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

by Pam Grossman

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.

I honor nature and the divinity that is inside me and all living beings, and I strive to spread light and to be in service of something higher than myself: Spirit, the gods, the Goddess, the Mystery—that which language is too restrictive to name.

The church having forbidden its offices and all external methods of knowledge to woman, was profoundly stirred with indignation at her having through her own wisdom, penetrated into some of the most deeply subtle secrets of nature: and it was a subject of debate during the middle ages if learning for woman was not an additional capacity for evil, as owing to her, knowledge had first been introduced in the world.”

Yes, I’m a good witch and a good person. But I also embrace complexity. I intend to wear a black cape over my proverbial pink gown. To laugh too loud and get real mad and defend myself and the people I care about. I want more out of life than to float gently along in a bubble. I want to wear the pointy hat and the crown. To live as vividly as I can, as I am. To be wicked and winsome and wild and whole. I want to be more than either/or.

So let’s get this straight: witches could copulate with devils, commit murder, and change the weather itself—but causing the actual loss of such an important extremity was too much for Kramer to fathom: Don’t worry, boys, it’s just a trick of the eye! Even all-powerful witches could not breach the sanctity of the boner.

That’s why we become witches: to show our scorn of pretending life’s a safe business, to satisfy our passion for adventure. . . . One doesn’t become a witch to run round being harmful, or to run round being helpful either, a district visitor on a broomstick. It’s to escape all that—to have a life of one’s own.

Say what you will about witches, but we are a literary bunch.

“Witches do not kiss the Devil’s posterior, first because they never kiss anyone’s posterior, and, secondly, because the Devil is never there for anyone to kiss.”

“There is no ‘joining’ W.I.T.C.H. If you are a woman and dare to look within yourself, you are a Witch. You make your own rules. You are free and beautiful. You can be invisible or evident in how you make your witch-self known.

One of my favorite photos from the @witchpdx Instagram feed shows two W.I.T.C.H.es with a pair of signs that say HEY PAUL RYAN . . . MISSING SOMETHING? and holding a life-size spine between them. It’s an image that’s both wickedly funny and perfectly macabre,

In February 2017, magic practitioner Michael M. Hughes shared his “A Spell to Bind Donald Trump and All Those Who Abet Him” on Medium.com. As with most spells that circulate, it has a list of ingredients (his suggestions include an unflattering photo of Trump, a Tower tarot card, and a tiny stub of an orange candle—though a baby carrot can be substituted, he states). It also has an incantation to be read out loud. An excerpt of Hughes’s spell includes the following language: I call upon you To bind Donald J. Trump So that his malignant works may fail utterly That he may do no harm To any human soul Nor any tree Animal Rock Stream or Sea Bind him so that he shall not break our polity Usurp our liberty Or fill our minds with hate, confusion, fear, or despair And bind, too, All those who enable his wickedness And those whose mouths speak his poisonous lies.

Witchcraft was a haven then, a place for me to retreat from the dizzying demands of my day-to-day. I would light my candles, check in with my deities, mark lunar and solar occasions in quiet, private ways. I’d buy bouquets of flowers to decorate my cubicle on the Pagan holy days, and save up more elaborate ritual sessions for nights and weekends when I had the energy or the need. All of this sustained me through family hardships and health woes and the stress and strain of city living.

That the male captains of industry and institution are the ones who tend to use the term the most is ironic to say the least. During the witch hunts of Western Europe and the New England colonies, tens of thousands of people—most of them female—were persecuted for witchcraft they almost definitely didn’t practice by citizens who usually had far more power than they did. These so-called witches were in fact victims of religious propaganda, paranoia, and scapegoating, not to mention they were usually of lower social and economic status than the magistrates and religious leaders who put them on trial and, in many cases, condemned them to death on entirely false charges. In contrast, there is ample reason for legitimate suspicion, if not outright conviction, of many of the very powerful men who are now acting like aggrieved Salem villagers. And while their livelihoods may be at stake (pardon the pun), their lives are not.

Not only is being a witch now considered a good thing by many, but the definition of what a witch actually is is also undergoing a revamp. The word is now being used to refer to any woman who is deemed a rule-breaker, world-shaker, or no-shit-taker.

And that’s where things get confusing, and it can seem as though the goalposts for what a “real witch” is are constantly moving. In truth, no one owns witches, in the same way that no one fan owned my favorite band. My identity as a member of their community—their coven, if you will—is personal and indelible and nobody can take that away from me.

The metaphor of witches and writers is particularly apt when one considers that the words grammar and grimoire are sprouted from the same etymological seed.