The War over "Witch"

The Witch Controversy:
Should we call ourselves "Witches" in the Modern Day?

* * *

Introduction: You’re a WHAT?

I know a lot of people who don’t like the word “witch”. This isn’t normally a cause for much problem in most people’s lives; but I have a problem with it. Where I come from, “Witch” means something different than what it means to most people.

I know, I know, you are already thinking “BORING”- we’ve all heard the new-age empowerment talk; we’ve all heard how the villainous Christians warped the meaning of the word “witch”, and changed it to a word that resonates with satanic evil, as part of their long plot to discredit the gentle, earth mother-worshipping midwives of Pagan Europe.

Hear me out here! I’m not going to feed you that line (well, not exactly). I know that if you happen to be Pagan, that you’ve heard it already.

I’m writing this article to address the usage of the word “Witch” for a different reason. I’m not going to sit here and try to defend it; because historically speaking, there seem to be some good reasons to think that originally, the word “Witch” may not have had a very good meaning. But at the same time, I’m not going to say that we modern Pagans shouldn’t use it, if it is appropriate to us. Sound strange? It gets stranger.

According to some scholars, “witch” is a corruption of the word “witega”, which, to the Anglo-Saxons, referred to a wise person or a prophet. Some people have even made the leap to connect this idea of witches being the original “wise people” with the term “Wicce”, also an Anglo-Saxon term, and the origin of the modern word “witch”.

Well, all it takes is one scholar to make a statement, and immediately, you have at least seven others who have to disagree. Don’t hold it against them; it’s how they make their living. And in this case, disagreement and contrary opinions can be helpful in revealing the truth of matters- indeed, the freedom of other voices to make contrary opinions is the ONLY thing that has ever revealed the truth, in any time or place.

They’ll get you, my pretty…

So, we have some other scholarly opinions about the word “witch”. Some say that the original occult writers (such as Leland and Gardner) were a bit hasty when they associated the word “witch” to “Witega”. They assert that “witch” has always had a rather negative connotation- across the world, and in all cultures, including the Anglo-Saxon culture.

These people say that according to the Anglo-Saxon dictionary, “witches” were people who “mixed potions and did incantations”, and those potions were usually poisonous. The implications are that these are shady people, dangerous people. The ancient Hebrew word for witch seems to mean “poisoner”, as well as the Greek- it seems to refer to a person that makes drugs, herbal mixtures and potions, again, for possibly dangerous purposes.

These fine people assert that no true follower of a Pagan system would ever (now or in the past) have wanted to be called a “witch”, because a witch was a person of evil; they point to the Anglo-Saxon word “Wikke”, meaning, of course, “Wicked”, and associating that word with “Wicce”.

To this, I feel that I have to say what most of us have been thinking all this time: SO WHAT?

So what if “witch” really meant “wicked” during some historical period in England? That’s not what it means now, to a growing population of millions of Pagans. Are we still living in Anglo-Saxon England? If someone is, they need to be politely tapped on the shoulder and reminded of the last 1000 years of progress that has taken place around them. Then we can move on.

But there is more to it than this- there are other angles that we need to at least consider before we close the case on this word.

Ye Olden Times

I am all for historical guidance and reconstruction when it comes to the rebirth of Pagan faiths. Of course, I am fully aware (as are most serious Pagans) that there is more to Paganism than JUST the historical basis that it grows out of- just as there is more to Christianity than JUST the history of the early Christians.

The reality of the matter is that we don’t have an “old Anglo Saxon dictionary” that comes down to us from Pagan times. The Pagan Anglo-Saxon seem to have forgotten to make dictionaries for us- what we know (in writing) about their old language comes from a later period- a Christian period.

If it’s a linguistics argument you want, there are more possibilities- In Old German, the word “Wikkerie”, which means “Witchery” and the word “Wickhersen” which means “Witch”, are both linked to “Wicken”, which means “foretell”, and “Wicker”, which refers to a “Seer”. The image of the “witch” that we are so familiar with, with her riding-pole or broom and her cauldron, does indeed link back to a cult of pre-Christian sorcery, all of which has been neatly pointed out in the works of Nigel Jackson, and Carlo Ginsburg.

I’m not saying that Old German and Anglo-Saxon are the same language, or even so close as to make a solid case here- but they were all Germanic people, speaking Germanic languages, and the Anglo-Saxons were once continental Germans. The fact that the Germans linked Witches with seership and foretelling, and not just to making poisons, is quite interesting. Maybe the nay-sayers spoke a little too soon. Who can say?

Now, getting back to the Anglo-Saxons: I can’t prove to you that the word “witch” once had some positive connotation, and that the incoming Christian religion’s moralizing made the profession of “potion mixing” into an evil thing. I can’t prove that, but I can ask you to think, realistically, for one moment, about what we DO historically know about how the Christian religion dealt with ANY native healers, mystics, or faiths that it encountered.

We know that they immediately associated anything that was part of the older Pagan order with the devil himself, and with the worst parts of human nature. Terms such as “warlock” came to mean “oath breaker”, among other very terrible things; when in reality, the term “warlock” is from the old Norse “Vard-Lokkur”, meaning a “Song that attracts spirits”, or a “Song of conjuring”, and it refers to such a person who makes such incantations or “songs” to lure spirits, because gradually, with time, the term for the song and for the singer became interchangeable. Modern day shamans, in many tribal societies worldwide, use “songs” to invoke spirits or communicate with them- and you don’t see their fellow tribesmen living in terror of them!

The people that Christian rulers and clerics turned on didn’t have to be just Pagans, or even practicing holdovers from Pagan religions; any wisdom practise that was extra-biblical would have been enough, especially if that practise was used for ends that Christian morality found repugnant- and birth control certainly tops that list.

Where have all the herb-wives gone?

Midwives in many rural areas knew how to utilize herbs to abort pregnancies. As a consequence of their knowledge of herbs, they could also mix potent mixtures for healing, or poisons. The earliest Christian mindset was rather against using herbs for any purpose- in some early Christian thought, to “heal” a person’s sickness was to be impious- to their way of thinking, God’s will made people ill, as a consequence of Sin; and it was the lot of humanity to suffer under the curse of sin. Prayer and penance was the only approved-of method of helping those who were ill, for many centuries. Medical “science” (as it were) was looked down upon, and the church actively stopped research into human bodies that required that cadavers be dissected, until very late in history.

Added to this, it didn’t help that the herb-cunning traditions of Europe DID almost universally stem from pre-Christian traditions. Even in Greece, the homeland of skeptical rationality, the temple of Asklepios, the God of healing, was the foundation upon which medicine and ancient doctors relied. Healing was a sacred duty. And it was firmly associated with Pagan religion, just as justice was, and farming, and every other crucial aspect of society.

Now, isn’t it just strange that EVERYWHERE Christians went, they decided that a person who was mixing medicines and potions were evil? Could it be that midwives were allowing women to have herbal abortions, and this fact was considered rather atrocious to Christians- so atrocious that “a potion mixer”, to this day, AUTOMATICALLY implies that they are mixing something “poisonous” or “dangerous”? Where are the various old cultural words for the mixers of Good Potions? If you will look, you will see that there aren’t any.

What we don’t know, and yet we all know

We won’t ever know if the old Anglo-Saxons had a thriving tradition of herbalists that were respected and who were considered to be “wise” in older ways. Of course, it would be the epitome of ignorance to decide that they didn’t- the simple fact is that every other culture did! Some modern cultures still do.

If these tasks of herbalism and healing were performed by women, as well as by men, and if there were natural means of painlessly ending the lives of terminally sick or elderly people, or of aborting pregnancies, the early Christian church would certainly have attacked these cultural institutions (and herbalists) with all guns blazing.

And just like with any other non-biblical cultural theme that didn’t fit into the Christian moral universe, such as the Vardlokkur, (which, by the way, is only one example of literally hundreds of cultural mystical practices across Europe that were diabolized and warped by church propaganda into things of evil or shame) The “potion mixers” got associated with wickedness, and moral weakness.

All we will know about the ancient English are the things that some Christian scribes decided were important enough to be written down- and what things we can divine from old legends and stories, and surviving manuscripts.

Does it make any sense at all to look at a post-Christian “Anglo Saxon dictionary” and decide, based on what we see, that all people who mixed potions or did incantations in ancient England were wicked? No, it doesn’t. Is this exactly what the enemies of modern-day witchcraft and Paganism do? Yes, it is.

Again, I can’t prove that the Anglo-Saxon Pagans thought of their potion mixers and incantation makers as a mostly positive, good force in society- but I can prove that incoming Christians went out of their way to blacken the reputation of every pre-Christian religious element in society; as well as those they found “immoral”. So are we to believe that it happened in Greece, in Rome, in Ireland, in Asia Minor, and in Germany, but it didn’t happen in Anglo-Saxon England? Think on it for a while. Good sense and a realistic view of history (and human nature) can really be all the proof you need.

Oh, I don’t doubt that there were BAD potion mixers and incantation makers that hurt people! Humans are humans, and were humans, even in Pagan times. But that doesn’t mean that everyone who knew herbs or how to summon spirits was evil, or even thought of as wicked by society. I think the truth is somewhere in-between. It’s certainly not as black and white as the Early Christians, or the ‘Anglo Saxon Dictionary’ would have us believe.

And Fate is Still Stronger

Okay, so maybe the Christians did blacken the word, and make it into a thing of evil. Maybe it was always seen as evil. It may be true that no person practicing a pre-Christian wisdom tradition in post-Christian Europe would have EVER referred to themselves as a “witch”. Let’s face it: 1000 years of using a word to mean “evil” and “dangerous”, regardless of what it originally meant, has a way of firmly altering its meaning in the ears and minds of the people.

But a strange phenomenon has occurred in the modern day; it seems that many people are feeling called “back” to worship and believe as ancient Pagans did. The modern rise of Paganism is evidence of some strand of the Fate of Humankind, as well as some hidden strand of Fate in human souls, is making itself known, after being rather invisible and suppressed for many centuries.

The people who are at the forefront of this movement, as well as the new Pagans themselves, are questioning whether or not we should allow early (or present day) Christian moralizing to influence how we think and talk, or even how we refer to ourselves.

Like it or not, the word “Witch” does, and always has, referred to a person who had extraordinary capabilities, whether those be for good or ill, or even ambiguous enough for both. It does refer to a “magical” person; a person who knows things, perhaps things forbidden, or perhaps things secret. It refers to a person who experiences life in a different way, in a more extreme and hidden way- and even though Christian hallucinations such as the character “Satan” has been named as the “master of witches”, there isn’t a person alive today who isn’t aware that the early Christian church automatically associated ANY god that wasn’t their own with Satan.

Witches being ‘satraps of Satan’ is the weakest, flimsiest, most historically exposed and discarded charge that has ever been tossed at them, or at any group of people who believed differently from the mainstream- because let’s face it: artists, scientists, philosophers, free thinkers, and even heterodox Christians have all been called “Satanists” by the orthodox Christians.

Even totally orthodox housewives who were minding their own business were more than likely to be accused of being worshippers of Satan, and tortured into confessing to all manner of silly things, before being murdered by local authorities, during the various historical witch-hunt hysterias.

The term “witch” holds with it a kind of mystique, a hint of mysticism, a hint of danger, a hint of mystery, precisely because of the fact that it goes back to pre-Christian times, where the primal character of society was quite different, when people lived in constant awareness of the weird spiritual forces that surrounded them, the Gods were real, spirits were wily and sometimes dangerous, and “magic” was alive and well. The word “witch” calls back to that time.

And “witch” wasn’t the only Anglo-Saxon Pagan cultural term for a sorcerous person; there were others, and those terms are still used by other kinds of Pagans today. But the term “Witch” has survived through the centuries, for many reasons, as one of the most emblematic words referring to English Pagan sorcery, and those who practiced it. For those of us today, who practise a “craft” which has physical or spiritual roots in Germany, Italy, France, England, or the British Isles, it is still a word that you can’t shake, even if you wanted to.

Oh, those Fundies…

Most modern Pagans seem to like the word “witch”. They use it. This has some unfortunate side-effects; modern fundamentalist Christians can’t get enough glee at the chance of actually having “real witches” to combat- they love to discuss fighting demons (which they literally see everywhere and in everything), so having people around to call “witches” and accuse of evil is pure bliss for them.

It makes them feel like they are fighting the good fight, and it fulfills their dramatic fantasies of calling on their God’s name and ‘banishing evil’. In such a degenerate, faithless, and dying institution as fundamentalist Christianity, they so much desire to have a simplistic, black-and-white world of miracles and supernaturalism all around them, and full of self-assuring experiences of their God’s power, that they wouldn’t know what to do without their demonic tormentors, or without the “Godless” politicians who try make laws protecting homosexuals, or to stop their public prayer in schools, or even those people who call themselves “witches” and ally with “Satan”.

Until fundamentalism, and all its extremism and social dangers is gone, (and it will be gone, as the bulk of humans will evolve past it) modern Pagans may not be doing themselves a favor by using the word “witch”. But that doesn’t stop them. In the end, it might turn out to be a good thing.

So who cares??

Are we making a statement here? Is this word ‘witch” that symbolic place that we want to draw a line in the sand? Seems that way. But there is one final perspective on the term “witch”, one that I think is important.

We aren’t living in Anglo-Saxon times anymore. We aren’t living in medieval Europe. We are living in the 21st century, and where the bulk of the Pagans live, religious freedom is totally and 100% allowed. You can call yourself whatever you want. It’s a great, blissful freedom, and a wonderful time to be human. Finally, we can guide ourselves to our own spiritual destinies.

I wouldn’t care if the word “witch” originally meant “eater of small children”. Who cares? Times have changed. I don’t live 1000 years ago. I live now. I know what it means now.

Today, “witch” tends to mean a follower of an earth-based religious path. It tends to mean a follower of Older Gods. It tends to mean a practitioner of older crafts and mystical arts from pre and post-Christian Europe, or even Africa or other parts of the world.

The word “witch” is gradually losing the moralistic, propagandistic meanings that were smeared onto it, and it is re-emerging as a word that refers to people who “ain’t quite like the next person”, and who see the world in some radically different ways- ways that may include the possibility of making some potions, some incantations, and maybe even some prophecies, every now and then.

Would the old folk have called themselves “witches”, a few centuries back? No, probably not. It was a bit of a dangerous word then, considering it could still get you executed. Where they witches? Some were. Are we? Only the individual can answer that question. I answer, “Yes”.

Somehow, this word sums up something about me, and some of my fellow pagans, that I feel is real and quite vital.

Site last updated: November 2, 2005