Basic Witches: How to Summon Success, Banish Drama, and Raise Hell with Your Coven

Conjure more confidence, banish toxic energy, and embrace your inner witch with this funny, feminist guide to self-care and self-empowerment.

Want to feel terrifyingly beautiful? Wear the right color of eye shadow to project otherworldly glamour. Need to exorcise a toxic friendship? Repeat the proper incantation and make it disappear. Want to increase your energy? Whip up a tasty herbal “potion” to rev up your stamina.

In Basic Witches, DIY projects, rituals, and spells—along with fun historical sidebars—summon the best trends of the modern witchy lifestyle and the time-trusted traditions of the hell-raising women of the past. With humor, heart, and a hip sensibility, Jaya Saxena and Jess Zimmerman dispense witchy wisdom for the curious, the cynical, and anyone who could use a magical boost.

• Turn spells, rituals, potions, talismans, and other magical traditions into playful tools of modern life for building confidence, setting intentions, practicing self-care, and embracing your own power
• Make peace with your body, counter impostor syndrome, navigate personal demons, and let go of relationships and expectations that bring you down
• Explore rituals for deepening friendships, practicing vulnerability, dating, talking about sex, understanding consent, and creating healthier connections with the people in your life
• Experiment with crystals, herbal potions, tea-leaf reading, incantations, DIY projects, beauty glamours, and other accessible practices, alongside entertaining sidebars about witches in history and pop culture
• A funny, irreverent gift for curious witches and self-care skeptics

Cast spells, perform rituals, strengthen friendships, and conjure the life you actually want.

Jaya Saxena is the co-author of Basic Witches (Quirk, 2017) and a staff writer at Eater. Her work has appeared in many outlets, including the New York Times, Buzzfeed, GQ, ELLE, Electric Literature, Catapult, the Daily Dot, The Toast, and more. She lives in New York City with her partner.

Jess Zimmerman is the editor-in-chief of Electric Literature. Her writing has been published in the Guardian, the New Republic, the Washington Post, Hazlitt, Vice, Eater, and others.