Laurie Cabot - Life and Career and Possible Inspirations

Life and Career and Possible Inspirations

Laurie Cabot was born Mercedes Elizabeth Kearsey in 1933 in Wewoka, Oklahoma. She grew up in California and came back east to New England as a teenager. She maintains that her interest in the occult began in childhood. She developed this interest in Boston through time she spent as a young woman in the halls of the Boston Public Library.

During the 1950s Cabot worked as a dancer in a Boston nightclub called "The Latin Quarter" owned by Lou Walters (Barbara Walters' father). Cabot was asked by Mr. Walters to open his Las Vegas Latin Quarter which she declined.

Cabot married and divorced twice, with each marriage producing a daughter, Jody Cabot (b. 1963) and Penny Cabot (b. 1965), respectively. Cabot chose to raise her daughters as Witches, and she began appearing in black robes and black eye-makeup in her everyday life. She identifies herself as a Witch, but not as a follower of the modern Wiccan religion, because she practiced Witchcraft before Wicca became a popular movement. The kind of Witchcraft she practices focuses on the Art and Science of Witchcraft. Many of Laurie Cabot's lectures focus on energy, instead of a focus on religious particulars, thus making her brand of the Craft Traditional Witchcraft.

In 1970, television's sitcom witch "Samantha Stephens" of Bewitched visited Salem for a series of episodes, with location filming in the town by the cast and crew. Laurie Cabot opened the town's first "Witch shop" in Salem in 1971, as it started to become a tourist destination (thanks in part to the national "Bewitched in Salem" TV exposure). At present time, there are numerous such shops throughout downtown Salem, but it was Cabot who was the trailblazer so far as these businesses are concerned.

Cabot was featured prominently in Season 5 of In Search of..., hosted by Leonard Nimoy, in Episode 13: Salem Witches, originally aired 13 December 1980. The episode spent much time on Cabot's activities as a leader in the local community of witches in Salem.

Cabot's shop sold herbs, jewelry, Tarot decks, and other items used in Witchcraft. She later relocated her shop to an old gambrel-roofed house on Essex Street. This new shop was named "Crow Haven Corner". The physical store is still open, though no longer owned or managed by any member of the Cabot family (formerly, her eldest daughter Jody owned and ran it). Cabot's final shop in Salem, The Cat, The Crow and the Crown on Pickering Wharf, later renamed The Official Witch Shoppe, closed its doors in February 2012. Cabot still maintains an online shop by the same name that is frequently patronized, and is an important resource to many witches. She is as well known for her businesses, lectures and books. Cabot was a guest on both "The Oprah Winfrey Show" and on Phil Donahue's talk shows in the late 1980s.

In March 2008, Cabot celebrated her 75th birthday at a surprise birthday party attended by hundreds of Wiccans, including Sully Erna of the band Godsmack for whom Cabot had appeared in the band's "Voodoo" music video shot at Hammond Castle.