Witchcraft is a slippery term…
From a post from February, 2019.
Witchcraft is a slippery term precisely because of who and what the term indicates, points to, invokes.
If we attempt to hammer in a definition of witchcraft, it makes no sense to do so without looking at people called witches and who may, in societies as various as Mexico, Nigeria, Ireland, Iceland, and Greece be identified as such by legend, lore, and linguists.
A witch is a woman who conjures, ensorcels, reads signs of Fate in stars and dreams, befriends wild things, and knows the hidden places.
A witch is a man who sings runes, summons spirits from the underworld, studies the medicine and poison of plants, ingests mushroom people, flies on the wind...
A witch is a sabbatic and ecstatic creature, drawn by nature and initiatory communion into erotic congress with the Mysteries.
And a witch has met the Devil at the Crossroads.
And a witch has been hanged for curses of justice unjustly... and burnt in Scotland for ill-wishing and blasting the harvests, and for healing the sick and teaching the young girls about power.
And a witch has healed the sick and blessed the peasant.
And a witch has called for revolution in the streets.
And witches have been hunted.
And witches have been celebrated.
And witches have been ridiculed.
And witches have been respected.
A witch is bound only to their nature and fate, answers only to her star and the counsel of kin, is responsible for all his actions, and knows it, and commands all their senses, yet controlling nothing...
She may rip the throat from snakes or turn the rivers back to their wells. They may soothe the dying elder and bless the new born babe, just as she might help the babe to die in the womb and liberate the parent from worser fate.
The witch does not grovel. Sometimes we go to the Gods and say - fuck you - in all the ways that can be said. The witch calls and they come.
And if none of this makes sense, it is because our ways are not for a world of rape and reduction, or for societies of bigotry and shame. The witch is Lilith in the wild places, is Prometheus stealing fire, is Aradia rallying the call for freedom, is Isobel Gowdie who has gone out as a hare and left a besom by her sleeping husband, is Alice Kyteler speaking to Robin Artisson in the dark at the crossroads, is Bessie Dunlop with her familiar Thomas Reid, is Tituba stolen from her lands and preserving herself, is Doreen Valiente whose poetry breaks hearts, is Rosaleen Norton and her brush and knife, is Victor Anderson whose drum opens skies...
The witch walks through forest, fertile field, blasted heath, city streets, and by village hedges... and we can not be killed, though witches and people accused of being so are murdered to this day. No, we have our tricks... at every tree, in every lake, at every pyre and noose, in every place where humans crawl and subdue... we have our tricks.
The Witch lives on. And so if you wish to define witchcraft, first think upon and feel into the creatures we call witches. No, not all magic is the witch’s, but a witch may employ whatever she wills, as a witch. And therein lies the secret.
