Season of the Witch: A Psychiatrist's Case for Magic

A provocative call for women to reclaim the intuition, mystery, and transcendence that modern life has trained us to dismiss—from the author of The Anatomy of Anxiety

“Season of the Witch is a bridge between the scientific and the mystical, leading us to embrace the magic that surrounds us. This book will start a movement.”—Laura Lynne Jackson, New York Times bestselling author of Signs

Witch: /wiCH/ noun: Any woman who has reclaimed the intuitive, mystical, and embodied ways of knowing that our culture tries to shame and suppress

We are caught in a crisis of disconnection. The cost of this shows up everywhere: in our bodies, which cry out with digestive issues and chronic conditions; in our relationships, where we’ve lost the communities that once held us; and in our day-to-day, where we feel rudderless, anxious, and incapable of navigating our lives without outsourced advice.

For years, Yale and Columbia-trained psychiatrist Ellen Vora has taken a holistic approach to helping her patients navigate these challenges. But when she herself experienced a shattering loss, she realized that true healing would require what her training had taught her to dismiss.

According to Vora, every woman possesses a natural connection to magic, but our culture teaches us to disavow it. From a young age, we understand the assignment—we learn to perform our rational, linear selves and quietly suppress our mystical side. In Season of the Witch, Vora names these forces and reveals the five practices that can help us reclaim the full spectrum of our intelligence: embodiment, presence, valuing the yin, being open to mystery, and serving the collective.

By engaging with these practices, we become witches: women who walk through the world with a quiet conviction, anchored in our own knowing, trusting that we are whole unto ourselves—women fully alive to mystery. This is what true witchiness looks like: not an escape from reality, but a deeper way of being in it.