Waking the Witch: Reflections on Women, Magic, and Power (Witchcraft Bestseller)

by Pam Grossman

I call myself witch for other reasons, too. It is a means of identifying how I carry myself in the world, and the kind of energetic current I wish to be a conduit for. At any given time, it can signify that I am a feminist; someone who celebrates freedom for all and who will fight against injustice using every tool at her disposal; a person who values intuition and self-expression; a kindred spirit with other people who favor the unconventional, the underground, and the uncanny. Or it can simply refer to the fact that I am a woman who dares to speak her own mind and display the full gamut of human emotion—behavior that is still met by society with judgment or disdain. Like many others these days, I use this word with both absolute conviction and with my tongue in my cheek. And like many such epithets, it is loaded and coded. I’m thoughtful about how I use it, when and why and with whom, because it is a word that carries weight, even as it liberates. It resists being flattened or reduced. It bristles at binary. And that’s also why I love it, because, hey, so do I.