All along the Witches’ Road : Autorité rituelle et régimes de preuve dans la sorcellerie contemporaine

Abstract

This article examines the recomposition of ritual authority in contemporary witchcraft when it must become visible, circulate, and gain recognition in digital environments. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Québec (2013–2016) and an analytical reading of the series Agatha All Along, it proposes the concept of ‘regime of proof’ to capture how authenticity is now produced at the intersection of practice scenes (ritual circles, covens, workshops) and mediation infrastructures (platforms, algorithms, shareable formats). The series functions as a narrative interface: it condenses operations of certification, debt, and cost that ethnography detects in practitioners’ accounts. Three distinct regimes of proof, oppositional, sensory, narrative, emerge from interviews and reveal how platforms redistribute the conditions under which a magical practice becomes credible, shareable, or monetizable.