Wayne State College has numerous religious and spiritual clubs and organizations, but the Witches of the Silver Willow has exposed students to new ideas and ideologies. 

The current club president, Emma Micanek, said the Witches of the Silver Willow was founded by former WSC student Ash Black in the spring of 2021 and meetings began in the fall of 2022. According to the WSC Clubs and Organizations page, Witches of the Silver Willow is a club aimed at providing students with a safe space to explore, experience and educate themselves on spiritualism, Wicca, witchcraft and more. 

“We try to cover other faiths and religions a little bit,” Abby Wieseler, vice president of the Witches of the Silver Willow, said. “It’s just a great place to be able to come together with like-minded people and learn about a culture that may be different from what we’ve grown up with.” 

The club is not exclusive to students interested in practicing witchcraft though. Wieseler said the club is open to and encourages anyone to attend a meeting or two.  

“We’ve had a few different people who are a part of the other religious groups on campus who are like ‘Hey! I wanna learn more about your club. Can I come for a meeting or two?’” Wieseler said. “Anyone is welcome, even people outside of the community.” 

However, the club secretary, Adrian Huff, said not everything is sunshine and roses for the club.  

“We are a welcoming club,” Huff said. “We’ve had problems in the past since we are considered a controversial club with our advisor specifically getting hate emails for the club.” 

Huff said to get information about meeting times and locations, interested students need to seek out club members or officers.  

“It’s just so we can try and keep the rest of our group safe because we don’t really know who is giving the emails to our advisor,” Huff said. 

Meetings cover a variety of topics such as crystals, candlemaking, various cultural histories and more.  

“We will come in and just kind of start off a little bit with catching up and see how everyone is doing,” Wieseler said. “And then we usually get into a PowerPoint that we are going to upload to our Canvas page so anyone can look back on it years in the future.”  

Huff said during the past few meetings, the club has been exploring methods of divination.  

“We’ve talked about tarot cards, pendulums and rune stones, so that kind of thing,” Huff said. “I think it was first semester, near the middle of the semester, we did divination night in the library. I think that was the first major event our club has held in a while. Basically, people could come in, give us like a couple bucks, and we give them a tarot card reading.”  

Huff said in the next few meetings, the club will be covering moonology and astrology, which deal with the phases of the moon, zodiac signs and horoscopes.  

For more information on the Witches of the Silver Willow, students can reach out to one of the club’s officers or to club advisor Becky Zavada.