“I think all women are witches,” Nicole Boekhoorn explains over an aperitif. “But over time, the term has taken on a negative connotation, which is why I prefer describing Sterrekopje as a home for wise women.”
I’m sitting in a candlelit dining room, rain softly falling outside, surrounded by a group of women who are discussing what drew them to Sterrekopje Farm, a healing retreat nestled in the foothills of the Franschhoek mountains in South Africa’s West Cape. We’re a mixed group: CEOs and stay-at-home mothers, writers and people working in the charity sector. “It’s interesting that we have such a broad span of guests here,” Boekhoorn goes on, “It really captures those classic archetypes of maiden, mother and crone.”
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The Wiccan references are on point. With hitting screens this month, along with the rising popularity of #Witchtok and Etsy witches, it feels like the right moment to connect with my own magical alter ego. And where better than Sterrekopje’s seasonal Wise Women retreat, where I’m promised “a week of feminine awakening, growth and renewal”? Having attended my fair share of retreats in the past – from the punitive to the outright trippy – I’m intrigued.
For Boekhoorn and her wife and co-owner Fleur Huijskens, Sterrekopje was created precisely because there was nothing else like it out there. “I've visited most of the world’s healing hotels and been on many, many retreats. They heal you in parts, not as a . That’s why we created Sterrekopje. We built it for ourselves. It’s how we live, and that’s what we try to show other women: how beautiful it is to live in sisterhood.”
To note: beauty is a recurrent theme here. While the property itself has been standing in the shadow of an ancient mountain for nearly two centuries, it’s been thoughtfully restored over the course of five years by the couple. The gardens are fertile with healing grasses and herbs, a loose freeform style that reminds me of Piet Oudolf’s meadows. Within the main farmhouse, there’s more to delight the eye with a twinkling glass conservatory, womblike guest bedrooms and a Nancy Meyers-style copper-clad kitchen – all roaring hearths and shelves artfully stacked with local pottery.
It’s a true reflection of Nicole and Fleur’s global travels (and impeccable taste): “I love beautiful things,” Nicole goes on, “I think it starts there, because why would you want to work on yourself if it doesn’t start in a place where you feel truly at home, at ease, surrounded by beauty?”
The “work” she refers to is far from formulaic – indeed, no two Wise Women retreats at Sterrekopje are the same. Running just twice a year, the week’s schedule is informed by the seasons, although the common thread is about learning how to connect more deeply with your intuition and “essence”.
I don’t think I’ve been in touch with either since having my two babies, and so the first few days at the retreat were really about re-grounding myself, encouraged through the farm’s signature “rituals” and “rhythms”. I found the “ritual of cleansing” delightful; an hour-long session in the farm’s Bathhouse, where I was sloughed and soothed in a marble hammam before being invited to dip in a natural pool fringed by spearmint. I emerged feeling freshly minted myself, like a newborn baby. Rest is also positively encouraged – I’m told “a wise woman knows that rest doesn’t need to be earned” – and so, I embraced the afternoon nap with gusto.
The farm’s medicine walk, one of the more esoteric experiences of the week, felt more like a rude awakening. Derived from the Native American vision quest tradition, this self-guided hike is usually done in silence and on an empty stomach (a shame given that the farm-to-fork breakfasts here are superlative). The premise of it is that you venture into nature alone at sunrise and put a single question to whoever might be listening, be it spirits or guides. I duly set off with my paper map – and phone in my pocket for when it invariably failed me – but throughout the hike, the constant pulse of notifications drew my attention to something even more profound: that the nature of life back home was so fast and urgent, often distracting me from being fully present.
Sadly, there’s no silver bullet or spell that can cure this – the paradox of a retreat is that you do have to return to normal life. But cultivating an awareness of what’s going on in your mind and body can help shift things a little. This is where a somatic healing session proved useful ( coming from the Greek for “the body within”). In the space of the farm’s Mongolian yoga yurt, I was invited by a friendly facilitator called Lindl to embrace unstructured movement through dancing, stretching and active breathwork. What initially felt silly soon conjured a crescendo of emotional release. As the adage goes, the body keeps the score.
Having tended to both body and mind, I was primed for magic of an altogether different sort: dream manifestation therapy, perhaps the culmination of my week of woo. Of course, manifesting is now mainstream, but this particular therapy is used at Sterrekopje as a way for women to map their hopes for the future on a subconscious level.
In practice, this involved a detailed 1:1 goal setting session with resident therapist Gerrit Visser, who then gently takes guests on a guided meditation (said to mimic clinical hypnosis) while incanting those same aspirations back to them. On a neurological level, I have absolutely no idea how it worked, but surrendering to the process felt oddly freeing, clarifying even.
This was the true magic of the Wise Women retreat. Not the performative side of being a witch – all cacao, crystals and Etsy-adjacent spells. But, rather, being able to properly tune into myself with tools I could carry into everyday life. Like I suspected all along: it’s practical magic.
The next Wise Women retreat runs from 5 to 11 December 2026.
