‘We Need Magic’: An Afternoon with the Witch from Piedemont

Solea spreads a small purple tablecloth, with a pentacle painted in the middle, over her kitchen table — “so the tarot cards won’t absorb its energy,” she explains, rolling up her sweater sleeves. She begins to shuffle, her hands moving quickly, practiced. She turns over the first card, places it in front of her, and studies it, then looks up at me and says, “What I’m about to tell you can’t be recorded.”

It’s a rainy February afternoon, and darkness has settled over the rustic mustard-yellow house at the end of a dirt road in the countryside near Alessandria. I had just parked my Fiat Panda outside the iron gate when a slight figure in jeans, carrying an umbrella, approached, wrapped in drizzle. After a brief introduction, she led the way through the garden and welcomed me into a cozy, wooden kitchen, where the tarot cards were waiting for us. 

Although we’re meeting for the first time, I feel a comforting sense of familiarity. It could be her kind eyes, framed by dark-rimmed, squared glasses, or maybe it’s her smile, sweet and marked by a tiny diastema.

Solea (who goes by one name) defines herself as a “green witch,” a magician in contact with nature. She reads tarot cards and coins, senses energies and souls, and performs magical rituals and charms all over Piedemont. But she is more than that.

For the past five years, she’s hosted what she calls “oracular dinners,” welcoming clients in her home to read their cards. Now in her fifties, she feels the urge to use her abilities outside the confines of the domestic sphere. She’s set an ambitious goal for herself: a project called Solea’s World, a place where people with similar energies can “bond and grow.” 

“Solea” is the name the 53-year-old chose for herself last summer. It comes from the Greek and means “the one who brings light.” She says her real name doesn’t matter. What’s more important, according to her, is to pursue her venture. In a world increasingly shaped by war, political uncertainty, and personal disorientation, she imagines an evolving space for souls searching for their life’s purpose.

Her project is sprawling, made up of multiple elements, including her tarot readings, an art gallery, and a new discipline she has just patented. Trying to tame her indomitable blonde hair, she explains the concept to me, lifting her hands as if she’s arranging invisible threads in the air.

Three months ago, in late 2025, Solea opened an art gallery that’s unlike any other. “It’s a healing space where the protagonists are the artists’ souls and the souls of their works,” she says. For now, it’s an online space, but the plan is to make it physical soon. She accepts any form of art, from poetry to paintings and music. Through the pieces, she “reads” the artists’ unconscious, then helps buyers understand their own emotions as they view the artworks. 

In just a few months, the self-described witch has already connected with more than 50 artists worldwide. Many of them believe she deeply understands their works and has the gift of transforming feelings into words. Sarah Stetie, a Lebanese painter, describes the gallery as “a space where my art can be listened to.” 

But this isn’t enough, not for Solea’s allergic-to-stillness temperament. The day before we met, she officially patented her “alchemical flow,” a discipline that blends the well-being of the body with that of the soul through movements, vibrations, and sounds. Its aim, she says, is to help shift people’s energy in a more positive direction. She’ll teach her first class this March in Milan. She plans to bring it to as many studios as possible.

“The help she gives you is not reading your future. She offers you the chance to work with yourself,” says Lucia Barbagallo, a retired nurse who met Solea during her training in the nineties and bonded with her after the COVID-19 pandemic. Barbagallo believes talking to the witch gives her the push she needs to process her feelings.

“I meet her every time I need to recharge my positive energies,” she explains, adding that she’s since referred some close friends to Solea. “She can truly help bring out the vitality someone still has,” Barbagallo says, her voice full of gratitude. “She has a gift.” 

***

Solea calls Piedmont home, but she plans to extend her world far beyond it. She’s chosen the right starting point. The region’s capital is Turin, Italy’s esoteric city, long linked to mystical traditions, hidden knowledge, and occult practices. “It’s a place where energies converge,” Solea explains.

In occult legend, Turin sits at the intersection of both triangles of magic. The white one, with Lion and Prague, and the black one, with London and San Francisco. This May, academics, professors, and students of witchcraft will gather in Turin to share knowledge. Maybe it’s not a coincidence that, after all her travels and adventures, the witch ended up here. 

Solea was born in Genoa to an Italian father and a Croatian mother. Witchcraft has always been a part of her life. Although she’s the first in her family to identify as a witch, the magic has run in their blood for generations. Her mother reads tarot cards, her aunt used to read hands, and her grandmother read coffee grounds. All these women taught her the craft. “But they were into divination, and I’m not,” she specifies, as if correcting a common misconception.

Divination is the art of predicting the future. “My mother is really powerful,” Solea says, recalling a trip she took at 16. She was preparing to go on a ski vacation with her friends when her mother told her, “Be careful, I see the police in the cards.” Solea later found the police in her room on her second day. They’d received a call to investigate a theft. “Someone had stolen everything,” she remembers. In the end, it wasn’t a surprise. 

As a teenager, Solea began experiencing sporadic flashes of the future. Some abilities take time to surface, though. She shrugs as she recounts this, like it’s an inconvenience she’s had to adapt to. “I was seven years old the first time I read the tarot. To me, it was normal,” she remembers. At that time, her feelings about witchcraft were different. “I had a love-and-hate relationship with magic.”

For years, she ran away from her abilities. She tried other paths, training as a nurse in Genoa and working in clinics. But after four years, she traded hospital corridors for open sea, moving between roles onboard, from bartending to purser. It was only in her late twenties, after meeting her future husband, that she anchored herself in Piedmont, where she returned to her roots and worked again as a nurse. That was until COVID.

“I couldn’t take suffering anymore,” she explains. “I needed light.” And just like that, she decided to listen to herself and embrace her true nature. She realized she’s always been Solea. She just needed the courage to quit her job and turn witchcraft into her profession. “Now I’m finally whole,” she says, sounding relieved.

***

There are many types of magic. The green energy — the one Solea will use to build Solea’s World — is part of the domain of “white magic.” But light witchcraft also contains gray, purple, and many other colors, she explains without further details. 

“And the black one?” I ask. Her expression darkens, as if I’ve spoken a forbidden word. 

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she says. “I become anxious, see?” Her hands move in nervous, animated bursts, speaking for her.

Dark witchcraft isn’t the only topic she refuses to discuss. Parts of her project remain a mystery. Some secrets can’t be shared. “It’s a magical law, you can’t reveal some things until they reveal themselves,” she says enigmatically, her face turning cryptic. She smiles again, changes the topic, and returns to the (non-secret) magic she practices, like she’s shutting a door I didn’t know I’d opened.

On the subject of Solea’s World, she corrects the definition she gave of herself. She isn’t just a witch, but also an alchemist. “I transform energies and heal souls,” she says. Not all vibrations are welcome in her practice. Some energy levels unsettle her.

“For example, I don’t accept all the artists in my gallery,” she explains. Some of them are too negative, and she fears they could bring in bad vibes. In her view, the gallery is not a place to make deals. “Money isn’t my goal,” she says. Her dream is to elevate people’s energies and promote well-being; the art gallery is just a small fragment of her overall vision.

Her final aspiration is nothing less than a new form of evolution. “Now humans are stuck. Don’t you see what the world is becoming?” she wonders. Ultimately, witchcraft is a story about surviving in a frightening and uncertain world.

Magic is her natural element, but religion is another place where Solea finds peace. Despite being a witch, she has a strong faith. Shrugging off the fact that women like her were once burned at the stake during the witch hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries, she calls herself Christian. This isn’t an incongruence in her opinion. “The Gospel is just the first witchcraft book,” she argues. 

Heaven and Hell exist in her idea of the afterlife, just with different shades. Solea lost someone, but she seems to know that no one is ever truly gone. “I imagine a place where souls will land, after they’ve completed all the cycles of life.” Still, she isn’t interested in communicating with the dead. She has no business in the afterlife; she is dealing with the living.

“We need to recover our ancient traditions,” she says. “We need magic.” Fortunately, she sees magic everywhere she goes. “There are always signals,” she says.

Solea pays attention to everything she sees: license plate numbers, animals, and objects. Anything can be a clue. Everyday things gain new meaning through her sharp eye. The hare reminds her to run free; the falcon warns her to look closer; a license plate number 111 suggests she is on the right path; 000 means she is starting over. “It’s about awareness,” she says. “When you see something, you can’t unsee it.” She admits that sometimes it’s hard to be herself, but it’s also fun.

What Solea sees is simply a reflection of how acutely aware she is of the world around her. Tarot cards help sharpen that awareness. There are many types of decks. She has a huge collection and is very fond of it.

The Tarot de Marseille [credit: pexels]

Cards can also be used as a cure. “I use them to work on myself,” she says, leaving some positive cards around the house and walking by them many times throughout the day. I ask if there’s a deck she uses just for herself. She shakes her head and tells me, “I can’t read my own cards, I know tarot too well, and I may change their meaning.” The disadvantage of being a witch.

Tarot cards are simply a tool in her hands, but they can also bring trouble. They need to be used wisely. “I can’t tell someone that something will happen to them; the risk is of changing their future,” Solea explains. There is always free will, and she doesn’t want to interfere: it’s the magical law. If she told a brokenhearted girl that in a few months her boyfriend would come back, the girl’s inner growth might stop – reassured, she might simply wait for her love to return. 

Three hours later, the rain intensifies outside. The soft sound of running water fills the room. The sky is a black blanket covering the countryside. It’s time for me to leave.

“I want to give you something,” Solea says, reaching for a small red velvet bag, before letting me go. She puts something inside and adds a pinch of cinnamon, then ties it closed. “It’s an amulet. It will help you.” 

I’m not a witch. I’m not into witchcraft. I define myself as a rational person.

But that amulet is now in my everyday bag. After all, I could always use a bit of magic.