Laurie Cabot (born March 6, 1933) is an American Witchcraft high priestess, and the author of several books. She founded the Cabot Tradition of the Science of Witchcraft and the Witches' League for Public Awareness to defend the civil rights of witches everywhere. She lives in Salem, where she owned a shop. Cabot claims to be related to the prominent Boston Brahmin Cabot family. Life and career and possible inspirations Laurie Cabot was born Mercedes Elizabeth Kiersey. She grew up in California and came 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, father of TV journalist Barbara Walters. Cabot was asked by Mr. Walters to open his Las Vegas Latin Quarter, but she declined. Cabot married and divorced twice, with each marriage producing a daughter. 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. The kind of Witchcraft that Cabot practices focuses on the Religion, Art and Science of Witchcraft. 1970 TV's sitcom Bewitched visited Salem for a series of episodes with location filming. Laurie Cabot opened the town's first "Witch Shoppe" in Salem in 1971, which became a tourist destination thanks to the national TV exposure. In 1986, after the release of the film version of The Witches of Eastwick, John Updike's novel about single suburban women venturing into the occult, Cabot established the Witches' League for Public Awareness to counter negative images of her religion in popular culture and the media. "Here are three women who have nothing better to do, because they are so frustrated sexually, than to get involved with witchcraft," Cabot said of the movie. "They are not witches. If they are anything, they are weekend Satanists. They don't do one witchy thing in the whole film." Cabot's shop sold herbs, jewelry, Tarot decks, and other items used in witchcraft. She later moved 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, but is no longer owned or managed