Laurie Cabot

Encyclopedia : L : LA : LAU : Laurie Cabot

Laurie Cabot is an American Wiccan high priestess, and was one of the first people to popularize Wicca in the United States. She is the author of such books as The Power of the Witch, and also founded the Cabot Tradition of the Science of Witchcraft and the Witches' League for Public Awareness. In the 1970s, Cabot was declared the "official witch of Salem, Massachusetts", by then-Governor Michael Dukakis, to honor her work with special needs children.

She continues to reside in Salem, where she owns a shop called The Cat, the Crow, and the Crown. Cabot claims to be related to the prominent Boston Brahmin Cabot family. She is perhaps the most high-profile self-proclaimed witch in Massachusetts. She is a part of Salem lore, and a bona-fide local celebrity in that city and throughout Boston's North Shore.

Life and career

Ms. Cabot (born 1933) grew up in California and came back east to New England as a teenager. She maintains that her interest in the occult began in childhood. She developed this interest in Boston as she became a young woman. During the 1950's Cabot worked as a dancer in a nightclub called "The Latin Quarter" in Boston's notorious "Combat Zone" She married twice, with each marriage producing a daughter, Jody Cabot and Penny Cabot, respectively. She chose to raise her daughters as witches, and dressed her younger girl mainly in black when the two would be seen in public. This was during the 1970's and her eccentricities regarding the decisions she made for her daughter attracted some degree of ridicule.

Laurie Cabot opened the first "witch shop" in Salem in the 1970's, as Salem started to become a tourist destination. At present time, there are numerous such shops throughout downtown Salem, but it was Laurie Cabot who was the trailblazer so far as these businesses are concerned. Her shop sold herbs, jewelry, Tarot card decks, and other occult accoutrements. She later relocated her shop to an old gambrel-roofed house on Essex Street. This new shop was named "Crow Haven Corner" and was a very successful. The store is still open, though no longer owned or managed by any member of the Cabot family (formerly, her eldest daughter Jody had operated this shop). Cabot still maintains a shop in Salem, on Pickering Wharf. She is as well-known for her businesses, lectures and books. Laurie Cabot has been a guest on both "The Oprah Winfrey Show" and on Phil Donahue's talk show in the late 1980's.

Incidents and controversies

She is also known for her sometimes controversial behavior. There was a legal situation in the mid 1990's in which Cabot seems to have threatened a friend with a gun. #redirect She garnered more notoriety in 2003 (or 2004) when Salem Police came to her home in order to remove her adolescent grandson--Jody's only child--from the home. #redirect Both incidents were covered by local press. A policeman claimed that during the latter incident Cabot ordered him to look into her eyes, telling him he was cursed once he did.#redirect Cabot denies she ever cursed the policeman, stating that performing harmful witchcraft goes against her public statements regarding wicca, or witchcraft. She has steadily maintained that witchcraft is never meant to be employed to cause harm or destruction.

External links

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.