Nude Witches of Sydney! 2007

(And, for the record, the exclamation is ironic.)

If you Google “nude witch”—well, someone has to do it—one of the top hits will lead you to a discussion of an episode of TV documentary series on the National Geographic Channel called Taboo. There have been sixty-five episodes of this series, over five seasons, since 2002 (see here for the full list of episodes). Nudity was the season opener in 2008 (Season 4, episode 1, aired 5 September 2008).

It is quite difficult to find much information about this episode, but the shout for it runs as follows:

Premieres Wednesday, September 5,
at 10:00 PM ET/PT (World Premiere)

It’s possibly the most natural thing in the world, but for many the naked human body remains a taboo. In this episode, NGC travels the globe to examine the cultural significances of nudity. In Sydney, Australia, a coven of Wiccan witches perform rituals in the nude to express their truest form and bring themselves closer to the natural world. In America, some devout Christians worship together naked, believing that is the way God intended them to. And in central Japan, watch a centuries-old chaotic event called the Hadaka Matsuri: “The Festival of the Naked Man.” Each year one man is chosen to be the “Spirit Man.” He is shaven, stripped naked and must walk from one end of a street to the shrine at the other end. Along the way, thousands of seminaked men struggle to touch his bare body for luck.

Imdb offers a runtime of sixty minutes (with commercials), so the five minutes of this segment that is available on YouTube is unlikely to be complete. Still, it is worth a look (NB, even though the naughty bits are digitised away you will still have to sign in to watch this on YouTube).

If you look on the National Geographic Channel site you will (eventually) find that you can download the episode via Video On Demand until 31 March (here); more details are available here, including the image at the top of this page which has the caption: “In Sydney, Australia, Brad, Rachel, and Kael stand around a table laden with Wicca implements”).

In one of the few discussions of this segment by local Wiccans (here) Mama Kelly writes

I cringed at the sexual undertones in coven members undressing one another. My first (and only) coven worked skyclad at esbat rites. I can promise you that at no time did any of us undress one another … I winced at a few wordings that I felt were poorly chosen. One example was when the narrator made mention of stripping in front of strangers. In my own experience skyclad rituals were not open to the public. You did not work skyclad with a group unless you were an initiate which implied having known them and worked with them for a year and a day …. hardly strangers. But I shuddered at the end when the narrator referred to Wicca as … a CULT … as opposed to just referring to it as a religion. I was one very angry witch last night I can tell you that.

Since the narrator of the section on YouTube video does not refer to Wicca as a cult I am assuming that this bit has been snipped off. Without it the segment is not too bad, certainly not as bad as you’d expect. I acknowledge the mutual stripping in front of strangers would be very unusual and unlikely to really occur, but Alex and Maxine Sandars did a great deal for the cameras that was “very unusual and unlikely to really occur.”