Following on my reflections in my blog post 'Seekest thou the path', and my influence and involvement of a forthcoming anthology on witchcraft and popular culture. Where I was originally an editor and going to contribute a chapter and co-write the introduction. I intended focusing on my lived experience through a recent TV show - what I am sharing here. However, as this was out of my core knowledge base field, it led me to withdraw from the project. Though I am still involved as a research assistant, in designing and distributing the online survey instrument for data collection that we are planning to use. However, I later thought I might as well produce something accessible through a blog post and reshape the initial intention, including some literature I became aware of through related conversations on the publication and via general research. I did reflect extensively and collected substantive notes to work on, so it would be a shame not to use the material. Plus, I thought when I complete in the online survey as a participant it would provide excellent supplementary information to include.
One of the strongest insights I could emphasise is that my contribution is understanding how people come to learn through TV media, which makes this piece very distinctive. Plenty of people can analyse Agatha All Along as a TV show or debate whether it represents contemporary witchcraft accurately. Perhaps fewer can thoughtfully examine how a TV show can act as a catalyst for identity development, curiosity and reflective practice.
Considering all of that, I decided to collaborate through GenAI can help me articulate my complex case study of my lived experience, and present as a hybrid typical accessible blog post, but with a bit of supporting scholarship to give some light academic rigour. I feel my story and experience is rarely visible/published and offers a significant and valuable contribution to this interesting and complex field. To be clear, the article is not a conclusion, but a starting point for further research should I wish to. And to be transparent, I supplied to GenAI the 'Agatha All Along' section from my 'Seekest thou the path' blog post, original chapter abstract and my extensive original chapter notes for the book I was going to contribute to. GenAI will not fully understand my lived experience. This is the first time I have attempted a collaboration of this kind. I did not ask GenAI to produce something independently without my own nerdy and deeply personal and reflective inputs, therefore I define it as a true collaboration. We had months of really deep conversations sharing both our perspectives, based on the content, questions and answers I had supplied. It literally felt like I was working with another person going back and forth to get a piece we were both happy with. As what I thought I wanted to write about was actually different. Conversing with GenAI helped me realise that I was not writing about why I am drawn to the figure of a witch and witchcraft, but about how people learn through TV media and how it helped me notice and reveal my spiritual identity, which I allowed it to fully emerge and proudly make it visible and own it. Which I guess lends itself well given I am a strong visual and pragmatic learner. Essentially, somehow the TV show refocused my attention to my spiritual side after years of dormant and infrequent spiritual work. Forgive the pun, but it was inherently there all along. Previous blog posts of mine detail more of my endeavours and origins (newest to old) 'Drum birthing workshop - ready to begin', 'Roots to radiance - a mini retreat', 'Catching the dream - a mini retreat', 'Seekest thou the path 🌕', 'Dreaming, rituals and values', 'Roots and beyond', 'The calling, awakening and initiation', 'Energy through numbers', 'Orca-strating' and 'Get my rocks on'.
One final thing before I head into the article. As part of my 40th birthday gifts, my husband Gary drew me a surprise poster of some iconic witches from popular culture TV and movies. It literally provides visual evidence of the said impact these TV shows and movies have had on me! My interests and identity is very much recognised by others. Me at end of August - "Because today has felt Autumnal... 🍂 Amongst the kindness I've received over my birthday month, there was one heartfelt surprise present from the hub. He drew this for me and put it in a black frame. Some of my favourite/iconic witches from pop culture! 🧙🏻♀️ Absolutely love it, I can't stop looking at it. Well, I feel seen ha. He asked if there was any others that could have been in, I went on to suggest Misty Day, Rio Vidal/Death (genius that a green witch should be personified as death), and a cheeky reference to Stevie Nicks."
Original abstract:
Beyond special visual effects: how Agatha All Along empowers viewer exploration of witchcraft
Abstract:
The influence of witchcraft in the entertainment media industry has been very prominent, especially through Disney, as historically they have proven to favour a witch character arc, often evil for cursing and trickery purposes. Witches have been present in our lives through various stories and media types. In modern times, for some, film and television are often the first entry point of encountering a witch figure, enabling viewer interest to engage and learn more about witches and witchcraft. If the figure of the witch and associate practices are not too farfetched in how it is conveyed. Therefore, this identifies an area for further exploration.
This chapter critically examines how a modern televised representation of witches and practical magic in Agatha All Along (2024), a Disney+ miniseries. Indicating that Agatha All Along might not only serve as media entertainment and spectacle, but as a catalyst for casual viewers to explore interest in basic contemporary witchcraft as a potential starting point for novices. Shifting casual viewers from passive viewing to an explorer and potential practitioner, moving from fantasy to experiential reality.
The chapter will holistically analyse Agatha All Along through a number of theoretical evidence-based witchcraft lenses coupled with my own lived experience, identifying common themes and present-day depictions, representations, tropes and commentary on aestheticisation. Grounding and discussing these attributes in relevant literature, and how these attributes could increase perceived viewer accessibility and inspire exploratory engagement with real-world basic witchcraft practices. Therefore, the focus is not on how Agatha All Along accurately represents witches and witchcraft and if/what Disney/Marvel got it right, but arriving at how it incorporates, balances and moves beyond fantasy and spectacle with real-world exploration and application. Ultimately addressing, how does Agatha All Along construct witches and witchcraft as experientially plausible, and how does that plausibility enable viewer exploration? And more broadly, does this offer another contribution to the influence of witchcraft in the entertainment media industry?
Brief biography:
Daniel is a learning technologist providing digital, academic and strategic leadership and operational management, in the pedagogical and technical design and application of learning technologies. He holds a Technology Enhanced Learning MSc, Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Authority (SFHEA) and Senior Certified Membership of the Association for Learning Technology (SCMALT). He is qualified in teaching, assessing, lead internal verification, management and leadership and information technology and computing. He is the winner of the ALT Learning Technologist of the Year Award 2016 (individual category), and is the author of 'Digital Learning, Teaching and Assessment for HE and FE Practitioners' (2022). In addition to his personal spiritual interests and practices, he is a lifelong consumer of how the figure of a witch and witchcraft is depicted in the media entertainment industry, more specifically TV and film from the 1990s to present day.
Beyond the screen: how Agatha All Along TV series enabled active learning exploration and reconnection to personal spirituality
Can TV (television) inspire more than entertainment? We usually think of TV as escapism; watch to relax, laugh, be frightened or temporarily disappear into another world. Fantasy, perhaps more than any other genre, asks us to suspend disbelief. We accept supernatural powers, impossible worlds and mythical creatures because they are entertaining, not because we expect them to change our lives. Occasionally, though, a TV series does something unexpected. It might reconnect us with an interest we have quietly carried for years and gives us enough curiosity, confidence or permission to explore it beyond the screen.
I think Agatha All Along (2024) did exactly that for me. This isn’t an argument about whether Marvel accurately represents witchcraft. Nor am I claiming expertise in contemporary witchcraft, Wicca or Pagan traditions. There are people far more knowledgeable than me to have those conversations. Instead, I am interested in something slightly different; how can a particular representation of witchcraft move someone from passive viewing towards active exploration?
My response to Agatha All Along can be understood through Graham Gibbs' (1988) model of reflective practice, moving from experience and emotional response towards analysis, learning and subsequent action. Alongside ideas around lived religion and spirituality from scholars such as Meredith McGuire (2008) and Robert Orsi (2005), and Van Gennep (1960) and Victor Turner’s (1969) work on rites of passage, ritual and liminality, and contemporary Pagan scholarship by Helen Berger (1999), Sabina Magliocco (2004) and Ronald Hutton (2018).
I have realised that my story is perhaps less about witches and witchcraft than I initially thought. What's literally quite magical about all of this, pardon the pun, it is about how people learn through TV media, how popular culture sometimes becomes an unexpected enabler and teacher, and in the process understanding myself a bit more. And interestingly, my professional background makes that particularly difficult to ignore.
Growing up with figures of witchesBefore talking about Agatha All Along, I think it’s important to acknowledge something I only realised while writing this piece; my interest in witches didn’t begin with this TV series. In truth, it has quietly followed me for most of my life. Like many people, my first encounters with witches came through popular culture and at a young age.
My fascination with witches began long before Agatha Harkness appeared on Disney+. Some of my earliest encounters came through Disney. Characters such as Ursula from The Little Mermaid and the familiar villainous witch archetypes of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty introduced me to witches as mysterious, powerful and usually rather dangerous figures. Then came Hocus Pocus, The Craft, Practical Magic, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Sleepy Hollow, American Horror Story: Coven and Apocalypse, and later Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. Long before I understood anything about contemporary witchcraft, those characters had already established the visual language of the witch in my imagination. I have therefore spent much of my life as a consumer of the witch figure in popular culture. As I grew older that fascination never disappeared, it evolved. But looking back it was rarely the spells that interested me most. I was drawn towards community, belonging, mystery, nature, ritual, healing, specialised knowledge, camaraderie and people who existed slightly outside conventional society. I liked the idea of covens, not necessarily because members possessed magical powers, but because they represented groups of like-minded people sharing knowledge and supporting one another. They possessed specialist knowledge that sat outside conventional institutions. They lived close to nature, healed as much as they harmed, developed rituals, were often misunderstood, and therefore frequently treated as outsiders.
I recall in one of my blog posts (Scott, 2018) I stated “I have always thought of myself as something different to others, like Matilda she was 'different' and alone but was able to use it positively as well as her own company.” Perhaps this is why programmes that weren’t about witches appealed to me too. Desperate Housewives and Sex and the City, for example, offered strong communities, chosen relationships and bonds between people navigating life together. Even though these programmes have nothing to do with witchcraft, they represented something similar to what I later recognised in fictional covens, finding your people. Perhaps what I have always been searching for is not magic itself but belonging. Looking back I can see that the fictional witches I was fascinated by represented forms of community and practice long before I had language for them. This connects with Orsi's (2005) argument that ‘religious worlds’ are made through the practices, relationships and meanings of those who inhabit them. McGuire's (2008) concept of lived religion is also useful because it directs attention away from prescribed systems of belief towards what people actually do and experience in everyday life. Therefore, emphasis on that spirituality is not necessarily experienced through formal doctrine. It can emerge through everyday relationships, objects, practices and experiences.
The figure of the witch also represents the outsider, of which has become personally significant. I grew up working class and was underestimated because of my poor educational beginnings. I subsequently entered Higher Education, developed a professional career and as a gay man, have experienced being different from expectations in other ways. I don’t claim that my experience is equivalent to the historical persecution of people labelled as witches, but I can understand why the broader archetype of the outsider resonates. The witch has repeatedly been used in popular culture to represent someone who does not quite fit. Perhaps that is why the figure endures, I saw something of myself in these fictional witches long before I consciously recognised it.
There is also something compelling about the historical image of the witch as someone who exists outside established systems of authority. Historically, witches have often been portrayed as threatening because they represented alternative forms of knowledge and power. Whether healers, midwives, herbalists or simply women and sometimes men who refused to conform, they occupied a space that challenged accepted authority. Popular culture has frequently simplified that history into familiar tropes of good versus evil, but traces of those deeper narratives remain visible beneath the surface. I sometimes wonder whether this explains another aspect of my lifelong fascination.
Beyond special visual effectsWhat strikes me most now is that, despite decades of consuming witch-themed media, none of these stories ever persuaded me that I wanted to become a witch. They simply kept returning, decade after decade, almost like familiar companions. That is why Agatha All Along proved so unexpected. At first glance it might be appear that Agatha All Along made me interested in witchcraft (Scott, 2025). It wasn’t the first witch story I had loved, it was the first one that made me pause and ask why. As I reflected on that question, I realised something that surprised me. In reality, for over thirty years, I had quietly been collecting fragments of what might be described as a “witch identity” without ever consciously assembling them. Collecting crystals and books I bought and gifted to me on shelves, and oracle cards tucked away in my drawers. A lifelong fascination with forests and autumn, and an attraction to rituals, symbolism, community, healing, mystery and nature. Later came Movement Medicine, interest in shamanism and shamanic practices, vision boards, and countless walks through local woodlands that gradually became places of reflection rather than simply somewhere to exercise. Also thinking about healing, and frequently reflecting and writing in those previous blog posts, and now examining why I feel drawn to the witch figure. None of those interests arrived because of Agatha All Along, they were already there. The series simply gave them somewhere to belong. That, I think, is the beginning of the story I really want to tell.
When Agatha All Along arrived in September 2024, I was ready for it. Leaning heavily into other similar TV shows I enjoyed, it has been clearly designed around the current fourth-wave, feminist-informed, witchcraft-themed trends and tropes of recent years (Trammell 2020, Schubart 2019, Maclaran 2015). Borrowing a popular maiden, mother, crone concept and aesthetic. The show brought together many of the things I already loved: mystery, horror, fantasy, humour, beautiful production design, music, character development, witchcraft and a journey through an enchanted landscape. It felt to me like The Goonies meets The Craft, with a little Interstellar, Saw and Ghost Whisperer thrown in. However, what surprised me most was not the quality of the production, although the performances, music, writing and practical sets were exceptional. Nor was it simply that the series centered entirely on witches. I had watched countless witch-themed films and television series throughout my life. But its biggest achievement was making witchcraft feel approachable. It certainly contained fantasy and spectacle – this is Marvel after all. But it didn’t rely entirely upon spectacular Computer-Generated Imagery. Although sometimes rendered as caricature, alongside the magical effects were recognisable practices and symbols: chanting, covens, elemental associations, moon phases, ritual, divination, potion-making, sacred spaces, tarot and specialist witches and forms of magical practice, that balance somehow mattered. Rather than presenting witchcraft as something impossibly distant, the series quietly grounds much of its visual language in practices that feel recognisable. Although these are naturally dramatised for TV and should never be mistaken for documentaries, they nevertheless create a sense that aspects of what is being shown exist beyond the screen. The fantasy remains and it becomes approachable. Also, perhaps one of the most important distinctions is that Agatha All Along portrays witchcraft as something people do, rather than simply something they believe. That connects strongly with lived religion scholarship where witches gather together, they perform rituals, work with the elements, chant, use objects, heal, collaborate, amongst many other things of course. Berger's (1999) and Magliocco’s (2004) research into contemporary Pagan communities is particularly relevant because witchcraft can operate not simply as a set of magical techniques but as a means of constructing identity, community and belonging. That helps explain why the idea of a coven has remained so attractive to me.
During its release, Agatha All Along generated significant discussion across social media, inspiring fan theories, artwork, musical covers, reaction videos and countless analyses of its symbolism. The Ballad of the Witches’ Road quickly became one of the programme’s defining cultural moments, functioning almost like an authentic folk song that had somehow travelled through generations before finding its way into the Marvel universe. Even outside the series, listeners embraced different arrangements and interpretations, while I found myself replaying it long after the final episode. Like the Road itself, the music seemed to invite participation rather than passive observation.
The programme also succeeds because it avoids reducing witches to a single stereotype. Popular culture has often oscillated between two extremes. Witches are either terrifying villains or glamorous caricatures. Historically, Disney contributed heavily to this image, with witches frequently serving as figures of deception, curses and evil. While those characters remain culturally iconic, they rarely encourage viewers to think beyond fantasy. Agatha All Along broadens that picture considerably. Its witches possess different strengths, personalities and relationships with power. Some specialise in divination, others in protection, healing or elemental practice.
The show’s depiction of Death as a witch particularly resonated with me. Through my own interest in shamanism, I have encountered the idea of death as teacher: not simply something frightening at the end of life, but something that accompanies us throughout it. Agatha All Along’s treatment of Death similarly presents death as part of the natural cycle of existence. I found particularly compelling given my own growing interest in nature-based spirituality and aspects of shamanic thought, where death is often understood not simply as an ending, but as transformation. The final earth trial, with its imagery of burial, emergence and reclaiming what is desired, reinforces that idea of death and rebirth. Again, the show didn’t teach me this, it gave me a symbolic language through which I could think about it.
The series also quietly challenges another familiar assumption. Not every witch is good. Not every witch is evil. Agatha herself exists somewhere between those extremes. Her story continually peels away layers of personality, trauma, ambition, humour and vulnerability, creating a character who is difficult to either condemn or celebrate outright. That ambiguity makes her far more human than the traditional fairy-tale witch. Perhaps that complexity is what makes her memorable. Which is another important reason why the show affected me. The stereotype of the witch is deeply entrenched in popular culture and the human psyche. For centuries, the witch has been constructed as the dangerous woman, the outsider, the seductress, the hag, the healer or the embodiment of supernatural evil. Ronald Hutton’s (2018) work on the historical and contemporary witch figure provides a useful framework here. He identifies several different ways the term “witch” has been understood, including those who use magic for positive purposes, practitioners associated with Pagan religion such as Wicca, people who adopt the witch as a symbol of independence and authority, and the historical image of the harmful supernatural witch. Agatha All Along plays with these traditions rather than presenting one simple version. Agatha herself is deliberately difficult to categorise. She steals witches’ powers to survive. She is a witch and, paradoxically, a witch-killer. She is selfish but occasionally protective; cruel but vulnerable; powerful but increasingly diminished. Kathryn Hahn has described Agatha’s story as a process of losing her youth through the trials, perhaps the overarching maiden, mother crone theme? The character was always moving towards death. In that sense, the Road becomes a cycle of life, decline, death and transformation rather than simply a quest for magical power.
Equally important was the programme’s inclusivity. The introduction of Billy Maximoff, better known to comic readers as Wiccan, felt like a natural continuation of Marvel’s increasingly diverse storytelling. Rather than treating his queer identity as the defining feature of his character, it simply existed alongside his curiosity, compassion and magical development. As a gay man myself, I appreciated seeing that normalisation. Representation matters most when it feels ordinary rather than performative. The series’ recognition through LGBTQ+ awards suggests many viewers felt similarly. My own experience of spiritual circles has similarly found me as an ‘honorary male’ among women, creating an unexpected resonance with Wiccan’s experience alongside Agatha and the other witches.
Within the show, the Witches’ Road becomes a liminal space. The coven moves through a series of trials, each associated with different people, elements, abilities and challenges. The structure of the Witches' Road can also be read through the anthropological concept of the rite of passage. Van Gennep (1960) identified separation, transition and incorporation as recurring elements of such processes, while Turner (1969) subsequently developed the concept of liminality to describe the transformative space between established states of identity. The Road isn’t simply somewhere the characters travel, it changes them. One of the cleverest aspects of the programme, however, is something I only recognised much later. The Witches’ Road functions on two levels simultaneously. Within the narrative it is a mystical place of trials and transformation. Outside the narrative it becomes a metaphor. Each trial asks participants to confront fear, grief, identity, relationships and self-understanding before they are allowed to continue. Although presented through fantasy, these experiences resemble the kinds of symbolic journeys found throughout mythology, pilgrimage traditions and many contemporary wellbeing practices. The Road is magical but it is also deeply human. That was the moment everything shifted for me. I realised I wasn’t simply watching fictional witches overcome impossible challenges. I was watching a story about growth, healing, community, and finding the courage to keep walking, even when the destination remains uncertain. Perhaps that explains why Agatha All Along affected me so profoundly. The TV series didn’t teach me witchcraft it taught me permission. Permission to slow down, to become curious with my spirituality again, to reconnect with nature, to explore ritual without embarrassment, to wonder whether the interests I had quietly carried throughout my life were worth taking seriously. It didn’t give me new interests, it legitimised old ones. Looking back now I think that is the programme’s greatest achievement. Not that it persuaded me to explore witchcraft or become a witch, which wasn't my intention anyway. But that it quietly reminded me that curiosity itself can be a perfectly valid place to begin. A completely fantastical portrayal can be entertaining but difficult to translate into curiosity about real life. Agatha All Along repeatedly gave me things I could actually go away and investigate. It became less an instruction manual and more an invitation.
From spectatorship to exploration: walking my own Witches’ RoadOnce the series finished, something unexpected happened. I didn’t immediately search for spells or attempt to recreate scenes from the programme. Instead, I began noticing what was already around me. Perhaps that sounds strange, but I genuinely believe Agatha All Along didn’t introduce anything entirely new into my life. Rather, it encouraged me to reconnect with interests and experiences that had quietly accumulated over many years. I found myself opening books that had sat unread on my shelves. Using oracle cards more deeply that had long remained tucked away. Handling crystals that had fascinated me since childhood. Pondering why I had Tibetan bells and a wooden shamanic rattle that had gathered dust. None of these objects suddenly became magical because of a TV series. They simply became meaningful again and that distinction feels important. The show didn’t persuade me to believe anything, it encouraged me to become curious. Curiosity, I have come to realise is a surprisingly powerful thing. Rather than rushing towards certainty or adopting an identity, I simply allowed myself to explore. Some evenings that meant sitting quietly with oracle cards. Others involved reading books on contemporary shamanism or witchcraft. Sometimes it meant nothing more than walking through woodland with a heightened awareness of the changing seasons, textures, sounds and wildlife around me. The more I slowed down the more I noticed. One of the most unexpected consequences has been my changing relationship with nature. I’ve always enjoyed woodlands, but over the past year they have become something altogether different. Places that once served as pleasant walking routes have gradually become spaces of reflection. I notice individual trees, the changing colours of leaves, the movement of birds, the textures of bark and stone, the shifting atmosphere as one season quietly gives way to another. When I first moved to north Nottinghamshire in 2018, I remember thinking that the nearby woodland might become significant one day. I had no idea how true that would become. Local woodlands and other green spaces have gradually become places I now think of as sacred, not in a religious sense, but in the way they consistently offer perspective, calm and restoration. That growing connection has also made me more emotionally invested in the natural world itself.
Looking back, I can also see that this shift extends beyond witchcraft alone. For several years I have explored practices grounded in shamanic traditions, initially through working with animal spirit oracle cards at a young age, later Movement Medicine and other workshops focused on embodiment, healing and personal development. Although witchcraft and shamanism are distinct traditions, I tend to place them under the same umbrella. However, I am more aligned to shamanism given I currently and previously experienced those practices. I’m not especially interested in labels, nor do I feel the need to declare myself a witch, a shaman or a member of any particular spiritual tradition. If anything, I feel more comfortable describing myself simply as witchy. That probably says more about my interests than my identity. I remain fascinated by ritual, symbolism, intuition, healing, nature and community, but I have little interest in adopting these practices as an aesthetic or performing them for appearance’s sake. This work, however I eventually define it, feels sacred rather than fashionable. That distinction matters enormously to me. One observation that has stayed with me throughout this journey comes from The Craft. Fairuza Balk once reflected that films about witchcraft often distort something she regarded as deeply sacred in order to make it more commercially appealing. I think there is wisdom in that observation. Popular culture frequently encourages us to admire witches. It doesn’t always encourage us to understand them.
The Witches’ Road reminded me of spiritual visualisation and shamanic journeying and other reflective practices where an individual temporarily steps away from ordinary life and enters a different psychological or symbolic space. Perhaps the most enjoyable example of this came from an idea inspired directly by The Witches’ Road. I began imagining my own real-world version of the Witches’ Road, using local woods and the four elements as inspiration for seasonal trials. I asked ChatGPT to help me construct these. That might sound slightly ridiculous, but it illustrates the transition perfectly. I was no longer simply watching the programme, I was playing with its ideas, adapting them and making meaning from them, which can be viewed as exploratory learning. The result wasn’t an attempt to recreate Marvel. It became an invitation to explore my own landscape differently. Likewise, creating a Lego version of the Witches’ Road with my husband, beginning a handwritten grimoire type book for collecting meaningful rituals and gradually building a small personal library, all became expressions of curiosity rather than belief.
The Road had quietly left Disney, it had become my own. That, perhaps, is the programme’s most unexpected legacy. It transformed passive entertainment into active participation. Not through grand gestures, but through countless small ones. As I reflect on the past year, I also realise something else. As I have deeply reflected on my adult life (Scott, 2026), I have directed enormous energy towards education, career progression and professional achievement, and I’m incredibly proud of that journey. Growing up working class, education transformed my life. It gave me opportunities I could never have imagined. But achievement also has a habit of becoming all-consuming. There comes a point where another qualification, another project or another promotion no longer answers the questions that begin quietly emerging underneath. Who am I when I’m not working? What nourishes me? Where do I experience genuine peace? Those questions have become increasingly important. Perhaps that is why this exploration feels so timely. Rather than replacing my professional identity, it complements it. It reminds me that personal development isn’t solely intellectual. Sometimes it is embodied, emotional, simply involves standing beneath trees, listening to birdsong and allowing yourself to remember that you are part of something much larger than your own ambitions. The more I reflect on this journey, the less I think it is really about witchcraft at all. It is about paying attention to nature, intuition, creativity, community, to those quiet parts of ourselves that modern life often encourages us to ignore. Perhaps that has always been my real Witches’ Road. I just didn’t recognise it until now.
This is where I also think my professional life unexpectedly becomes relevant. I’ve spent my career working in education and learning technology, thinking about engagement, motivation, accessibility, participation and how people move from curiosity towards meaningful learning. That is exactly what happened to me. The curriculum just happened to be Agatha All Along. The show didn’t teach me how to become a witch. Instead, it made existing interests feel sufficiently accessible to investigate further. I started using books and crystals I had owned for years. I began working with oracle cards again and bought the show’s official tarot deck, along with other related transmedia products. I became more attentive to local woods and nature. I started looking for practitioners and workshops locally. It reignited my interest in healing, ritual, shamanism and the relationship between humans and the natural world. In other words, I moved from consumption towards active exploration. That is what makes this experience really interesting to me. It’s about I engaged and was learning through TV media. Therefore, whilst I have enjoyed witchy TV shows and films prior to Agatha All Along, it clearly gave me permissions of sorts to nudge and connect me back into my spiritual interests and identity. Agatha All Along didn't begin this, it was: lifelong curiosity, media catalyst, exploratory learning and identity development.
As I have reflected on this journey over the past two years, I have become increasingly convinced that Agatha All Along succeeded not because it perfectly represents contemporary witchcraft, no television series ever could, but because it understands something much more important. Throughout its key story to develop and move forward the trilogy and character arch narratives, it someone conveyed and understood curiosity. The series never asks its audience to believe in magic, instead, it quietly encourages viewers, in my case, to ask questions. For some viewers, those questions will end when the credits roll. For others, they may become the beginning of an entirely different journey. I suspect that is exactly what happened to me. I wasn’t inspired because the programme convinced me witches were real. I was inspired because it reminded me that wonder and curiosity is still possible.
We often think stories entertain us, but sometimes they do something much deeper. They provide language for experiences we have not yet been able to articulate. They reveal patterns that have quietly existed beneath our lives for years. They help us recognise parts of ourselves that were already waiting patiently to be discovered. Looking back now, I don’t think Agatha All Along changed who I am. It revealed who I had quietly been becoming all along. That may sound dramatic but I genuinely believe it. For over thirty years, I had been collecting fragments without ever consciously assembling them. Each interest sat independently never quite forming a complete picture. Then one television series unexpectedly connected the dots. It didn’t tell me what to believe. It simply gave those interests somewhere to belong. Perhaps that is why the Witches’ Road resonates so strongly with me. Within the programme it represents a magical journey. Outside the programme, I have come to see it as something much more universal. Every one of us walks our own road; we encounter different trials lose parts of ourselves, rediscover others. Sometimes we walk alongside companions or continue alone. Often we have little idea where the path is leading, yet we keep walking. The destination matters less than the person we become while travelling. That idea feels far older than Marvel. Perhaps that is why it speaks so powerfully. People often ask whether TV can genuinely influence our lives; life imitates art? I think it can. Not because it tells us what to think. But because it occasionally gives us permission to explore thoughts we were already carrying.
Whether that exploration ultimately leads someone towards contemporary witchcraft, shamanic practice, mindfulness, environmental awareness, creative expression or simply a greater appreciation of the changing seasons almost feels secondary. The important thing is that it encourages exploration. Curiosity has always been the beginning of learning. Still allowing the questions to unfold naturally rather than rushing towards answers. That feels like the most honest place to be. It turned out that this isn’t really about Agatha All Along, it’s about what good stories do to people. Sometimes they entertain us. Sometimes they stay with us. And, every so often, they quietly arrive at exactly the right moment in our lives, giving us permission to reconnect with parts of ourselves that were always there, waiting patiently to be noticed. Perhaps that has been my journey all along.
This isn’t the end of the roadWhat I did find surprising in my reflections was realising how closely this experience mirrors my professional life. For 16+ years I have worked in education and digital pedagogy, studying how people become motivated to learn, how different media encourage participation, and how curiosity develops into sustained practice. For example, through my full-time work, broadly I have been asking and studying questions like how do people become interested? how do people engage? what motivates deeper learning? how does technology encourage participation? and how does curiosity become practice? The key audience being teachers/lecturers and students. These are the questions I have been answering throughout my career and I just happen to be my own case study in this. Which can be connected to autoethnography, reflective practice and learning theory. Viewed through this lens, I feel that Agatha All Along becomes an example of informal learning. The series never attempted to teach witchcraft directly, instead it reduced the perceived distance between fantasy and reality.
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