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

by Pam Grossman

I do know this for sure though: show me your witches, and I’ll show you your feelings about women. The fact that the resurgence of feminism and the popularity of the witch are ascending at the same time is no coincidence: the two are reflections of each other.

Whether the witch is depicted as villainous or valorous, she is always a figure of freedom—both its loss and its gain. She is perhaps the only female archetype who is an independent operator. Virgins, whores, daughters, mothers, wives—each of these is defined by whom she is sleeping with or not, the care that she is giving or that is given to her, or some sort of symbiotic debt that she must eventually pay. The witch owes nothing. That is what makes her dangerous. And that is what makes her divine. Witches have power on their own terms. They have agency. They create. They praise. They commune with the spiritual realm, freely and free of any mediator. They metamorphose, and they make things happen. They are change agents whose primary purpose is to transform the world as it is into the world they would like it to be.

The witch is the ultimate feminist icon because she is a fully rounded symbol of female oppression and liberation. She shows us how to tap into our own might and magic, despite the many who try to strip us of our power.

Doing witchcraft is a way for us to strive to be the best version of ourselves, to honor the sacred, and ultimately to try to make the planet a better place. It also allows for the fact that both light and darkness can offer great gifts.

One of the most famous tales we have of a woman being a magical, evil sex monster is that of Lilith, Eve’s predecessor, and the supposed original apple of Adam’s eye. Lilith’s story as Adam’s first wife got popularized in the eighth century CE thanks to a text called The Alphabet of Ben Sira. It stated that God created both Lilith and Adam from the earth, but that she refused to lie beneath him during sex, believing that they were equals since they were made from the same material. Adam declared that he was superior to her and declined her request to be on top. Furious, she uttered God’s true name—an enormous sin in Jewish tradition—and then flew away from Eden. In some versions of the story, Lilith then copulates with Samael, the angel of death, and bears thousands of children, thus earning the moniker Mother of Demons. God sends three angels after Lilith, and they tell her that if she doesn’t return to Eden, they will kill a hundred of her children each day. She refuses and begins murdering human babies in retaliation for the death of her own offspring. Per Jewish folk tradition, it was believed that only a magical amulet with the names of the three angels could ward her off and protect human newborns from being killed by her.

Christianity, the dominant American religion, holds up a mother—and a virgin one at that—as the highest ideal for a woman.

Even outside of mystical contexts, a persistent idea of “female intuition” implies that women have some innate sense of awareness that men do not. Personally, I’m not convinced that this is true. Even if women seem more sensitized to invisible forces or subtle emotional cues, this most likely has as much to do with socialization as biology. Perhaps people of all genders have the potential to be equally intuitive, but many men have been taught to suppress this, because sensitivity has historically been linked to femininity and weakness.

Surrealism, the art movement pioneered in the 1920s by André Breton, which incorporated imagery from dreams, myths, and the unconscious mind.

As she wrote in her best-selling 1979 book The Spiral Dance, “The symbol of the Goddess allows men to experience and integrate the feminine side of their nature, which is often felt to be the deepest and most sensitive aspect of self. The Goddess does not exclude the male; She contains him. . . .”

Musician Anohni has stated, “. . . I’m a witch. I actually de-baptized myself. And what’s great about being transgender is you’re born with a natural religion. It applies almost across the board no matter what culture or economic group or nation that you’re from—you’re almost automatically a witch. None of the patriarchal monotheisms will have you.”

In Starhawk’s view, the witch is a being who honors all of life; therefore activism is a large component of her practice. As she sees it, witchcraft is a process of dissolving estrangement—or rather, the false idea of estrangement—from other living beings. And once you do that, you realize that taking care of others is a holy responsibility, because everything is interconnected. Involvement with ecology and environmentalism, civil rights discourse, and antiwar efforts are all included in Starhawk’s spiritual system, which she now classifies as “modern earth-based spirituality and ecofeminism,” according to her website.

typical models of power are hierarchies or ladders that cause oppression and disconnection. Covens, however, are structured in circles or webs: “In a circle, each person’s face can be seen, each person’s voice can be heard and valued. All points on a circle are equidistant from its center: that is its definition and its function—to distribute energy equally.” The coven is not only a sanctuary for kindred outliers, then. It’s also an aspirational paradigm for society at large.

The link between groups of outspoken feminists and covens was fortified during the 2017 Women’s March immediately following Donald Trump’s inauguration. Among the most popular protest signs were those emblazoned with phrases like HEX THE PATRIARCHY, WITCHES AGAINST WHITE SUPREMACY, and WE ARE THE GRANDDAUGHTERS OF THE WITCHES YOU WEREN’T ABLE TO BURN.

marginalized people have long gravitated to witchcraft because it enables them to have access to power and to be celebrated as sacred in a society that questions their worth and threatens their well-being on a daily basis.