Hex and Muse
A podcast for the curious, the creative, and the quietly powerful.
Hex & Muse is a slow-burning exploration of modern mysticism, feminine power, and the spaces where history, art, and ritual entwine.
Hosted by a practicing witch, artist, and seeker, this show isn’t a how-to guide; it’s a breadcrumb trail.
Each episode invites you into a moment of reflection through storytelling, folklore, sacred practices, and the occasional deep-dive into witches in art, culture, and cinema.
From building altars and meeting goddesses, to walking ancestral paths and unearthing forgotten histories; this is a gathering for those who feel the hum of something more beneath the surface of things.
Come as you are.
Take what you need.
And from my altar to yours - welcome.
Hex and Muse
Witches on Screen - From Celluloid Shadows to Cinema’s Spell
From silent trick films to technicolour queens, from broomsticks to suburban sitcoms, from horror’s hysteria to feminist reclamation - cinema has never stopped conjuring the witch.
In this episode of Hex & Muse, we trace her journey through a century of film: the haunted illusions of Georges Méliès, the fevered beauty of Häxan, the vanity of Disney’s mirror-obsessed queen, the domestic rebellion of Bewitched, the dread of Rosemary’s Baby, the velvet defiance of the 90s, and the reflective power of modern cinema.
The witch has worn many faces - monster, muse, scapegoat, saint - but her image on screen tells us more about us than her. Each era projects its fears and fascinations onto her body, revealing what the world loves, hates, and still doesn’t understand about women who refuse to soften.
A cinematic séance for those who love folklore, feminism, and film history - with a touch of candlelight.
Films & Television:
- Le Manoir du Diable (1896), dir. Georges Méliès
- Häxan (1922), dir. Benjamin Christensen
- Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), dir. Walt Disney
- The Wizard of Oz (1939), dir. Victor Fleming
- Bell, Book and Candle (1958), dir. Richard Quine
- Bewitched (1964–1972), created by Sol Saks
- Rosemary’s Baby (1968), dir. Roman Polanski
- Season of the Witch (1972), dir. George A. Romero
- The Exorcist (1973), dir. William Friedkin
- Suspiria (1977), dir. Dario Argento
- The Craft (1996), dir. Andrew Fleming
- Practical Magic (1998), dir. Griffin Dunne
- Charmed (1998–2006), created by Constance M. Burge
- The Witch (2015), dir. Robert Eggers
- The Love Witch (2016), dir. Anna Biller
- American Horror Story: Coven (2013), created by Ryan Murphy & Brad Falchuk
- Motherland: Fort Salem (2020–2022), created by Eliot Laurence
- Suspiria (2018), dir. Luca Guadagnino
- The Wailing (2016), dir. Na Hong-jin
- November (2017), dir. Rainer Sarnet
- Border (2018), dir. Ali Abbasi
📚 Further Reading
Marina Warner – No Go the Bogeyman: Scaring, Lulling, and Making Mock (Oxford, 1998)
Diane Purkiss – The Witch in History (Routledge, 1996)
Ronald Hutton – The Triumph of the Moon (OUP, 1999)
Silvia Federici – Caliban and the Witch (Autonomedia, 2004)
Barbara Creed – The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 1993)
Lucy Johnston – Witches: A History of Misogyny, Feminism and Magic (Laurence King, 2022)
Anna Biller – “Witch, Please: Women, Power, and the Gaze,” Sight & Sound (2017)
Kristen J. Sollée – “The Witch Wave: Pop Culture and the Occult Revival,” The New Inquiry (2018)
Jason Colavito – “The Occult Roots of Cinema,” Journal of Film and History (2015)
Hex & Muse is recorded on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. I pay my deepest respects to their Elders past and present - and to all First Nations people, whose stories and spirits continue to shape this land.
Follow along for more folklore, magic, and mythic musings:
Instagram: @hexandmuse
Website: www.hexandmuse.com
Hex & Muse is a spellbound journal of folklore, magic, art, and the sacred feminine - told through cinematic storytelling and whispered histories.
From my altar to yours… thank you for listening.
