Warlock Claims Innocence in Legal Battle Against Nemesis Witch

Lori Bruno, a prominent priestess in the Salem witch community, successfully petitioned the court for a restraining order against the World Famous Warlock Christian Day on Wednesday. Three years ago, Day cut ties with Bruno after they stopped working together professionally. Though Broadly reached out to both parties for comment, only Day responded to our request.

Bruno's claims against Day center around a series of harassing telephone calls she says occurred throughout the past three years. The Boston Globe reported on her testimony in court. They wrote, "Dressed in head-to-toe black and adorned with rings, necklaces, and broaches, Bruno-Sforza said the harassment kept her up at night, made her fear for her store, and left her wondering if she would be physically attacked."

"'I am a woman! I am not somebody's footstool,' Bruno-Sforza yelled from the witness stand."

For a period of time, Bruno worked as a psychic in one of Day's stores. But the warlock maintains that he never made the phone calls in question. According to Day, Bruno claims she received calls from a private number, and he says he would never use a private number, that anyone who knows him—especially his enemies—knows he does not shy away from conflict. "I sometimes call myself the Donald Trump of witchcraft," he says. "I just sort of have my powerful opinions about things. Not necessarily politically, but I say what I feel about whatever."

According to The Guardian, there is a sexist backdrop to the case. Christian Day apparently admitted that he's received court orders to stop harassing women on the telephone before. JM Lawrence reports that, "Two of [Bruno's] friends testified when the witch worked in the warlock's store, they heard him call her vulgar sexist obscenities."

Christian Day first became interested in witchcraft at seventeen years old, but his Wiccan religion didn't become his career until he was in his thirties. Today he is a veritable Wiccan Overlord. Day has a handful of stores in both Salem and New Orleans. In addition to the witchcraft store Hex, and the psychic parlor Omen, he co-owns the Salem Witch Walk and hosts The Festival of the Dead, which is an annual month-long series of events including the Official Salem Witches Ball and the Psychic Fair. "We also host Hex Fest in June, which is a conference of witchcraft teachings, and we have a psychic phone service called psychicsforhire.com."

Lori Bruno is also a public figure, psychic, and a prominent Wiccan priestess in Salem. She owns the magic apothecary, Magika. According to her website, Bruno was born into a long line of Ancient Dream Prophets, worked for NASA in her twenties, and eventually founded a Wiccan church. Judging by the amount Day's current psychics make, the warlock estimates he must have paid Bruno $200,000 over four years of work together.

"I looked to her as a second mother and, as she said in the news, she looked at me like a son."

On the morning of his trial, Day's lawyer called in sick. He hired a replacement on the courtroom floor, and claims the judge refused to grant a postponement because "in Massachusetts restraining order law, you're not required to have a lawyer and therefore they don't provide one for you."

"We really thought we had it in the bag. She got up on the witness stand and said that her spells make Mount Etna erupt in Sicily. We thought, Okay."

Day believes the "smoking gun" that led the judge to rule against him was Bruno's claim that the she'd been receiving harassing phone calls from Day for the past three years. "Here is the crucial point," Day explains. "In [Lori Bruno's] original request for a restraining order on September 29th, there was no mention at all of these phone calls. In fact, my previous lawyer said that nothing rose to the level of harassment at all." Bruno appeared in court on October 13th for an initial hearing, but Day says he was unable to attend because Bruno put his address as Marblehead, a town neighboring Salem that he hasn't lived in for thirteen years. "She knew I didn't live in Marblehead, but there it was, Marblehead. They gave us an extension until the 28th. It was on the 13th of October that she added to the affidavit this thing about these phone calls."

Day understands why people laugh at the story in the press. "A witch and a warlock walk into a courtroom; it's a punchline waiting to happen. Of course everyone is going to make fun of it, and I can laugh at myself" he says. "I don't take myself too seriously. I love what I do and I believe in magick and I believe in the old ways of witchcraft. But I also believe in having a sense of humor and understanding that sometimes you can help the world understand who you are better when you can laugh at it a bit and that has helped me both as a gay man and as a warlock."

Though Christian Day doesn't believe in superstitious versions of magic, he still follows his faith seriously. "Look, I believe in divination. I'm a witch, I'm a warlock. I certainly believe in magic as manifestation, but not in a superstitious crazy way. Oprah does witchcraft; they call it the secret. What is manifestation if not the power of the mind?"

Day plans to request a second hearing, despite the elder witches in England apparently being none too happy with the feud leaving the borders of the Wiccan fold. "Real witches actually have rules against that. So I've been hearing from all the elders in England how discouraging this is, that they've seen this playing out in the non-witch courtrooms. It should have been handled through mediation in some way. That's generally how we do things."