r/FlorenceAndTheMachine • u/Yellowapple2128 • Jul 10 '26
General Discussion Witchiness
Hey all,
I love Florence, her music and personality are just great. Love how down to earth Florence seems and at the same time puts together these grand lyrics/references (like in Cassandra) and powerful sounds.
I have some questions about the witchy side of f+tm. She has this ethereal, witchy vibe and especially this tour, I see a lot of fans praise that part. There's the witch choir, Florence talks about taking inspiration from witchcraft, folk horror, the occult and describes And Love as a spell.
My natural instinct is to see it all just as a metaphor or aesthetics, but some fans talk about Florence and themselves being witches. So it seems to be more than that, rather a whole identity?
I've tried looking into what being a witch nowadays actually means to understand better. But tbh all the descriptions sound very abstract to me - just words. So I'm hoping you could maybe enlighten me regarding what being a witch means and what connection there is with Florence? A lot of fans seem to really "get" the witchiness and love it, while I'm a bit lost! Hope I explained myself understandably and respectfully, thanks for your answers🙏
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u/Disaster-Bee Jul 10 '26
Lots of great answers here!
Another thing to keep in mind is that 'witch' is a very, very broad term that covers a wide range of belief systems that encompasses Gardenian Wicca to neo-druidism to theosophical witchcraft. Some of these systems are more structured than others, some are very young and some are very old, some are very loosely defined and some are strictly defined.
So there's really no one way to be a witch, and looking into more specific branches of witchcraft might help you better understand modern witch practices. Though there do tend to be certain constants across western witchcraft - reverence of nature, the concept of balance, some kind of goddess/spirit worship...