Our world is getting spoopy with brave souls heading off for the skeleton war, pumpkin-adorned houses, and warty hags in pointed hats leering from candy displays and shop windows. In honor of those lovely hags, I want to talk about witches. My very first idols were witches. Let me take you back.
At some distant point in the mists of the ’80s, my parents made a big purchase: a VCR. The first video we ever rented was “The Wizard of Oz,” which I instantly fell in love with. I didn’t fall for Dorothy, per se, but with Glinda, and to a lesser extent, the Wicked Witch. To my parents, this should have been a clue about the weird kid and adult I was destined to become.
After I forced my parents to buy the video (I cried when it went back to the store) and watched it a few thousand times, I desired new entertainment and magic. This came in the form of “Sleeping Beauty.” That movie had it all. Visuals that imprinted themselves on my imagination forever, sassy fairies, perfect music, and most importantly, Maleficent. I loved her instantly. She was powerful, beautiful, and she turned into a DRAGON. I wept each time I watched the prince kill her.
I wanted to be Maleficent and my witches. I ran through the house with a cordless phone as my wand, calling on “all the powers of hell!” I tried as hard as I could to get our broom to fly. These were my first witches and the first inklings of the tiny goth I would become. They were also, outside of my family, my first icons of true female power, magic, and a gateway to a forgotten history of women.
There’s a reason witches are villains in so many stories: witches are women. They are the very embodiment of female power that cannot be controlled by the patriarchy. Witches are sexual, liberated, and powerful. There is no better dream of female freedom than flying a broom across the moon, sporting the latest in pointed headgear.
Witches, unlike zombies, werewolves and vampires, have a very real origin in history. The idea of “witches” as hags who had sold their souls to the devil was a part of a concerted campaign of misogyny that pervaded the European Renaissance. As Europe’s elite — read: men — strove for greater knowledge of the world, they revolted against the women who had, for centuries, continued a tradition of herbal knowledge, midwifery and folk magic. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of women who threatened the power of a small club of insecure men were hanged and burned.
But the “burning times” as they are called, were just another chapter in a long history of witches and women who inspired this little girl to try to fly. We are taught history in a pretty simple way: from the beginning of “civilization.” But, despite what young Earth-ers might assume, people have been around for a long time. Hundreds of thousands of years. Those Paleolithic and Neolithic populations practiced religions. In an area ranging from central Europe to India, most religions centered on a figure historians have called the Great Goddess, as Merlin Stone stated in her seminal book on the subject, “God was a Woman.” Then things changed. Invaders who worshipped gods of the mountains and sky swept through the lands, subjugating and subsuming the Goddess culture, and sowing the seeds of “great civilizations.” This conquest is nearly forgotten in history, but it is remembered to this day in myth. The invaders told stories of how their god subdued the old goddess, a goddess of the Earth, eternity and transformation. In their stories, the god was a brave young hero and the goddess became, you guessed it, a dragon.
Over the years the icons of the old Goddess filtered down to us. The dragon was the ultimate evil; another name for the devil. The goddess became a witch, the servant of the devil. The embodiment of female independence and power was reduced to the sexual subject of a man. Objects of magic, cones of power, and cleansing brooms became the witches’ garb. Sacred pagan days, such as Samhain, became the witches’ night. Witches flew over and danced in the light of the celestial emblem of the feminine — the moon.
The feminine, transformative, nourishing Earth was the first goddess. She was the first villain and the first dragon. To a weird little girl, she was also the first story I ever loved. I’ve loved witches ever since Maleficent. I’ve sought them out in fiction and in reality. I loved them so much that I became one.
As you’re enjoying your candy corn and pumpkin spice mai tai this Halloween, take a minute to reflect on the witches and the dragon. Consider the significance of horror being personified as a woman who has power and no need for a man or a god. Think about the dragons deep in the mountains hiding troves of secrets. And when you see a little girl in a pointy hat, remember that she is a goddess.
