Imagine a world where the most famous wizarding school was founded by five women.
Imagine a school where the curriculum is centered around exploring magic and rituals connected with femininity.
Imagine a universe where “feminine” means courageous, powerful, and unyielding
This story has been told so many times before. Please join us as we tell it one more time, in a whole new way.
Welcome to the Hecatic Academy of Witchcraft!
DATE TO BE ANNOUNCED
Czocha Castle in Poland.
Then.
Europe is burning. The stakes are taking lives of both mundane and witchards, mostly women. Magical education of women is nonexistent – schools and academies accept only men, leaving young witches to learn magic by themselves. Female magic is seen as primal and wild, untamed and unbridled, not sophisticated enough and even dangerous. Until recently young witches could learn from their elders, but with the public witch hunts and ever-present threat of trial, most female mentors are dead or in hiding. Youngsters that are trying to use magic without counselling are ending up on the stakes.
This is when Libussa–a Czech witch known for her unorthodox views–decides to take a bold move, daring even by witchard society standards. Despite the traditions and the unfavorable opinions from witchard society, she founds a school for young witches. It is not just a school, but also a sanctuary, a retreat for those who are lost and persecuted, a safe space for young souls to learn and to grow without fear or prejudice. And so Czocha Castle became the Hecatic Academy of Witchcraft, the first European all-female magic school.
Now.
It is now the middle of the 19th century. Queen Victoria rules in Great Britain, railways and other new mundane inventions are trying to connect the entire world, and social changes are starting to shake up the fossilized structures of the old world order. Mundane society is speeding up and rapidly expanding while witchards watch with growing horror. The new magical field called “Technomancy” is born, combining magic and mundane science, connecting the two worlds in an unprecedented manner.
The Czocha Conflux is dealing with those changes in its own way. Several decades ago, Hecatic Academy of Witchcraft opened itself to the rest of witchard society and stopped limiting its students to only women. The curriculum is still unorthodox and the school continues the traditions started by the five founding mothers, but the school is very popular among students of all genders for its innovative thinking and open-mindedness. Czocha was even the first school that officially offered a class on Technomancy.
The social changes are not going unnoticed as well. In Czocha Conflux women and men are equal, but the same can’t be said about the rest of magical society. The students and staff are watching the suffragette movement rising up in the mundane world with great interest. Will the brave mundane women be the catalyst of changes in the witchard society? Or will they be stifled like they have been so many times before? Will the stakes burn again?