Does Mayfair Witches Follow Magical Traditions?

In the books, Suzanne calls up Lasher through a circle of stones. Tongayi Chirisa, who plays Ciprien Grieve, also found it helpful to educate himself on metaphysical knowledge. His character is gifted with psychometry, which is a talent for reading objects through touch, but he took a dive into the devilry of his onscreen nemesis. 

“From that standpoint, and me being a fan of mythology and religion, you look at Lasher, what his impact was, and how he was conjured up,” Chirisa says. “You start to ask the questions ‘what dimension is he from’ and ‘what’s his mission,’ because they have similar throughlines. These things don’t just come for the fun of it. If you conjure something up, there’s an end goal for the entity. Just trying to discover what that is, and what it takes to take it out or send it back to its other world, was some of the research that I did.”

On the page, Rice’s witch family had a virtual underworld archive in the main floor library. Rowan inherits her mother Deirdre Mayfair’s (Annabeth Gish) house in episode 4. In The Witching Hour, Rowan’s ancestor Mary Beth Mayfair had crates of books, “including obscure texts in German and French having to do with black magic,” brought to the house in New Orleans. She could also “make doors open and close without touching them.” Her Irish “servants spoke often of Mary Beth going down to the French Quarter to consult with the voodooiennes and of having an altar at which she worshiped the devil.”

The novels are mainly set in New Orleans, but the Mayfair family’s pact with Lasher goes back to the 17th century Scottish witch burnt at the stake. “Rice created and manifested a totally new tradition for Mayfair Witches,” says Rebecca Halladay, an occult writer, scholar, and witch. “She derived aspects of many magickal traditions available throughout the generations, allowing them to all evolve.

The series’ creative team had to parse a diverse range of translations. “There’s a lot of Latin in the book, and we went to a Latin professor for a little lesson on things like, “What is the case for this?” And how do you call a demon out, and so on,” says Esta Spelling.

To serious practitioners, linguistic detail is a potent part of the potion. “There is power in the usage of ‘Dead Languages,” says Halladay. “It is the intense energy to study and implement them into spell casting. Rice’s use of Latin throughout the novels may be for consistency when working evocations to call upon Lasher. When an entity is conjured throughout the centuries, continuation of language would make evocations easier to maintain power and fluidity.”