Every Witch Has Magical Hair—And There’s a Reason Why

What is a witch without her hair? Winifred Sanderson of Hocus Pocus wouldn’t be the same without her crimson bird-nest bouffant. It is hard to conjure American Horror Story: Coven’s Voodoo priestess Marie Laveau without the waist-grazing braids. In The Craft, Nancy Downs wears her rebellious, jet-black bob like it’s armor. And Cher’s electrified curls in The Witches of Eastwick? They are an inextricable part of her character’s descent into magic. A witch is defined by her hair—it’s her essence, a story carefully woven into every strand.

In a sea of pop culture witches, few have enchanted the public quite like the Owen sisters in 1998’s Practical Magic. Gillian (Nicole Kidman) and Sally (Sandra Bullock) illustrious manes become scene-stealing side characters. It is impossible to ignore how shiny, thick, and otherworldly their hair look, keeping us up at night with rosemary oil seeping into our scalps, wondering how a woman could look that good. While the precise hand of stylist Rodolfo Valentin certainly had something to do with it (let this free you; it was not, in fact, all-natural), the Owen sister’s carefree tresses go deeper than great on-set hair and makeup.

“[Hair] is how you know a witch when you see her, in ancient stories or images from the early modern period, their wild, flowing locks,” says Elizabeth Ann Pollard, professor of History at San Diego State University, who specializes in depictions of witches over time. “There is a great deal of writing that describes in vivid detail the imagining of what a witch might look like: she will wear dark clothing or nothing at all, she has bare feet, her hair is flying wildly all over the place, she will be pale, her fingernails are disgusting and scraggly, her teeth are nasty.”

For witches across historical texts and now, pop culture, hair is never just hair. It is a tool of seduction, a symbol of her inner chaos or control, a conduit of power, sexuality, and freedom. You can learn so much from hair alone. Look at Suki Ridgemont (Michelle Pfeiffer) in The Witches of Eastwick, transforming from demure to dangerous as her hair grows bigger and wilder. Or Samantha Stephens (Bewitched) with her tidy ‘60s housewife bob, standing in stark contrast to her mother Endora’s towering red beehive and electric blue eyeshadow as she tries to coax her daughter back to witchcraft.

“Witches are the projections of the fears and the longings of any given time and place,” says Pollard. The way that witches look reflects those same fears, a physical manifestation of our anxieties.

The Witches of Eastwick came out during the height of Satanic panic, a time when people were truly afraid of devil-worshipping cults. It feels fitting that the witches in this 1987 film, played by Cher, Susan Sarandon, and Michelle Pfeiffer, would all be devil-worshiping women who have strayed from the righteous path; they are widows and horny divorcees rather than wives and mothers.

The ’90s brought The Craft and its witches, clad in thick eyeliner, black lipstick, and box-dyed hair. At a time of growing youth rebellion, of goths and grunge music, these witches wore their defiance on their bodies, an unapologetic revolt against societal norms. As their powers grow, their looks become more intense—hair becomes a literal and metaphorical extension of their power.

Despite the witch’s prevalence, not all depictions are created equal. “There is a real problem with how white and European depictions of witches tend to be in modern pop culture, often neglecting the complex picture from the past, women like Tituba from Salem or someone like Medea from Colchis in modern Georgia on the Black Sea,” says Pollard.

“You very rarely see black witches,” adds Aramide Tinubu, TV Critic for Variety. “We very rarely get a spotlight as witches, and when you do, it is often as small side characters. I think of Bonnie Bennett in The Vampire Diaries, and even then…she is a beautiful woman and they have her hair looking crazy because there were no black hair or makeup artists on set.”

In the case of American Horror Story’s Marie Laveau (Angela Bassett), she is undoubtedly captivating in the (albeit limited) scenes they give her, but her character can sometimes border on caricature. In real life, Laveau was a herbalist, midwife, and Voodoo practitioner in New Orleans, and Tituba was an enslaved Native American woman (not a Black voodoo practitioner as she is often wrongfully depicted). It feels important to remember that witches are not just fictitious, conical hat-wearing characters. Many were real people who faced real consequences due to their perceived power, and hair was thought to be the root of these powers.

In 1486, the best-selling manual of the Inquisition, “Malleus Maleficarum,” identified witches’ hair as being so full of magical powers that it must be cut (as a safety measure, along with torture ideally). Anyone suspected of witchcraft would have their head shaved in the hopes it would render them powerless and more willing to confess.

“[Witches] have existed throughout history, and they do exist today,” says Pollard. Whether as rootworkers, spiritual community leaders, Wiccans, or hoodoo practitioners, “witch” is a term that has often been used broadly to explain the unexplainable.

“Practical Magic was a happy medium,” says Tinubu, “Something different than the Hocus Pocus kind of cloaked up witches, or The Craft’s very dark and chaotic witches.” Now we have The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Mayfair Witches, Discovery of Witches, and of course, the long-awaited Wicked movie all swirling around the zeitgeist.

In the quaint New England town where Practical Magic is set, witches aren’t swathed in darkness like in The Craft, nor are they campy like in Hocus Pocus. Gillian and Sally love slamming margaritas and wear slinky low-rise skirts. They hail from a long line of powerful witches, yet they are not immune to picking the wrong men (and sometimes killing them). They love a casual claw clip. Witches…they really are just like us.