My friend Peg Kay Aloi, a modern practicing witch, has two articles out on the “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina." In the first one, on Arts Fuse, she reviews the third season of the show and discusses the importance of the season's plot arc (spoilers aplenty).
Also at the end of Season Two, Sabrina’s Aunt Zelda (the excellent Miranda Otto) renounced her marriage to Faustus, who turned out to be a misogynist patriarch. The coven of Satanic witches who preside over the shadow side of Greendale are a sort of elite society with their own boarding school. The daytime Greendale is all Scooby-Doo high school hijinks (with some intersectional activism and coming-of-age drama thrown in). Because of her duel nature, witch and mortal, Sabrina straddles these worlds. In Season One, her Sweet Sixteen Party was also her Dark Baptism, the ritual when witches must proclaim their allegiance to the Dark Lord. The Satanic antics are all rather arch and fantastical (Aunt Zelda’s smiling “Praise Satan” is now a popular meme), making this all rather fun and entertaining.
In her second piece, for Refinery 29, Peg compares the show's TV hocus-pocus to modern, real-world witchcraft.
RIGHT: Sex can be part of witches’ magical workings
The show’s emphasis on sexuality keeps it firmly in the “adult” genre while also portraying a fascinating yet sometimes controversial aspect of modern witchcraft. Many of the seasonal holidays of Wicca have their origins in ancient rites performed by Europeans — including the rather erotic ritual of Lupercalia seen previously in Season 2, episode 3.
Lupercalia is a Roman fertility festival that falls between Imbolc (February 2) and February 14, hence the show’s dichotomy between the Lupercalia rites and the Valentine’s Dance at the high school.
On the whole, CAOS is often impressively accurate in the way it handles the folklore and background of Wicca and its rituals. But, of course, the supernatural occurrences are not realistic.
