Witch, Please

The latest trend in spirituality might just cast a spell on you. Is there really something behind all the fuss about ‘ritual magick’, or is it all just hocus pocus?

- Coco Marett

“Witches don’t burn, honey,” Sabrina Villard, a modern day shaman, tells me as we’re standing in a ceremony room inside her chic apartment on Robinson Road in Hong Kong’s exclusive MidLevels district. “We are not going anywhere.”

As a baby, Villard took her first steps in the Sahara desert, just south of Algeria, holding the hand of her great grandmother, a Bedouin shaman who lived to be 123 years old. It was from her that Villard inherited her craft. “She is still with me every day, guiding me,” Villard tells me as she looks fondly at an altar adorned with candles, flowers and a faded photo of her great-grandmother.

By day, Villard is the project manager for AsiaPacific at one of the world’s biggest luxury fashion houses. By night, she guides clients on shamanic journeys, straddling the living and spiritual realms, and if some people might think that’s a little woowoo, it turns out that there are a growing number of others who are tapping into ancient practices, witchcraft included, as a means to navigate and find balance in an everchanging world. And Villard is among those who are approaching spirituality through a more modern lens.

“The traditional definition of a shaman is a seer in the dark,” she says. “I don’t know about anyone’s life when they come to me. I am shown what you are ready to see by your spirit guides, ancestors and your own memories. I have a conversation with your soul.”