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December 9 - December 10, 2022
In every culture, in every age, in every place and, probably, in every heart, there is magic.
And perhaps one of the most powerful magic words of all is ‘Abracadabra!’
‘Abracadabra’ is probably familiar to us all. But it has more sinister connotations as well. Londoners used to paint it on their doors to ward off the plague in the 17th century. The
She created a magic world that co-exists with our own, and specified the careful boundaries and techniques of how its magic worked.
The witches are depicted as old and hunched, carrying a stick alongside their familiars: birds, goats, a many-legged sort of fish-cat and the devil himself.
In the 17th century and beyond, women were often disenfranchised and vulnerable within wider society, along with the disabled and mentally ill. They were easy targets and that’s what we’ve seen in the iconography of witchcraft ever since: the witch with a walking stick is really a vulnerable old woman.
Accusations of witchcraft were a way for societies to control what they viewed as ‘disruptive’ female behaviour.
The rider looking over the bristles of this domestic item suggested an inversion of power, a world turned upside down, women all-powerful over men.
