# Witchcraft - Best of Coast to Coast AM - 9/1/26

An episode of [The Best of Coast to Coast AM](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1206175991), 2 Sep 2026, 21 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/61c1535a-56bb-431a-ad6b-ae2b00350f5c/e8a06641-8d58-4612-bac0-b4b900a47768/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=b95f0c24-c199-4939-b52c-ae2b00350f65

George Noory and occult expert Salvatore Santoro explore his experiences practicing ritual magic, the differences between witchcraft and magic, and the power of the planets to help cast effective spells for love and relationships. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
[0:05] Speaker 2: And welcome back to Coast to Coast. George Norrie with you.
[0:07] Speaker 2: Salvatore Santoro back with us as the co-owner of The
[0:11] Speaker 2: Crooked Path, the leading traditional witchcraft store in Los Angeles.
[0:15] Speaker 2: Sal has practiced various occult philosophies, giving him the ability
[0:19] Speaker 2: to combine structures and systems cohesively for practical ritual magic.
[0:24] Speaker 2: His website is linked up at coasttocoastam.com. And here he
[0:29] Speaker 2: is on Coast to Coast. Sal, how you been?
[0:31] Speaker 3: Good to talk to you, sir.
[0:33] Speaker 4: How are you?
[0:34] Speaker 2: It's good talking to you too, my friend. What's new
[0:36] Speaker 2: with you?
[0:37] Speaker 3: Not much.
[0:38] Speaker 4: I mean, it's been a couple of years since we've talked.
[0:41] Speaker 4: I had a 62nd birthday last week. So I broke
[0:45] Speaker 4: the 60s. That's kind of cool.
[0:48] Speaker 3: Congratulations. I know. We just got back from Greece.
[0:52] Speaker 4: I was just in Greece for 15 days with my
[0:55] Speaker 4: wife and her family, my in-laws. So we were in Crete.
[0:58] Speaker 4: went there and visited so just coming off the summertime
[1:01] Speaker 4: you know.
[1:02] Speaker 2: How many years you've been practicing witchcraft now.
[1:07] Speaker 4: Unofficially without without baptismals and being connected to specific systems
[1:15] Speaker 4: i started in 71 when i was a child so
[1:19] Speaker 4: that would have been 64 74 i was i was
[1:22] Speaker 4: very young i found it i found it at like
[1:24] Speaker 4: eight or nine years old so it must have been
[1:26] Speaker 4: not 71 but um What started me off was Mastering
[1:31] Speaker 4: Witchcraft by Paul Hewson, which was a book that was
[1:36] Speaker 4: in paperback bookstores back in the day when we had
[1:39] Speaker 4: such a thing. And it was just a traditional primer
[1:44] Speaker 4: of kind of some neo-pagan construct, some Wicca, a little
[1:50] Speaker 4: bit of Keys of Solomon, and it touched on more
[1:56] Speaker 4: of what we call trad craft or traditional witchcraft.
[2:00] Speaker 2: What did your parents, what did your parents think about
[2:02] Speaker 2: your involvement in witchcraft?
[2:04] Speaker 3: You know, I think it was, it was a laugh off.
[2:07] Speaker 4: I was, I was obviously it was a, uh, technically
[2:10] Speaker 4: before they had the term, I was kind of a
[2:11] Speaker 4: special needs kid, um, you know, in the seventies. And, um,
[2:17] Speaker 4: so my parents always gave me room to breathe, you know,
[2:20] Speaker 4: wanted me to explore. I mean, I grew up in
[2:22] Speaker 4: a really great home. My father, uh, was a World
[2:25] Speaker 4: War II vet. I was in the 8th Air Corps.
[2:28] Speaker 4: My mother, you know, my mom was two years younger
[2:31] Speaker 4: than him. They both died in 23, actually, 2023, one
[2:35] Speaker 4: at 98 and one at 100. So I was raised,
[2:40] Speaker 4: you know, by an older family. I was raised on
[2:42] Speaker 4: big bands and Tommy Dorsey and stuff like that. But
[2:44] Speaker 4: my parents, my father was Italian American and by first generation,
[2:50] Speaker 4: and he was Catholic. And I found Catholicist and studied
[2:54] Speaker 4: it for a while. So they didn't frown on it.
[2:58] Speaker 4: I mean, I wasn't brandishing the book around everywhere. But
[3:01] Speaker 4: I mean, I would talk openly about it with my
[3:03] Speaker 4: mom more than my dad.
[3:05] Speaker 2: Did you cast spells on kids when you were a
[3:07] Speaker 2: little guy?
[3:09] Speaker 3: No, it really wasn't like that.
[3:12] Speaker 4: It was never the means to an end was not
[3:14] Speaker 4: just doing evasive work on individuals or people. As much
[3:19] Speaker 4: as it was like, just at that juncture in my
[3:24] Speaker 4: small mind, you know, I was.
[3:25] Speaker 3: Just, it was taboo. It was obviously the 70s.
[3:28] Speaker 4: We know what the 70s were like, right? And finding
[3:32] Speaker 4: a book like that in there was pretty intense. And
[3:36] Speaker 4: the thing about it, there was a small shock and
[3:38] Speaker 4: awe that was attached to the book. And when I
[3:41] Speaker 4: think about it now, it's kind of tongue in cheek.
[3:44] Speaker 4: But as a child in the 70s reading it, it
[3:47] Speaker 4: scared the hell out of me. um and it was
[3:50] Speaker 4: when you opened the book the first three pages it
[3:53] Speaker 4: it had you say the lord's prayer backwards oh jeez
[3:59] Speaker 4: i know and it scared it scared me as a
[4:01] Speaker 4: kid you know uh the the whole you know psychodrama
[4:06] Speaker 4: of it all and i i never could actually figure
[4:08] Speaker 4: out how to say it backwards i was dyslexic so
[4:11] Speaker 4: it didn't work out for me you'd think it would
[4:13] Speaker 4: but it didn't um But it just gave me more knowledge.
[4:17] Speaker 4: And I wasn't reading the book cover to cover, ear
[4:21] Speaker 4: to ear. I couldn't memorize it back then. But it
[4:24] Speaker 4: was something to have. And then about, I'd say about,
[4:29] Speaker 4: let's see, that would be like 70s, so.
[4:32] Speaker 3: Probably about 1981, about.
[4:35] Speaker 4: Nine years later, as I got older, my first best
[4:38] Speaker 4: friend introduced me to 777 by Aleister Crowley. And At
[4:47] Speaker 4: that time, I was almost 18 years old, and we
[4:52] Speaker 4: were trying to do the basic rituals in that book.
[4:55] Speaker 4: They never actually worked out. But those were my starting points,
[4:58] Speaker 4: and then I came to California, and then I found groups,
[5:01] Speaker 4: and that's where it started really to kick in.
[5:04] Speaker 2: Was there ever a point where you did not practice
[5:07] Speaker 2: witchcraft or magic?
[5:08] Speaker 3: Oh, absolutely.
[5:09] Speaker 4: I mean, it's not like something that is... like staunch
[5:15] Speaker 4: every day.
[5:15] Speaker 3: You know what I mean? You're going to go through
[5:17] Speaker 3: rises and falls.
[5:18] Speaker 4: You know, it's just like, like when you're a young
[5:20] Speaker 4: kid exploring guitar, you know, or a band or learning
[5:25] Speaker 4: an instrument, you know, you think you're going to be
[5:28] Speaker 4: into it 24 seven, but after three months it wanes,
[5:31] Speaker 4: you know, and then it comes back up again. So,
[5:33] Speaker 4: you know, it moved in and out of my life,
[5:35] Speaker 4: but as I grew into a young adult, it definitely
[5:39] Speaker 4: became more of a philosophy and I understood it more.
[5:43] Speaker 2: How do you distinguish, Sal, the difference between witchcraft and magic,
[5:48] Speaker 2: or is there a difference?
[5:49] Speaker 4: That is a great question, George. So let's look at
[5:55] Speaker 4: the word witchcraft first. When we talk about witchcraft, usually, generally,
[6:00] Speaker 4: this word is utilized, and it was utilized in pop
[6:04] Speaker 4: culture coming through from even before World War II, right?
[6:09] Speaker 4: Once The Wizard of Oz came out, witchcraft became in
[6:13] Speaker 4: pop culture.
[6:14] Speaker 3: Okay.
[6:15] Speaker 4: That was his first like open door on a large
[6:18] Speaker 4: scale by, um, post-war America and post-war Britain. There was a,
[6:24] Speaker 4: a man named Gerald was so Gardner who developed, um,
[6:28] Speaker 4: a system, um, working with the old gods of Europe
[6:33] Speaker 4: and the wheel of the year, which is the, the
[6:37] Speaker 4: changing of the seasons. And he built a system called Wicca, um,
[6:42] Speaker 4: off of that construct. And he said in his book,
[6:48] Speaker 4: witches were people that worked with the old religions and
[6:52] Speaker 4: worked with the old wheel of the year. And sometimes
[6:56] Speaker 4: they practice ritual, magic and spell work. Other times they
[7:00] Speaker 4: don't practice it at all. A witch was another word
[7:04] Speaker 4: for wise one or one to bend and shape things
[7:09] Speaker 4: at will. And With all these constructs building into his system,
[7:15] Speaker 4: he kind of took the role with it, okay? And
[7:18] Speaker 4: it moved into the 60s and the 70s from there.
[7:22] Speaker 4: And then people started realizing there is different variations on magic.
[7:26] Speaker 4: So when I discuss magic, I'm coining Crowley when I
[7:31] Speaker 4: say this, but it matches up for me. And that
[7:34] Speaker 4: is magic is the science that causes change to conform
[7:38] Speaker 4: with your will. Now, that could be as mundane as
[7:43] Speaker 4: you turning the knob on a door to get to
[7:46] Speaker 4: a threshold, or it could be as detailed as ritual
[7:49] Speaker 4: magic utilizing planetary scale and Kabbalah and colors. So that's
[7:56] Speaker 4: the act of, it can be the physical act of magic, okay?
[7:59] Speaker 4: That isn't always necessarily connected to Wicca or witchcraft, right?
[8:05] Speaker 5: And I know you're going to want some after hearing this.
[8:06] Speaker 5: This is an amazing story. We've got Stephen and Malachi
[8:09] Speaker 5: Gregory in Nelson, New Zealand. I understand that Malachi, who's eight,
[8:14] Speaker 5: almost nine years old now, was suffering with Not just
[8:18] Speaker 5: one or two warts, but I mean a significant outbreak
[8:21] Speaker 5: of warts all over his body. So significant it impacted
[8:23] Speaker 5: his ability to really function.
[8:26] Speaker 6: Yeah, he was having trouble even holding a pencil to write.
[8:29] Speaker 6: It was Ty's book actually that got me thinking about it.
[8:32] Speaker 1: I'm not surprised.
[8:33] Speaker 7: It is an amazing immunomodulator. And so I can see
[8:36] Speaker 7: that it would work. And so at what.
[8:39] Speaker 5: Point did you see that there was actually improvement? Is
[8:42] Speaker 5: it really going to work?
[8:43] Speaker 6: Well, look, we really started to notice it around 12
[8:45] Speaker 6: weeks later. You can see these things actually getting smaller
[8:49] Speaker 6: and smaller and then going down to where they're just
[8:52] Speaker 6: little red marks. The whole things are gone. And we're
[8:54] Speaker 6: talking about one the size of a walnut. I thought,
[8:57] Speaker 6: no way that's going to.
[8:58] Speaker 1: Wow.
[8:59] Speaker 7: It's just been miraculous to see him get into a
[9:01] Speaker 7: pair of shoes.
[9:02] Speaker 1: Yes.
[9:03] Speaker 4: How wonderful.
[9:04] Speaker 7: It's great to see him so happy and confident.
[9:07] Speaker 5: Absolutely wonderful.
[9:08] Speaker 7: Our friends that have seen it, they're just blown away.
[9:11] Speaker 3: Ty, this is awesome. Yeah, this is awesome.
[9:13] Speaker 2: Another amazing story.
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[9:18] Speaker 2: system and protect yourself now.
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[9:21] Speaker 1: C-A-R-N-I-V-O-R-A.
[9:22] Speaker 4: Carnivora.com.
[9:35] Speaker 2: If you were in Salem, Massachusetts during the time of
[9:37] Speaker 2: the trials, would you have been burned at the stake?
[9:41] Speaker 7: Yeah, absolutely.
[9:42] Speaker 4: You know, and being a kid from New England, I
[9:46] Speaker 4: studied that a lot. And first and foremost, you know,
[9:49] Speaker 4: the majority of those people that were killed, women and men,
[9:53] Speaker 4: girls as well, young women were killed. A lot of
[9:57] Speaker 4: it was done in Danvers, not actually in in in
[10:01] Speaker 4: in uh salem like they they call it um but
[10:04] Speaker 4: a lot of that as we know was really not
[10:07] Speaker 4: about witchcraft it was about land rights and you know
[10:10] Speaker 4: in our politics of the of the of the town
[10:13] Speaker 4: and taking what they needed and they used that as
[10:15] Speaker 4: a scapegoat to.
[10:16] Speaker 2: Get rid of the people And it worked for them,
[10:19] Speaker 2: didn't it?
[10:19] Speaker 3: And it absolutely did. That's how things work.
[10:22] Speaker 4: They push their agendas that way by blaming it on
[10:27] Speaker 4: an act of devilry.
[10:30] Speaker 2: Sally, you do a lot of work with what is
[10:32] Speaker 2: called planetary magic. What is that?
[10:35] Speaker 4: Yes. Planetary magic is kind of like my pocket in
[10:40] Speaker 4: the world of the occult. Planetary magic sometimes can be...
[10:46] Speaker 4: connected to another term, which is Ptolemaic scale. Ptolemy was
[10:52] Speaker 4: a Greek philosopher that believed that the seven heavenly bodies
[10:56] Speaker 4: that were above us were, A, represented by the old gods,
[11:02] Speaker 4: or some of the old gods, depending on the pantheon,
[11:04] Speaker 4: and every one of them represented a certain energy, and
[11:09] Speaker 4: every one of them also had governance over the flora
[11:12] Speaker 4: and the fauna on the earth, on the microcosm, So
[11:18] Speaker 4: certain plants, certain animals would be identified with the energies
[11:22] Speaker 4: of certain planets. The seven heavenly bodies were the seven
[11:26] Speaker 4: ancient planets. And the seven ancient planets is where we
[11:30] Speaker 4: get the seven days in our week. So if you
[11:33] Speaker 4: know French, you'll know Tuesday is Mars day.
[11:37] Speaker 3: Okay. And it goes.
[11:40] Speaker 4: Through moon day, Mars day, Mercury day, Jupiter day, friday
[11:48] Speaker 4: saturn day saturday sunday but what happened was when when
[11:55] Speaker 4: christianity came into development they moved them around so what
[12:00] Speaker 4: you'll find out is the planets move we well we
[12:03] Speaker 4: all know this is basic science that certain planets are
[12:05] Speaker 4: further out so they appear to be moving slower than
[12:08] Speaker 4: the ones that are closer to us right um and
[12:12] Speaker 4: in to the ancients they believed that the sun and
[12:16] Speaker 4: the moon were planets. They weren't a satellite and gas
[12:20] Speaker 4: back then. They were, they were the heavenly bodies and
[12:23] Speaker 4: the Luna was the moon, right? That would be the
[12:27] Speaker 4: one that was closest to us. And then the sun
[12:29] Speaker 4: was also the furthest out. Um, and then the succession
[12:34] Speaker 4: of the planets move in the way of the speed
[12:38] Speaker 4: of them moving out, out in space. So this is
[12:41] Speaker 4: how we get what's called, um, planetary time, or the
[12:46] Speaker 4: time through the Chaldean order.
[12:48] Speaker 3: The Chaldean oracles.
[12:50] Speaker 4: Devise their timing system around the movement of those planets individually,
[12:56] Speaker 4: changing the days. So in antiquity, a day would start
[13:00] Speaker 4: and end with the sun cracking the horizon line.
[13:04] Speaker 3: Okay?
[13:05] Speaker 4: And so during that entire time, from sunup to sunup,
[13:11] Speaker 4: the seven planets would move in repetition in the same
[13:16] Speaker 4: order every day. So you could see the planetary hour
[13:22] Speaker 4: of any of the following planets of the seven at
[13:25] Speaker 4: three different times within the day, give or take. And
[13:28] Speaker 4: these were times when the planets are strongest. So when
[13:32] Speaker 4: you take that system and you find this sequence that
[13:37] Speaker 4: matches the planets for specific work that we do, we
[13:44] Speaker 4: utilize components like colors, herbs that match the flora and
[13:49] Speaker 4: the fauna that we were discussing, herbs that match the planet,
[13:54] Speaker 4: and we use them for sympathetic magic or objects that
[13:59] Speaker 4: we will move around down in front so we can
[14:03] Speaker 4: then take this in and move it up into the
[14:07] Speaker 4: subconscious mind. The subconscious mind and what is below in
[14:14] Speaker 4: the conscious mind is also terms that we use in
[14:17] Speaker 4: hermetic philosophy. And there's a very known hermetic term, which
[14:22] Speaker 4: is that which is above is a reflection of that
[14:25] Speaker 4: which is below. So the system is to believe that
[14:29] Speaker 4: if you can manipulate things on the microcosm in the conscious,
[14:35] Speaker 4: in the now, it will move up into the subconscious
[14:38] Speaker 4: mind and flip and then come back down and manifest
[14:43] Speaker 4: that change. So that's the theory on planetary magic and scale.
[14:50] Speaker 4: There's a lot more to it, but that's in a nutshell.
[14:52] Speaker 2: How do you know what planets to use and utilize
[14:55] Speaker 2: in your magic?
[14:57] Speaker 4: So the planets, that comes down through people like Cornelius
[15:02] Speaker 4: Agrippa and other people that studied magic long before you
[15:07] Speaker 4: or I were around.
[15:08] Speaker 3: Magic's been around since the beginning of time, right? And you.
[15:12] Speaker 4: And so commonalities would fall under these certain things. Like
[15:16] Speaker 4: when we think of Jupiter, okay? Jupiter is a day
[15:22] Speaker 4: for legal action. It's a day for bureaucracy. It's a
[15:28] Speaker 4: day for prosperity and flow of cash and flow of money,
[15:34] Speaker 4: advancement in your career.
[15:36] Speaker 3: And it's also governing luck, okay? Now, Mercury.
[15:41] Speaker 4: The day before it is communication. So you and I
[15:45] Speaker 4: are actually having a mercurial action because when you impart
[15:51] Speaker 4: communication to one another and information, this is the action
[15:56] Speaker 4: of Mercury and the movement of information. That's why Mercury
[16:00] Speaker 4: also governs math, science, the arts, literature, okay? And tech
[16:07] Speaker 4: is all mercurial. So that's where that's coming into play.
[16:13] Speaker 4: And Venusian work, when you look at Venus, most people
[16:17] Speaker 4: are thinking, oh, that must be where I'm going to
[16:19] Speaker 4: meet the love of my life, or I'm going to
[16:21] Speaker 4: hook up and get a new girlfriend or a new boyfriend.
[16:24] Speaker 4: But the truth of the matter is, pop culture has
[16:29] Speaker 4: got people in modern times believing that's what love is.
[16:33] Speaker 4: But when you study the old texts... what Venus is,
[16:40] Speaker 4: is agape. And agape is the love of spirit, the
[16:44] Speaker 4: love of family, the love of your mother and your
[16:47] Speaker 4: father and your brother and your sisters. And eventually will
[16:50] Speaker 4: become your life partner, the person you marry. But usually
[16:54] Speaker 4: the love that you get with romance is coming from
[16:58] Speaker 4: Mars because Mars is passion, sexuality, romance, and as well
[17:06] Speaker 4: as aspects of war And.
[17:08] Speaker 2: Would that be universal for people? That Mars would be
[17:12] Speaker 2: the planet?
[17:13] Speaker 1: Yeah, well, yeah.
[17:15] Speaker 3: Because Mars drives passion.
[17:18] Speaker 4: And passion is the other side of the same blade,
[17:21] Speaker 4: which is not different, really. When you look at it analytically,
[17:27] Speaker 4: violence and aggression, there's a passion to it, right? I'm
[17:32] Speaker 4: not saying they're exactly the same, but they come from
[17:34] Speaker 4: the same area. And it was said in Greece in
[17:38] Speaker 4: the old ways that the love of Eros always will wane,
[17:43] Speaker 4: but the love of Agape will always remain. Eros is erotic, right?
[17:50] Speaker 4: This is also the god Ares is coming from this region.
[17:54] Speaker 4: But Agape is your eternal spirit, the love of God
[17:59] Speaker 4: or gods or Zeus or Christ, the Christ consciousness, the energy.
[18:05] Speaker 4: That's going to be what agape is. So that's what
[18:08] Speaker 4: Venus really is, is the love of that. Venus also,
[18:11] Speaker 4: ironically though, is good for monetary amounts of cash. So
[18:17] Speaker 4: what Venus also brings to the table is giving you
[18:22] Speaker 4: things to satisfy your ego, your lower self, the new car,
[18:29] Speaker 4: the new house, the new shoes, a fancy iPhone, or
[18:34] Speaker 4: whatever it may be. These are gratifying us personally, and
[18:38] Speaker 4: that's what Venus will bring. It will give you things
[18:41] Speaker 4: that will give you good feeling as well. But monetary
[18:47] Speaker 4: gain on specific amounts, like say, oh, I need $ 640
[18:54] Speaker 4: for my car payment. Now you're going into Venus to
[18:58] Speaker 4: pull the denominational amount, where if you were saying, I
[19:02] Speaker 4: want my career to flow more money into it, Now
[19:06] Speaker 4: you're cocking prosperity, which is coming through Jupiter.
[19:09] Speaker 2: And how do you tap into the various planets physically?
[19:13] Speaker 2: How do you do that?
[19:14] Speaker 4: You work with the planets by working with the scale
[19:17] Speaker 4: of time. And another thing that I didn't get to
[19:22] Speaker 4: mention is the planets and the associative colors that we have.
[19:28] Speaker 4: So let's go back over the planets again, the seven planets.
[19:31] Speaker 4: Monday is the moon, okay? On Monday, the moon is
[19:35] Speaker 4: either the color violet or white. Tuesday is always crimson
[19:41] Speaker 4: or red. Wednesday, Mercury is always orange. Jupiter, Thursday, is
[19:47] Speaker 4: always blue. And Venus is historically always been green. But
[19:55] Speaker 4: through pop culture and modern perspectives, they've also attached pink
[20:00] Speaker 4: to it. Because most people think of Venus as love,
[20:04] Speaker 4: which equates in pop culture to Valentine's Day and So
[20:10] Speaker 4: they add the pink there. So sometimes you get that.
[20:13] Speaker 4: Saturn is Saturn day, Saturday. That is the black planet, okay?
[20:19] Speaker 4: That is the color black. And then Sunday is yellow
[20:23] Speaker 4: or gold. These colors come from Kabbalah.
[20:29] Speaker 1: Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
[20:33] Speaker 1: 1 a.m. Eastern and go to coasttocoastam.com for more.

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