By Romy de Vos and William Arfman – Friday the 28th of November 2025. As we approach the ritual site, the waxing gibbous moon casts a faint reflection of light over the dark forest on the hilltop. The low rumble of thunderclouds is just about audible as a backdrop to the excited whispers of a small crowd that has gathered around a single torch in the middle of an open patch of grass. We are here for a so-called Witches’ Night. Later in the evening, we will join a protest march against gender-based violence through the city of Wageningen, but now we are here at the Arboretum Belmonte Park to attend a reclamation ritual in honour of those who were persecuted, tortured and executed on accusations of witchcraft in the early-modern period.
As researchers interested in how early-modern witch-hunts are remembered today, we have come across many memorials and artistic (re-)imaginings for those who were targeted by these witch-hunts. Still, tonight’s ritual event and its location took us by surprise. We had not encountered such a clear link between activism and rituality before, and despite having worked on this topic for some years now, neither of us had heard of this particular memorial. We were curious to see it, but even now, supposedly standing right beside it, the darkness of the trees obscured any sight of it.
“There are a lot of beautiful beings present tonight,” a young woman says, stepping into the light of the torch. The crowd of participants quiets down in curious anticipation. Many have brought candles, as the flyer for tonight’s event suggested. We notice that one woman is dressed as a storybook witch; with a pointed hat, long robes, and a broomstick decorated with fairy lights. The woman opening the ritual welcomes us and tells us that over the past two years, she has hosted several seasonal rituals at her home, and that she likes to start them off by giving thanks to the earth and the elements. Holding a bundle of mugwort into the flames of the torch, she explains that she will now cast a circle – a cauldron if you will – to which we will be adding various ingredients throughout the ritual, and within which we will journey through time to meet the people who were targeted by the witch hunts; to reclaim their voices. After she walks the four cardinal directions in typical neo-pagan tradition, she tells us the cauldron is now “ready for some cooking”.
Another young woman joins her in the light of the torch. She introduces herself as a medicine woman and invites us to join her in a resurrection ritual. “Tonight, we are going to reclaim the voices of our ancestors,” she says. “The voices of our ancestors who were unable to speak. Who needed to stay silent because they were suppressed because of the witch-hunts”. She invites us to make a stirring motion with our hands, to stir the cauldron counter clockwise into the past. She explains that this is not symbolic. Within this cauldron, we really are traveling back in time. The slightly confused look on some people’s faces tells us not everyone in attendance is familiar with these types of rituals. Nevertheless, everyone seems to do their best to take an active part in this collective experience.
We have now arrived at the most important part of the ritual. Having travelled several centuries back in time, we will meet the people who were tried and executed as witches in the most gruesome ways imaginable. The woman leading this part of the ritual invites us to walk towards the monument – which we still cannot see – and explains it consists of a spiral of wooden poles with an oak tree in its centre. Each of the wooden poles is inscribed with the name of a victim of the witch-hunts, when known, or otherwise with the words woman, man, or child. Following our intuition, she asks us to seek a connection with one of them. In making contact with this person, we may get a sense of what has been lost or suppressed between this time and our own.
The candles in the hands of the fifty-or-so people joining the ritual slowly fill the monument with light as we each try to find someone to connect with. Many people seek a physical connection too, resting their hands or foreheads against the wooden poles until, back by the torch, the woman leading the ritual plays a drum, signalling for us all to come back into the cauldron.
“Thank you all for doing this,” she says, smiling. “Connecting with the people who didn’t have a voice at that time. Now it is up to us to be their voice. To reclaim what was lost back then”. She asks us to take a moment to think about a word or a statement that represents what we felt was being communicated to us in the monument. Then, on the count of three, she asks us to shout it into the cauldron, so we may take it with us as we travel back to our own time. With so many people shouting different things all at once, it is difficult to make out exactly what is being reclaimed, but the passion and sincerity in the voices of the participants make this moment feel very powerful.
As we are asked to reverse the earlier stirring motion to return ourselves to our own time, a question presents itself to the both of us: The ritual felt powerful, but how was it connected to the purpose of the protests later tonight? How do these two halves of this Witches’ Night fit together? In part two, we turn to these questions and explore what answers the rest of the night’s fieldwork had to offer.
Read more about the monument here: https://www.beeldenopdeberg.nl/archief/editie-12-2024/femke-herregraven/
Romy de Vos is an alumnus of the master’s programme Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. William Arfman is a sociologist of religion at Tilburg University, his research focuses on contemporary ritual practices in unexpected places. Romy and William are founding members of research group HEFT (Heritage of the witch-hunts: Echoes of Femicide and Trauma).