{"id":1200,"date":"2009-09-03T18:28:00","date_gmt":"2009-09-03T18:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1200"},"modified":"2009-09-03T18:28:00","modified_gmt":"2009-09-03T18:28:00","slug":"sex-and-witchcraft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1200","title":{"rendered":"Sex and Witchcraft"},"content":{"rendered":"

The popular image of the sexually alluring witch goes back to Circe<\/a> at least, was notable in the early modern period in the work of artists such as Hans Baldung<\/a>, and got a big boost from Jules Michelet.<\/a><\/p>\n

It keeps popping up today. Sometimes it is lightly disguised, as in the Craigslist posting blogged about here<\/a>, where what the original poster seems to want is not a Tarot reader but a softcore porn model.<\/p>\n

“Red Witch,” an Australian blogger, has been collecting popular culture images of female witches (some of them NSFW, not surprisingly), with thoughts of doing a book. <\/a><\/p>\n

Anyway, I started collecting the stuff you\u2019ve see on this blog because it seemed there had been an evolution in the representation of witches, and I wondered whether the polarized version that I was familiar with (witches are either good\/bad, young\/old, sexy\/hag) was actually the mid-point of an evolution in which the Witch is at first only bad\/old\/hag, then becomes either good\/young\/sexy or bad\/old\/hag, and then is only good\/young\/sexy. Since nobody that I knew of\u2014and my collection on witchcraft was pretty complete even then\u2014had discussed the history of the representation of witches, and the importance of good\/young\/sexy witch imagery to the growing social acceptance of witchcraft and Wicca, I wanted to understand it better.<\/em><\/p>\n

Matilda, who appears to be in the UK, has some flirtatious fun with the witch archetype on her web site.<\/a><\/p>\n

As far as the modern religion of Wicca is concerned, the sexual element was there from the beginning, when Gerald Gardner and his priestess\/paramour Edith Woodford-Grimes created the “Southern Coven of English Witches.” Where was his wife, Donna? Not interested in nudism, free-thinking, ceremonial magic, esoteric religion, and running a witchcraft museum, apparently.<\/p>\n

(A good scholarly biography of Gardner as founder of a new religion still needs to be written. I would love to see it in the Pagan studies book series that I co-edit.)<\/p>\n

At least Wicca is somewhat honest about its sexual element, with the centrality of the Great Rite and all. The fact is, however, that religion often<\/span> has a sexualized component.<\/p>\n

Every time that a Catholic priest, Pentacostal preacher, or Lutheran minister gets caught having sex with the wrong person, it is treated as a deviation from the standard. But sometimes spiritual practices lead to a stronger sexual vibe–and then what do you do with it?<\/p>\n

I learned in graduate school, finally, from a professor of Asian religions why monks and nuns there often wear saffron robes. The color signifies their spiritual “heat.” It’s a warning\u2014keep away!\u2014like an orange road cone.<\/p>\n

The East has sex scandals too\u2014Sai Baba’s is just one example.<\/a><\/p>\n

In Christianity, however, the professed religious often wear black, brown, or white\u2014neutral colors. “Nothing happening here.” (Except for some of those Pentacostals …)<\/p>\n

Wicca tries to seize the hot wire and direct the current. When that works, it can be life-changing. When it does not work, you get the usual run of social and interpersonal problems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The popular image of the sexually alluring witch goes back to Circe at least, was notable in the early modern period in the work of artists such as Hans Baldung, and got a big boost from Jules Michelet. It keeps popping up today. Sometimes it is lightly disguised, as in the Craigslist posting blogged about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[42,6,29],"class_list":["post-1200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-sexuality","tag-wicca","tag-witchcraft"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-jm","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":793,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=793","url_meta":{"origin":1200,"position":0},"title":"Helen Duncan’s Family Tries Again for a Pardon","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 17, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Mary Martin was 11 years old when her father taught her to box. She would come home from school scratched and bruised, her ears ringing with abuse from the playground. Mary Martin had the unhappy distinction of being the granddaughter of Britain's last convicted witch.Descendants of Helen Duncan, the \"last\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"England\"","block_context":{"text":"England","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=england"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12300,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12300","url_meta":{"origin":1200,"position":1},"title":"Free Download on Historians of Witchcraft","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 25, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"To be clear, The War on Witchcraft treats historical writing about the late medieval and early modern witchtrials, seen as an outbreak of \"unreason.\" From the publisher : Historians of the early modern witch-hunt often begin histories of their field with the theories propounded by Margaret Murray and Montague Summers\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"history\"","block_context":{"text":"history","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=history"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/9781108948746.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2900,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2900","url_meta":{"origin":1200,"position":2},"title":"Quick Review: Spellbound: Inside West Africa’s Witch Camps","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 16, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Karen Palmer, author of Spellbound: Inside West Africa's Witch Camps, is a veteran journalist, not a historian of witchcraft, so for me to read the book from the latter perspective is to do her a slight disservice. (As an inside, the subtitle might\u00a0 better read \"Inside Ghana's Witch Camps,\" but\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Africa\"","block_context":{"text":"Africa","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=africa"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11858,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11858","url_meta":{"origin":1200,"position":3},"title":"“Childish and Credulous Fantasy”: How the BBC Viewed Witchcraft in 1962","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 1, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Pop over to the BBC archive to watch presenter llan Whicker pontificate about witchcraft in a short television segment from Hallowee 1962. Among other non-information, Whicker trots out the bogus \"nine million witches executed\" figure from the Renaissance and Early Modern witch trials. He also interviews Cecil Williamson, Gerald Gardner's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Britain\"","block_context":{"text":"Britain","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=britain"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/williamson.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/williamson.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/williamson.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":11816,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11816","url_meta":{"origin":1200,"position":4},"title":"Call for Papers: Pagans and Museums","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 16, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"NOTE UPDATED DEADLINES AT BOTTOM Museums and contemporary Paganism are inextricably linked. Gerald Gardner, founder of modern pagan witchcraft, first publicized Wicca in 1951 at Cecil Williamson\u2019s Folklore Centre of Superstition and Witchcraft at Castletown (later The Museum of Magic and Witchcraft) on the Isle of Man. Some of his\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"museums\"","block_context":{"text":"museums","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=museums"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/ray-buckland-34-17-at-museum.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/ray-buckland-34-17-at-museum.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/ray-buckland-34-17-at-museum.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":11058,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11058","url_meta":{"origin":1200,"position":5},"title":"Witchcraft Cycles and the Official Witch of LA","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 6, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Jason Mankey's Raise the Horns blog (in the sidebar) carries his look back over the previous decade, \"Paganism & Witchcraft in the 2010's.\" I urge you to read it. I would like to add just a little bit of nuance to one passage: Until recently Modern Witchcraft was generally tied\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"blogging\"","block_context":{"text":"blogging","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Mayor-Sam-Yorty-Louise-Huebner-the-Official-Witch-of-Los-Angeles-Portrait.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1200\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}