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Halloween is a popular American family holiday consisting of costumes and candy, but its origins are deeply rooted in Celtic paganism. Halloween began to be celebrated in America in the 19th century with the influx of Irish immigrants who brought over their old traditions based on the cross-quarter holiday between equinox and solstice called Samhain (which translates to “summer’s end”.) Because the belief was that at this time of the year magic was more potent, young women sought fortune tellers and seers to divine insights into their future husbands. This is how the holiday became associated with witches and the supernatural.
I have been practicing witchcraft since college, but I rarely tell people that I’m a witch. For the most part, this is because I assume people will misunderstand. Last year I told my uncle I was a witch; I don’t remember the context. His response was, “So, does that mean you practice the dark arts?” That’s pretty much the response I expect from most people.
Witches are perceived as Satan worshipping heathens. Witch is a dirty word. Witch is a term used against women considered nasty, difficult, uppity, disobedient, rude. Witches are portrayed as evil antagonists in movies and stories. But none of these myths are true. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Modern witchcraft is a diverse religion that includes more sects than Christianity. Like any other religion or spirituality, witchcraft seeks connection with divinity. Witches are primarily nature lovers, healers and peacemakers. They believe everything that they do will return to them three-fold like magical karma, so they are cautious with their actions.
That said, where did these negative ideas about witches being evil come from?
HISTORY OF THE WITCH
The earliest written record of a witch is in the Bible, the book of Samuel, considered to be written sometime between 931 B.C. and 721 B.C., in which King Saul sought the Witch of Endor to summon the dead prophet Samuel’s spirit to aid in the defeat of the Philistine army.
The word “witch” comes from the Old English word wicca or wise one. Historically witches were people who practiced witchcraft. Many were healers, midwives, herbalists and other types of wise-women. With the complete adoption of Christianity in Europe in the Early Middle Ages, witches still practiced the old religions in some form or another. Since they were misunderstood, Christians perceived them as violent and evil and believed that they were working with the devil. This is because Christians believed that everything in the spirit world was evil and demonic. Natural forces, omens, ancestors, spirit guides, dryads, nymphs, fairies, and all the other spiritual beings of the pagan world were considered necessarily evil. And since witches communed with these beings, they were doing the devil’s work, the embodiment of evil.
In medieval times not being “Christian enough” or fitting into society’s box could be reason enough to put you on trial as a witch, which was secondhand for demon worshipper. Here in the United States, we know of the notorious Salem Witch Trials, but worse witch trials occurred all over the world beginning in the early 15th century and continuing through the 17th century, including The Würzburg Witch Trials, the Basque Witch Trials and the Pendle Witch Trials. The number of people executed for witchcraft is estimated at somewhere between 40,000 to 50,000 and a disproportionate amount were women. Being called a witch, though most of these people were not witches at all, meant torture, imprisonment, and execution.
Some historians speculate that the witch hunts were incited by the enclosure of the commons. Following the Great Famine and the Black Death, surviving landowners began constructing fences around once commonly shared land and resources that families had cultivated and grazed animals on for generations and depended on for survival. Privatizing common land resources as well as an increase in taxation and food scarcity, displaced mostly elder women and widows, who were rightfully angry and vocally protested the change. These women were some of the first to be put on trial for witchcraft.
Additionally, women who were practicing herbalism, midwifery and other healing arts were percieved as a threat to the newly trained male university physicians. These universities were run by the medieval church and starting to professionalize medicine, setting back women’s health care by hundreds of years. “The real issue was control: male upper-class healing under the auspices of the Church was acceptable, female healing as part of a peasant subculture was not,” writes Barbara Ehrenreich in Witches, Midwives, & Nurses. However, most women still prefered the folk medicines of witches as they were far more successful. Ehrenreich says, “The witch was an empiricist: she relied on her senses rather than on faith or doctrine, she believed in trial and error, cause and effect. Her attitude was not religiously passive, but actively inquiring.” The witch hunts and subsequent trials served to wipe out the competition.
WITCH WOUND
To this day women are killed as witches for far less. Since 2010, many men and women suspected of using witchcraft have been beaten and killed in Papua New Guinea, including a young mother who was burned alive. Similar episodes continue to occur in Africa, South America, the Middle East and in immigrant communities in Europe and the United States.
This historical warning to behave and conform is deeply ingrained in us and often it keeps us repressed, just as it was meant to. In her insightful book, Heal the Witch Wound, Celeste Larsen writes, “The messaging of these displays of violence was clear and direct: Seeking power while existing in a female body is dangerous. Defying societal norms around gender and sexuality is dangerous. Speaking out against injustice is dangerous. Questioning the authority of those in power is dangerous. Offending the wrong person is dangerous. Trusting in your friends and neighbors is dangerous. Believing in pagan superstitions is dangerous. Being different is dangerous—so keep to yourself, keep quiet, keep your head down, and keep out of the way.”
There is even a term for it “witch wound.” The witch wound is a shared, intergenerational, spiritual wound that was established in the Burning Times and continues today. Many of us still carry the witch wound, stored trauma held in our DNA or carried in our collective consciousness. There is a fear of being burned, persecuted, or judged if we speak our truth, act in ways that go against the popular mindset, or practice healing arts, especially those associated with women. This fear may run deep and manifest in ways such as playing small or holding back from doing the work we are called to do. The witch wound is your psyche's way of trying to keep you safe.
My witch wound manifests in multiple ways, such as not telling people I am a witch due to a fear of being misunderstood, for one. I still look over my shoulder before hugging a tree. I also censor myself from talking about goddesses, spirit guides, omens and other such witchy things around strangers I’ve yet to vet. This might be common sense or paranoia. At best, people will believe I am weird and delusional, which I’m okay with. At worst, they will think that I am colluding with satanic forces and should be kept away from their children. True story, a Young Life bible instructor once told my high school students not to trust me because I am not Christian. Perhaps I will not be burned, but I might be ostracized or even lose my job.
WITCHES IN MEDIA
Witches have been portrayed throughout world literature, particularly in fairy tales, as the evil villain. Witches eat children and poison princesses. Witches were the worst thing we could conjure to scare our children and keep them safe. This was based on the times in which fairy tales dominated. During the Renaissance or Elizabethan Era, on the tail of the Burning Times, people feared sorcery and curses with all manner of suspicion and because they didn’t know any better, they associated these things with witches.
This misconception continues today. When I looked up the meaning of the word witch in the modern dictionary it said: “a woman thought to have magic powers, especially evil ones, popularly depicted as wearing a black cloak and pointed hat and flying on a broomstick.”
Even in today’s media, most interpretations of witches are incorrect. Witches do not command an army of flying monkeys. Witches are not psycho killers, and they do not worship the devil, nor do they need to look like sexy goth chicks or old hags. Every time a new movie or television show comes out about witches, I am sorely disappointed to discover that once again, they missed the mark. With a few exceptions, the witch character is usually evil and dark. The old medieval stereotypes continue to play out in modern narratives.
MODERN WITCHCRAFT
Being a witch to me means that my spirituality is nature-based. Witches are animists with a deep respect for the natural world—plants, animals, rocks and the elements. Witches believe that the divine is in everything, here on Earth and within us, a part of all creation, not a punishing, demanding man on a throne in the sky looking down on us.
In fact, witches honor the divine feminine and the Goddess. Most major religions are patriarchal, and it may feel normal to refer to a monotheistic God or the Lord as a man, our Father that art in heaven. Witches are devoted to the Goddess as the mother of all creation, as well as multiple goddesses and gods. Witchcraft is very much in the body and sensuality based. There is not a hierarchy of spirituality above the body as you find in many religions. Sexuality is not perceived as profane but as mystic.
Witches also practice magic, yet another idea easily misunderstood by most people. I don’t pull rabbits out of my hat. I don’t wave a wand and say abracadabra, although I do sometimes wield a wand to cast a circle. And abracadabra is appropriately magical as it comes from the Hebrew and Aramaic and translates to “I create as I speak,” which is magic at its essence. The author Starhawk and one of the cofounders of Reclaiming Witchcraft defines magic as "the art of changing consciousness at will.” Magic happens by setting intentions and shifting thought patterns using animistic and pagan rituals in alignment with the natural world. Or as Alix E. Harrow writes in her fun novel Once and Future Witches, “That’s all magic is, really: the space between what you have and what you need.”
Witches are completely magical but also totally mundane. Witches walk amongst us, and you may not even realize it. We don’t fly or float or melt when you throw water at us, at least not in this realm. For witches, there is more to existence than this three-dimensional reality. “The traditional magician cultivates an ability to shift out of his or her common state of consciousness precisely in order to make contact with the other organic forms of sensitivity and awareness with which human existence is entwined,” writes David Abram in his book The Spell of the Sensuous. Dreams, trance, myths and symbols divinely inspired hold just as much if not more value as the reality of matter that we uniformly agree upon existing.
Witchcraft suits me and my values and life philosophy just as others feel more suited to Christianity or Buddhism. Witchcraft does not clash with any other spiritual practices; I can still fast for Yom Kippur and chant mantras on my malas. However, witchcraft is still not as socially acceptable as other religions. It’s still equated with dark arts or Satanism in many places (which, by the way, The Satanic Temple is pretty cool, look it up if you don’t know.) Witches are still portrayed as evil in films and books.
These days, it’s important to destroy taboos, dismantle our programming and reconsider our reality. That’s the only way we can move forward with love and abundance to outweigh the fear and scarcity models that proliferate our media. It’s important now more than ever to take back the word witch as a term of empowerment not degradation. We need our witch kin to help our planet heal and embrace a new path toward liberation for all. So mote it be.