Largest witchcraft festival coming to Croydon. Pic: Graham Nicholls

The largest witchcraft festival in the world is coming to Croydon this Saturday.

Witchfest International will bring thousands of sorcerers and witches together to exchange remedies, buy magic wands and take part in sacred rituals.

Fairfield Halls, the festival venue, will host more than 40 workshops, such as ‘Sacred Shadows – Discovering Inner Ancestors’, ‘Horses, Witches and Satan’ and ‘The Cult of Sacred Prostitutes’.  Visitors will also get the chance to make their own magic wands and watch hypnosis demonstrations.

According to the event planner, the festival features some of the world’s most famous witchcraft authors and experts, such as pagan witch, Tylluan Penry, scheduled to do a keynote speak during the one-day-only event.

According to Cathbodva Clarity, organiser of the festival, Croydon is “a very witchy place” with more witches per square mile than anywhere else known to her. The first and largest Wiccan Association ‘Children of Artemis’ group is also based in the borough.

The festival welcomes non-Pagans and is open to the public from 10am, finishing with a party at the Ashcroft Theatre and Arnhem Gallery for all attendees.

Also scheduled to speak is Professor Ronald Hutton, the UK’s foremost expert on witchcraft and Wicca, and John Belham-Payne, founder of the Doreen Valiente Foundation, a charitable trust that preserves the legacy and artefacts left by Doreen Valiente, who has a blue plaque in Brighton commemorating her as “the mother of modern witchcraft.”

Read more about the festival here and buy tickets for the event here.