In a parking lot in Alameda, a 4-foot-8 witch offers her 5-foot python, Waffles, to a little girl in a pink T-shirt. As small hands touch snake skin, opera singer Diva Marisa steps off the stage and into the crowd, sending soaring notes down Webster Street.
Waffles, apparently more interested in the nearby spectacle, turns his head to watch a man in traditional witch attire — black lace sleeves, a sweeping asymmetrical skirt, black boots and a pointed hat, not to mention reading glasses. He repeatedly tosses his daughter into the air, almost in time with the music.
The audience juggles crystals from Sacramento, spell jars from Redwood City and other recent acquisitions to free their hands for applause. Waffles coils back into the arms of his keeper. The python, whose origins are not merely as occult as one might hope, hails from a breeder in Hayward.
Waffles the snake and Diva Marisa, the singer, were among the thousands of souls who descended on Alameda on Saturday for the city’s ninth annual Witchfest. Some had traveled as far as 260 miles to browse dozens of vendors selling everything from miniature coffins and pots of Goddess Glow Balm to paintings of cats whose eyes light up under a flashlight…