How feminist is witchcraft?

14 May

I decided that I would choose three powerful words, words of strong protection, and so long as these great words were never spoken aloud no change would come. – Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle

A quick run down memory lane

When I did my Masters in English, I specialised in the Gothic (to the surprise of absolutely no-one at all). And when it came to writing my dissertation, the longest and most significant written work of my life until Coldharbour, I decided to go even further and titled it:

Demons, ghosts, and witches: Narrative unreliability and the Gothic in Shirley Jackson’s novels.

Each of the three main sections of my dissertation focused on a different Jackson protagonist, the final being about the infamous Merricat Blackwood from We Have Always Lived in the Castle, a girl who really should be a witch. Here’s a direct quote from my dissertation:

Merricat’s strength lies in her appropriation of witchcraft as empowerment, or as Oates says: ‘Witchcraft is an attempt to assert power by the powerless’. Carpenter builds an interesting case around Merricat’s status as a ‘witch’ – a classic Gothic trope given a modern treatment, which she argues ‘anticipates by more than ten years the writings of Andrea Dworkin and Mary Daly on the gynocide of the witchhunt as one patriarchal response to female rebellion’.

This was the first time I’d had to explicitly consider witchcraft in connection to feminism and in response to the patriarchy, despite having grown up with Girl Power and as, I’ve said before, a deep and enduring love of Charmed.

But is witchcraft inherently feminist? Is the relationship even a good thing? And what does it mean nowadays to be a witch?

Let’s look at the past, the present, and the personal.

The Past

As I mentioned in my previous post about witchcraft being a crime (or not), being called a witch could have lethal consequences. And, as will also come as a surprise to absolutely no-one at all, an overwhelming number of witch hunt victims were women, including Joan of Arc, who’d had the audacity to lead men into battle.

As practising pagan Pam Grossman explains in this excellent interview, our idea of the persecuted is what she describes as the ‘inconvenient women’ who were seen as ‘not womanly enough’ or didn’t fit the idea of what a perfect, subservient woman was. These were often women who were living independently or weren’t scared of confrontation – accusing them of being witches and having them taken out of the equation was an apparently foolproof method. That said, we now know that women from all walks of life were targeted in the witch hunts, but it still can’t be denied that at the peak of the hunts, 85% of those accused were female.

After all, the Church saw women as inherently weak and susceptible to evil, making witchcraft accusations nice and convenient.

The Present

So, obviously in the past, no-one really wanted to be called a witch. At best, they would be ostracised, at worst, executed.

But now it’s more complicated, though isn’t everything?

On the plus side, being a witch, either literally or figuratively, can be empowering when you choose the label for yourself, much in the same way Queer has been reclaimed by the LGBTQ+ community, myself included. It often allows people, particularly young women, to explore different facets of their identity in a safe way, and help normalise subcultures. As much as I hate to say it, TikTok has helped with this. Also, we’ve seen witches being politically engaged for decades, from taking on Nixon to standing up for minorities.

However, there are other factors to consider. For example, we’re examining this idea through a very Western lens: it’s still dangerous to be labelled a witch in many parts of the world. We’re living in a relative place of privilege to be able to claim the word ‘witch’, in the same way I know I’m in a similar position of safety when I call myself Queer. Where I live, being a witch or openly Queer are things that usually get treated with a shrug and I’m immensely grateful for that.

But even in the Western hemisphere, ‘witch’ and all of its negative tropes are still weaponised. Take Hillary Clinton as described here:

During the contentious 2016 presidential campaign, the Democratic candidate was dubbed “a witch with a B” by the conservative talkshow host Rush Limbaugh, taunted by Trump supporters who vilified her “vagenda of manocide”, and maligned by Bernie Sanders supporters who cried out to “Bern the Witch!” Clinton’s flaws as a candidate have been discussed to death, but the vehement hatred which she was shown was undeniably owed in part to her gender and to her perceived audacity in grasping for power.

Reclaiming the word for ourselves is one thing, but when it’s turned on someone who is daring to show ambition while identifying as a woman…

Well.

There are also concerns about commercialisation. Yes, everything and its mother is being commercialised these days, but something as subversive and as urgent as witchcraft doesn’t deserve that treatment. As Sollee points out, ‘there will always be capitalist appropriation of identities and movements that were once relegated to the fringes’, but I do worry that witchcraft’s power will be diminished in this sense. While social media is magnifying witchcraft, is it also diluting it?

The Personal

I am not currently a practising Wiccan. I still wear my pentagram and I still have my most important crystals, but now I’m thinking about it, I might’ve dumped my white sage on one of my many Konmari clear-outs and I no longer have a full set of Tarot cards.

It’s not necessarily that I don’t believe anymore, it’s just a time thing, in the same way I just about do Christmas and Easter because I live in a nominally Christian country and very little effort is required, and how I remember to do Hanukkah but I am, as I’m writing, letting Passover pass over me.

Identifying as a witch (and as a Goth, which I very much still am) as a preteen was a crucial step in my personal development. In a way, I suppose that was the first time I came out: a Goth Wiccan at the age of eleven and then Queer at fourteen. I imagine that I’m not the only person in the middle of that particular Venn diagram. For me, it was empowering and it guided me along the feminism pipeline that had started when I first saw the Spice Girls at the age of four (Girl Power still has a hold on me).

I’m proud to be a feminist and a witch and for all that stands for: equality and individuality and open-mindedness.

Coldharbour’s Witches

Alright, I can’t resist linking everything back to Coldharbour.

Technically speaking, the Wildes are never called witches, although, seeing as they have innate magical power (or in this case, Power), they very obviously are. Being witches does empower them, though it certainly doesn’t make life easier for them…