Letters to the Editor:
Letter from a Witch
By John Brightshadow Yohalem
Dear Editor:
I was a practicing Pagan for over twenty years before I learned that Witches thought of themselves as Pagan, too. Their choice of word was a shock to me. I would like to explain why, and ask a few questions not too many of us seem to have asked ourselves about why we picked such a word, with its history and popular connotations, to describe ourselves.
It's a word I now use myself, of myself. It took me a while to do it. I shuddered the first few times people said I was a witch. First because I couldn't imagine what they meant and felt no kinship with the popular stereotype, and later, when I'd got to know lots of witches, because I didn't feel quite worthy of the distinction.
I'm proud to use it now, especially to those outside the Craft. To symbolize my stand within it, just as I'm proud of myself when I can tell straight people "I'm gay" or even (whew) "I'm a fairy." Meaning by that last, something different from what they mean by it, of course — but also exactly what they mean.
I say these things aloud because saying them liberates me from the prejudices and my terror of the prejudices. It helps me rejoice in being what I am. It focuses and centers me in my actual being; A foundation in the real world for my life and work.
I know what I mean by witch: I mean I served a year and a day and I work magic and pray to the Gods. I consider Their ways in my life and my relationships to all Their other creatures — at least, I try to. (At least, I think about trying.)
That's just my use of a word that is in awfully common use.
We know witches aren't all malevolent, ugly old women. I know some that are beautiful old women, and many that aren't even women or old. They are not motivated by spite and Satan to curdle cow's milk with a word, or snatch children for blood sacrifice. I couldn't curdle milk if I tried. (Not on the hoof.)
But the point is the word "Witch" belongs to everyone who speaks English. For most of those folks the word suffers from simply frightful (no pun intended), karma. We know this.
We can write letters and teach courses and go on Geraldo (Heaven help us), all we like. The stereotype Witch will not go away just because all the witches we know are Glinda of the North, in drag, sometimes.
So why did we do it?
Understandably, we feel some solidarity with the 9,000 or however many witches burned by the medieval authorities. We empathize with the repressed classes; female, gay, or otherwise nonconformist groups of that era, Jewish in my case, when society, having suddenly discovered it had the technology to do so, drunk on its own ingenuity, decided to standardize beliefs of all sorts. This, not Christianity or male supremacy, was the real poison: the lust for control; Big Brother started young.
But did "Witch" in the days before Malleus Malleficarum (1484) mean just village wisewoman or cunning man, or did it mean the fearsome, awesome side of being more knowing than your neighbors are? Witches in the living Paganism today, such as Santaria and Vodoun, real witches, not prettified ecologists who chant bad poetry in state parks on the weekend most convenient to Beltane, are feared, are testy, are clever but also terrifying. Don't rub these folks wrong. They may not give a hoot for the Law of Return. They sometimes charge money for magic, too.
Are they witches like you and me? Well, maybe not like us, civilized and ethical and rational souls that we are, but you can bet your sweet patooty they're witches. Folk of power, knowing, willing, and daring.
They and we, Samantha and Malevola, Endor and Galadriel, Morgan le Fay and Margaret Hamilton are all of us, comprehended in the word "witch" as it is generally used. You know how to conjure spirits with the right syllable in the right ear. Well, THIS is the picture the W-word conjures. Lots of witches tell me they came to the Craft precisely because something drew them, sang to them, in that archetype. But in different ears, the same song may sound different notes.
If we're going to use this word, if we're going to insist on it, we'd better be ready to accept and deal with all the response, irrational and unthinking as it may be, that the word "witch" is going to excite. People are going to think we're evil. People are going to think we're silly. People are going to think we're imaginary. People will say we're in league with the devil, and it's no use telling them there isn't one if they've been raised to think there is. That he has horns and hooves and is rampantly sexual out in the woods, AND THERE WE ARE.
They may misuse it or brutify it, but the concept "witch" belongs to them as much as it does to us or to the filmmakers or the anthropologists.
For one thing, some people who call themselves witches really do worship what they call Satan, the adversary, and a part and parcel opposition to all things Judaeo-Christian. Isn't that special? Haven't they as much right to the word as we do?
But we say we are witches _ "doesn't that mean we get to define it?" Not if you take a word in common use. Since every word is a metaphor, a symbol — no word actually is the thing it stands for — no one can claim sole possession of one if it's in general use. That's like saying, "I'm Napoleon, the guy in the next padded cell must be an impostor." You may both partake of the napoleonic essence, but neither of you embodies the whole picture.
When I say I'm gay, I try always to be aware that those I'm speaking to may have to wade through generations of myth and misconception to reach me and what I mean by the word. I've been frankly surprised at the openness I've encountered in most straight folks, especially most straight witches, on the issue. And when I say I'm a witch, I tense up again, prepared to deal with and to explain — you know. I run with a lot of liberals. "Gay" they've worked on, but "witch" still gives them pause. But it's unrealistic to pretend we haven't asked for it.
This brings me to the other half of my question: Why, I wonder, did we ask for it?
It's a question of what you want to identify with, claim as your own, your self. If we lack respect for, or simply have no clear conception of, the self we possess, we stake out a new one by erecting an archetype and living, vividly, up to it. And the past is a popular place to look.
But why do we claim witches? And what is it we are claiming?
Each of us will have a different answer. Are we sentimental about women's rights, minority rights, and disgusted with a civilization divorced from responsiveness to nature? Do we seek an older, esoteric, forgotten wisdom, as humanity has always sought it, certain that the Golden Age had passed? Or is it the sheer self-righteousness of knowing more than the "average" person knows about witches that arouses us?
Dangerous medicine, that. As with any orthodoxy, knowing you're right may lead to a feeling of not having to understand or explain yourself to those who are ignorant or, simply wrong.
Or are we, in our heart of hearts, aroused and inspired by those preposterous clichés. The keeper of secrets, the wielder of power, the one who knows, the person aware of what hides in the dark, the person pregnant with magic — feared or beloved but, certainly, dangerous to cross.
Isn't it fun to play that role? Doesn't the awe, even the terror of the superstitious secretly delight us? Don't we really enjoy feeling however close or far from the truth, that whatever lurks in the underbrush, supernatural or not, is nothing we can't handle?
If that's the sort of energy we're invoking, perhaps it's a good idea to pause. Search the soul a bit for the impulse that yearns for this danger, and try to guide the energy into something more, umm, wholesome? No, that's a prissy word. How about, useful?
Because it is there, in the heart of our Wiccan little hearts, so we may as well acknowledge it, face up to it and use it.
I get off on that energy sometimes. I think the rest of us do, too. It may not be all or even much of what we mean by "witch" but it's in there.
The wisewoman of folklore is often benevolent, leveling, inspired, and just. But she's (he's) dangerous to trifle with, impossible to file away easily. Her priorities may not be yours.
When you call yourself a witch, be aware of all the different things you're evoking. If you use the word, you can't tell other people, not quickly, that you only mean it this way, not that way.
And when the local peasantry come after me with torches and garlic and crucifixes, they should be visible a long way off in New York City, because the crops have failed in Central Park and the beertaps in SoHo are giving sour brew and mysterious power surges have destroyed their hard drives, it will be no more than I've incurred and expected by curing their headaches with the herbs that grow on my fire escape and their heartaches with my tarot deck — And by calling myself a Witch.
Blessed be,
John Brightshadow Yohalem
Editor
Enchanté, the Journal for the Urbane Pagan
30 Charlton Street #6F
New York, NY 10014 | 
