desire for sisterhood and a rejection of the religious institutions they grew up in. Tara Monte, 55, a former bartender from south Philadelphia, told the Guardian she experienced a spiritual crisis after being raped at 23. “I was done with God,” she said. She eventually joined a coven in Los Angeles, but after moving to North Carolina, she said, “You can’t go around the Bible belt and explain why you have a pentagram on your neck.” Monte said a partner later killed himself in front of her and both parents died; she described the retreat as “transformative.”
Alyse Benjamin, 42, an interior designer and weekend oracle and tea leaf reader from Florida, said she grew up with a Pentecostal pastor grandmother and practiced non-denominational Christianity until her 20s. Her departure from the church was gradual. “I’m not a fan of needing to go to a building to find God when I feel it more in nature,” she told the Guardian.
Scholars who study contemporary paganism said the retreats are part of a longstanding pattern. Helen Berger, a sociologist of religion at Harvard Divinity School, told the Guardian that interest in witchcraft has grown since the counterculture movement of the 1960s, and that spikes often coincide with anti-authoritarian sentiment. She said many women turned to witchcraft after finding traditional religion “oppressive,” particularly evangelical and Pentecostal traditions.
Sabina Magliocco, a professor of anthropology and religion at the University of British Columbia and a former Guggenheim fellow, said witchcraft offers a way to channel anger. “If ‘right’ society is depriving women of rights, is excluding women, is saying that it is perfectly fine to sexually abuse women, that there aren’t going to be any consequences, then maybe being the opposite of right society is aligning with the forces of justice,” she told the Guardian.
Ferrari incorporates forest bathing, candle-making, and divination into the retreats. On one afternoon, participants walked through woods a half-hour drive from the site where Petronilla de Meath was burned at the stake in 1324 — the first recorded witch execution in Ireland. Alessandra Mascarucci, an Italian-born photographer documenting the retreat, described the collective trauma carried by women who have been punished for their power. “And women are never allowed to be angry about that,” she told the Guardian.
Not all witches approve of the retreat model. Michael Cardenas, a high priest and head witch of the apothecary brand Olde Ways, has said the mainstream moment turns radical female empowerment into a “glorified meditation retreat,” the Guardian reported. But Thorn Mooney, a PhD candidate in religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Gardnerian Wiccan priestess, said commercialization has always accompanied the craft. “Marketing has always been a part of witchcraft,” she told the Guardian.
On the final night, the women gathered around a bonfire and burned candles they had made, each vowing to release something — body shame, guilt, anxiety. Benjamin acknowledged that returning home was difficult. “I went there with some big stuff to figure out. Coming back is a shock because that stuff is still just there,” she said.