Medieval mania

National | Salem's celebrated witches are more in vogue than ever | Joe Maxwell

Theresa Pendragon's long chalky face and blood-red lips tense when she is asked how she got her interesting name. But she warms up when offered $30 for a 15-minute tarot card reading. Mrs. Pendragon runs Salem, Mass.'s famed Crow Haven Corner, a witch shop founded and still owned by Laurie Cabot, the "Official Witch of Salem." A Cabot disciple, Mrs. Pendragon raises her white brow in therapeutic kindness, her face framed by long tar-black hair and dangling blue-jay earrings.

"I'm sorry about earlier," she coos, saying she was in a hurry with something; her husband, she now reveals, is also a witch, and they draw their name from one of his earlier lives as European royalty.

A black shawl sags on her witch's shoulders as she pulls shut a beaded curtain that separates her trinket-filled back room from the outer store, in which the faint sound of synthesized Celtic music can still be heard and potions, pentagrams, and "Be Witched" bumper stickers can be purchased. Mrs. Pendragon lays tarot cards on a small round table. "Our religion pre-dates Christianity," she boasts, explaining that the tarot cards are also ancient in origin, a predecessor of the current standard deck of 52. Long before Christ, humans worshiped and used the powers of the earth, she notes.