The Witch Trials: Echoes of the Witch Wound

A Dead Good Festival Event

Sunday 11th October
19:00 – 20:30
Online Lecture · £15
 

Join Tree Carr  author, Death Doula, transpersonal therapist and High Priestess Witch,  for a haunting exploration of one of the darkest chapters in British history: the witch trials.

Between the 16th and 18th centuries, thousands of people across the British Isles were accused of witchcraft, subjected to persecution and, in many cases, executed. The overwhelming majority were women.

Tree explores the social, religious, political and psychological forces that fuelled the witch hunts. Ranging  from misogyny and religious extremism to class prejudice, ableism, fear of difference and state-sanctioned violence.

Far from being simply a story of superstition and the supernatural, the witch hunts reveal what can happen when fear, power and scapegoating converge.

Tree will explore how those accused were often people living at the margins of their communities: healers, midwives, herbalists, widows, outsiders and those who challenged accepted social roles. As well as the  mechanisms of accusation and betrayal, the role of community suspicion, and the systems that allowed persecution to become institutionalised.

From King James VI’s fascination with demonology to the intimate stories of those accused, this lecture brings the human reality of the witch trials into focus.

The Witch Wound

What happens when generations of people are taught to fear the feminine, the different, the intuitive. 

The idea of the “witch wound” is the cultural memory of persecution and the ways its echoes may continue to shape our relationship with power, identity, spirituality, women’s voices and those who exist outside the accepted norm.

This is an invitation to look backwards in order to ask questions about what we currently navigate in 2026.

You can read our ticket terms and conditions here. 

ABOUT YOUR GUIDE

TREE CARR

Tree is a published author, TEDx speaker, transpersonal psychology practitioner, Death Doula and High Priestess Witch whose work explores dreams, death, altered states of consciousness, creativity, ritual and meaning-making.

For more than three decades, Tree has worked at the intersection of mysticism, psychology, storytelling and the arts.

She is a graduate of Alef Trust’s programme in Psychedelics, Altered States & Transpersonal Psychology and holds a Crossfields Institute Diploma in The Living Well Dying Well Person-Centred Approach to Death & Dying. She has also undertaken studies in ecology, spirituality, the paranormal, mediumship and creativity.

Tree teaches dreamwork, lucid dreaming and consciousness studies at the College of Psychic Studies in London and has lectured and facilitated workshops for organisations and institutions including Tate Modern, the Freud Museum, the Barbican, Breaking Convention, the Psychedelic Society UK, the Royal College of Art and New York University.

She is the author of eleven publications exploring dreams, magic, death, culture, creativity and consciousness, including Dreamwork, A Spell A Day, The Witch’s Cat Tarot, Technomancy, Into the Pines and Accused! The Witch Trials of Britain.

As a Death Doula, Tree works with people around death, dying and grief. As a transpersonal practitioner, she explores altered states, dreams and consciousness, while her work as a High Priestess Witch encompasses ritual, ceremony and esoteric practice.

Her work has appeared across cultural and media platforms including The Guardian, The New York Times, The Sunday Times, Stylist, VICE, Grazia, ES Magazine and Sky History.

Step into the shadows of history. Listen for the voices that were silenced. And explore the echoes that remain.