Those wonderful witches are about to gather in York’s ancient streets again – and everyone is welcome.
This weekend sees the third Witches Coven event since it was dreamed up by Camelia Andrei and Vincent Roberts of the Hocus Pocus Tiny Hotel in 2023.
Witches of all ages and genders are invited to congregate outside the hotel in Patrick Pool at 5.30pm on Saturday (28 June) for the free event.
The rules are:
- Get dressed for the occasion (the darker the better).
- Play nicely with all other witches.
- Use your powers, only if necessary.
Award-winning guide Mad Alice will be there – and you can pre-book tours of the unique hotel, with spooky stories about each room, on her website. These take place before the main event at 3pm, 330pm, 4pm, 4:30pm, and are ticket only.
Then at 6pm, the magic portal opens. Everyone is invited to step through it and be blessed with ‘holy water’ from Mother Shipton’s Cave.
This year, there’s also a street hypnotist at the coven, wielding his own kind of mind magic.
An illustrator will be doing gothic portraits of people at the gathering. There’s also guided meditation session “to align the energies, to calm down the crowd, so we’re all on the same wavelength,” Camelia said.
Camelia’s daughter Sophia, a trained opera singer, will be singing show tunes and arias.
The winners of the Best Dressed Witch will then be judged – with lots of great prizes up for grabs from the coven sponsors, which include York shops the Potions Cauldron and the The Gothelie Station on Goodramgate.
Who knew that witches ate pizza and chocoate? Both are on offer during the coven – The Wizard’s Chocolate from Heroes Journey, and Cresci are creating a special magical pizza for the night.
At the end of all this fun and games, it’s over to Mad Alice again for a special spellbinding tour of York, featuring witches, ghosts and history. It will call at, among other places, Barley Hall and York Minster.
Camelia told YorkMix: “The Witches Coven is all about people who are having an awakening, and have this awareness about being on this planet while trying to do their best to create magic in their life. Because if we don’t believe in magic, then magic doesn’t happen.
“We are all of us witches in our souls, I think. We just need to learn how to activate that magic that lies within us.”