Tag Archives: witchcraft

NYT: On not Looking like a ‘Witch’

Wear your gray hair long, ladies, says the New York Times, but be careful not to look like “a witch.”

The article is tied to a “march” that was clearly a staged publicity event. Still, it resonated with NYT readers, and one commenter even started a blog.

That choice [to wear one’s gray hair long]  however, flies in the face of a long-held assumption that a lavish head of snowy hair is somehow unseemly, a rude reminder that a woman, whatever her age, remains a sexual being.

Much of the 16th-17th century art of witches touches the “wrongness” of sexuality in post-menopausal women. Here is an article on witch hunts and gender, and i would also recommend art historian Linda Hults’ The Witch as Muse if you want to think more about artistic representation of witches, which were not made in any sort of journalistic way.

The Basic Split in Pagan Witchcraft

Issue 2 of the British newsletter Pentagram, November 1964, price 2s, "for private circulation only."

Issue 2 of the British newsletter Pentagram, November 1964, price 2s, “for private circulation only.”

As I posted earlier, the issue of The Pomegranate now in press has an article about Robert Cochrane, one of the first English witches to use the term “traditional” in opposition to Gerald Gardner’s Wicca, back in the 1960s. In fact, my own current researches are going to force me to grapple with that term and its permutations quite a bit.

The term “traditional” is tossed around a lot more now than in past decades, but the clashes between various forms of revived Witchcraft started quite some time ago — in the 1960s, at least. Some of the infighting appeared in a short-lived publication called Pentagram, arguably the first English-language Pagan zine.  Note the headline, “Before Gardner—What?”

Gerald Gardner himself had died earlier that year, so he could not say anything. There might be a connection with the timing of the article!

The unsigned short article complains, in essence, that Gardner’s version of Witchcraft is getting all the press attention. It continues, “Now as you must know, there are a number of other groups, quite apart from the little group in which I am interested, who practice various forms of Magic and Witchcraft. Now why does the Press make no mention of them . . . ?” and goes on to speak of “hereditary covens” and about Witchcraft is a “complicated and all-embracing way of life.”

There you have one split that has persisted to this day. Against Gardner’s claims of unbroken ancient tradition (which I do not think that any Wiccan leader would advocate today), you have another set of claims: that there are non-Wiccan groups that do not seek publicity (yet are apparently insulted that they do not receive it), that are “hereditary” in some sense, and that are more demanding of their members than some mere Stone Age fertility cult allegedly rediscovered in southern England.

Was that Cochrane writing ? Possibly. He did write for Pentagram under his own name as well. And the use of “sock puppets” predates the Internet. The idea of being more “complicated” sounds like something he might have said.

The appeal to (undocumented) tradition and other logical fallacies are still found  in “Traditional Witchcraft,” but there can be something else as well, something healthy and refreshing. I will return to this topic in the near future.

 

Pentagram Pizza: Buy It by the Slice in the Occult City

pentagram pizza• David Metcalfe writes in depth about the “Mapping the Occult City” event that I mentioned earlier.

• The one true religion —  the Church of Aircraft. It has some bizarre rituals too.

• Dver on polytheism: “Gods are not characters.”

• A rare book on witchcraft — a manual for prosecutors, similar to the Malleus Maleficarum  — has been re-discovered in the library of the University of Alberta (the article is a little unclear.)

Its pages describe cackling wenches sailing across the night sky on broom sticks, frolicking in nocturnal orgies of twisted delight and casting Satanic spells to doom crops with lightning and hail.

The usual. But note that the organized persecution of witchcraft was coincidental with the rise of modernity, not the Middle Ages.

Tempest in a Pointy Hat

Organizers of this year’s Pagan Pride Day in Denver, Colorado, want to set a Guinness World Record for the largest number of people dressed as pointy-hat witches.  One of the organizers posted to a statewide mailing list,

I think that we should let witches in non-black hats participate, too…I was thinking we would have the black hat witches as requested per the Guinness guidelines for our official count, but then in the front row we can have witches wearing other colors of hats—holding a banner that says “Real Witches Come in All Colors”. This way, we would be combatting the stereoptype rather than supporting it, and maybe we can persuade the Guinness folks into dropping or renaming the “dressed as witches” category—as a wise witchy lady pointed out, this is really just as offensive as having a “largest number of people dressed like Native Americans” or “largest number of people dressed like Jewish people” category…Definitely NOT what we’re going for with the Pagan Pride message! So please spread the word that the hat does not have to be black after all. We all know of course that not all witches even wear pointy hats, but let’s ease the Guinness folks into it slowly and start this year with our hats in many colors to help get the point across.

I am a little confused here, because I searched the Guinness site and cannot find anything about witches in an existing category—please let me know if I overlooked it.

Of course, someone else immediately replied,

I still think this is offensive.    The last thing I would think we want to do is to promote the stereotypical image of the classic wicked “witch” in an event that is trying to promote us to the public. . . .  My spiritual path is far more sacred to me than trying to break a world record for pointy hats.   I don’t see where that is honoring the Lady and Lord at all.

So will witches-in-pointy-hats end up in Guinness next to the “world’s fastest toilet“?  We have a long way to go to catch up with “Sikhs in turbans” or “Orthodox Jew with sidelocks,” after all. Is it worth the bother?

The Bushranger and the Witches

A quirky story has been filtering out of Australia in bits and pieces.

First came the discovery of the headless skeleton of Ned Kelly (1854–1880), the country’s most infamous bushranger (outlaw) of the 19th century, which involved DNA matching and other modern techniques.

Then his descendents appealed for whoever had the skull to bring it back.

Then comes a “self-proclaimed” (a term used to avoid libel suits) witch from New Zealand who says that she has it — “given” to her by a security guard (under what circumstances?).

This woman, Anna Hoffman, was supposedly a friend of Australia’s most famous pre-Wiccan witch and trance-artist, Rosaleen Norton of Melbourne. An Australian writer on occultism, Nevill Drury, has devoted quite a lot of time to writing about Norton. including a recent article in The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies, titled “The Magical Cosmology of Rosaleen Norton.”

Which is why I am blogging about Ned Kelly.

“Magic Shows” at Lapham’s Quarterly

Via Invocatio: Check the Summer 2012 issue of the online magazine Lapham’s Quarterly for an issue devoted to magic, small-w witchcraft, wonder-working, spiritualism, and carnivores versus vegetarians.

Then go back to Invocatio for more news on the study of Western esotericism.

“Season of the Witch”

On Peg Aloi’s recommendation, I recently watched Season of the Witch, also known as Hungry Wives.  As Peg mentioned, part of it is witchcraft-meets-Second Wave feminism, and part of it acknowledges the whole “occult explosion” of the late 1960s-early 1970s.

Maybe it it is what the old Bewitched series would have been if that show had any sort of edge to it.

Or Mad Men with a coven, bumped up to the early 1970s. (Hey, Mom had that couch!)

Enjoyable, and with enough twists that it rates three pentacles.

 

More on Pop Witchcraft in Movies and TV

At The Juggler, Zan continues the series on witches in pop culture with a look at the 1990s.

No, I did not know that Charmed wins the category of “longest-running hour-long series that features a trio of women.” But then it started after M. and I had moved up into the hills where, not being committed enough to TV to get a satellite dish, we get by with one or two channels.

Hanging the Salem Witches was a Good Idea, said the Zuñis.

From Philip Jenkins’ Dream Catchers: How Mainstream America Discovered Native Spirituality, which I am reading as part of some research on changing attitudes towards shamanism:

In 1882 when a group of Zuñi emissaries visited Salem [Mass.] . . . they congratulated the citizens for their ancestors’ determined response to the witchcraft problem. Through the 1890s, U.S. authorities were struggling to suppress Zuñi persecution of witches in conflicts that nearly led to war. (31)

Which reminded me of one of my all-time favorite articles, Malcolm Brenner’s “A Witch among the Navajo,” or what happens when Pagan Witchcraft meets witch-as-translation-for-our-word-for-evil-magic-worker.

At the time of writing it, Malcolm was a newspaper reporter in Gallup, New Mexico, and the Zuñi tribal government was part of his beat. Previously he had lived on the Navajo reservation to the north, during which the events he described took place. His website.

 

The Puzzle Path to Witchcraft

Clues to Witchcraft's Riddles?

Looking at the box, M. said, “It reminds me of the Christina Collection.” That took me back to the year we first lived together, when we rented a somewhat-winterized 1920s summer cabin in the faded resort town of Manitou Springs, Colorado, on the western edge of Colorado Springs.

Exploring the attics (there were two), we found a suitcase. Evidently it had been up there for several years. Inside were some clothes, a diary, and other items. From them we pieced together a partial picture of a twenty-something woman named Christina, her misadventures in Colorado Springs’ tiny lesbian bar scene, and other facts about her.

We never figured out her last name or any contact details, though, or why she stored her suitcase there—and she never came back for it in the six years we lived at that address.

All of this is a long introduction to “In the Drip of an Eave,” which is described by its maker as “a unique new way to learn witchcraft, this kit contains three books and handmade items, puzzles, and riddles. Carefully designed to evoke a true witchcraft experience.”

It’s the same principle as the Christina Collection, but with a smaller cardboard box instead of a suitcase.

Modred, the creator, is selling the kit. Mine is a review copy, and having sent a major editing project off to the printer, I now want to settle down in front of the wood stove (it’s chilly tonight) and start reading that diary.