So You Want to Claim the Title "Witch"...

Why I have mixed feelings about leftie witch cosplay, and what I want from my new feminist sisters in the Craft

I want to start out by saying that I believe very strongly that you don't need anyone's permission to become a witch, including mine. If you want to undertake the path of the witch, I am not going to tell you that you can't. And I'm not going to tell you that your path has to look any particular way, either. The truth is that there have always been magical people (women and men) from every walk of life, and every cultural and religious tradition that has ever existed (yes, including Christianity) who can claim the identity of "witch." The world is wide and encompasses many different ways for someone to be a witch. If you are determined to be a witch, then that is what you are, no matter what anyone has to say about it. And that most definitely includes me.

I am also an intersectional feminist. That's not why I became a pagan and a witch, but it certainly informs my path. The recognition of divinity in the form of both god and goddess sits much more comfortably with me than a religion where the most divine experience a woman can hope for is to be forcibly impregnated without consent with a baby whose destiny is to become a human sacrifice for the whole world. So I treasure the fact that my identity as a witch and a pagan affords me access to a much wider array of ideas and models for both manhood and womanhood, and everything in between.*

And it's also true that the close examination of the history of witch trials both in America and in Europe shows that the persecution of witches during this period, was, at bottom, not just way for Christianity to stamp out the last vestiges of paganism, but a means for patriarchy to assert itself against dangerous women who had too much power in their society.

DUDE!!! They’re just CABBAGES!!! I am NOT trying to hex your ass!!! Photo by British Library on Unsplash

During the 16th and 17th centuries, what are sometimes referred to as "the burning times," accusing a woman of witchcraft was often a convenient way for men in a community to assert dominance over a woman who would not otherwise submit to them. The fact that it was endorsed by the Christian church gave it an irresistible sheen of rectitude. That the woman wasn't actually practicing magic was immaterial. The historical record is clear that there are many who died during the "burning times' who were not actually magical practitioners or witches.

Thus having reframed the "burning times" as being about female power, not magic use, many present day feminists feel entitled to adopt the iconography of the witch as a way to assert female power. They print t-shirts proclaiming "we are the granddaughters of the witches you tried to burn," and announce their intention to adopt the identity of "witch" as a way to thumb their nose at the resurgence of patriarchy in America. And on the one hand, this excites me. The idea that legions of women are drawing power from the iconography of the witch is awesome. I have a personal fantasy that involves a huge flash mob of women in bare feet and long black dresses gathering outside Mitch McConnell's office at the Senate and singing "I am my mother's savage daughter" at the top of our lungs until Moscow Mitch shits himself. A girl can dream.....

But here's the problem: there is a real life community of witches out there that has been building its identity for nearly a hundred years, and I worry that my Janey-come-lately feminist sisters do not understand this community, and are not ready to accord it the respect it deserves.

White feminist women have a nasty habit of descending on a cultural identity and adopting it, with a lot of earnest desire to do good, but with very little understanding of how the authentic holders of that identity are impacted by their sudden interest and engagement. Whether it's white women building the suffrage movement in the early 20th century with the labor of Black women, only to summarily excise them from the movement as it picked up steam, or proclaiming someone (usually a person of color) as their "sprit animal," or adopting the language of black woman "boss" culture (Iliza Schlessenger did an excellent takedown of this in one of her standup routines), white feminism's track record when it engages with marginalized identities is not great. We are earnest in our desire to do good, but we are clueless as to the damage we leave in our wake.

And I think now is a good time to acknowledge that western witchcraft (also heavily populated by white women) doesn't have a great track record in that regard either. Modern witches are only just now starting to untangle the ways in which traditional Wicca, "core shamanism" and other traditions have appropriated practices from Black and brown and indigenous magical traditions. We're also dealing with racists and fascists who use our ways to justify their hatefulness. It's something that many in the community are working hard to rectify, but the going is slow and there is still much to do.

Sure, witchcraft is trendy right now. A huge crop of Gen Z and millennial practitioners have reinvigorated witchcraft for the 21st Century and have been bringing some amazing energy to to the community. They do not remember the "satanic panic" of the 80's, when the West Memphis Three, including Damian Echols, were accused and convicted of a murder they did not commit. (Echols spent roughly 17 years in prison until he was released through an Alford plea.) They do not know the work done by people like Phyllis Curott and Selena Fox, who ensured that practitioners of modern Wicca would have their practices accorded the same legal protections as any other religion. They have not had to worry that in many regions of the country, they can lose a job or even lose custody of their children because they identify publicly as a witch. Many of them don't know that there are still laws on the books that make some witchy activities like reading tarot cards for the public illegal unless it is done "purely for entertainment." They forget that even in the few instances where there have been public places of worship dedicated to pagan practices, these places are often desecrated and attacked. There are still places in the world, in Africa especially, where being publicly "out" as a witch is to risk being burned to death or stoned. Those of us who have been part of the witchcraft community (both men and women... in our community "witch" is a gender neutral term) understand these risks.

We also know how quickly those bad times are looking to come back. Project 2025 is about installing not just a fascist nationalist state, but specifically a CHRISTIAN nationalist state. Which is why right now, many in the pagan and witchcraft communities are on high alert. They are coming for us. We might not be at the top of the list of targets. But we are on the list, no question.

It is one thing to say "I'm a witch!" when it's essentially a cosplay -- when the woman making this pronouncement isn't actually interested in being a magical practitioner so much as she is interested in claiming the position of a powerful woman who does not abide by society's rules for women. That's nice, but what happens when claiming that title means claiming an identity that is legally proscribed, and where for women who are actual witches there are tangible repercussions to how we are able to do our craft, worship our gods, and exist peacefully in our communities? When being a witch actually might cost them something, how many of those well meaning white women will suddenly say, "well, I'm a not a REAL witch.....I'm just here for the empowerment of it all. I'm not actually trying to do magic or anything!" My erstwhile sister, so ready to claim the good parts of being a witch, now runs when things get rough, when the identity is not just about fun and empowerment and cheeky rebellion. And she leaves her sister who is an actual witch, for whom this is more than just a fun role to play, high and dry.

To the women who want to be witches because they think it's a great way to be a feminist, I welcome you to the Craft. Being a witch is a beautiful thing, and I am excited to see how your path changes the world and changes you.

BUT --- I beg you to not just blythely saunter into this. Don't just buy a bunch of crystals or a tarot deck and think that you're doing something for the resistance. Learn what being a witch means to actual witches. Learn all of our history, not just the parts of it that reaffirm your feminist cred. Witchcraft has a lot of feminist ideology running through it. (And some TERFy bits too..... one of the leading lights of Dianic witchcraft, a woman-centered tradition, went all JK Rowling even before Rowling did, much to the chagrin of many Dianic practitioners.) Witches are living, breathing people who live and work and worship and practice magic in your communities, often in places where you never see us. We are a community (albeit a highly diverse and fractious one), and we deserve to be treated like real people, not tropes or cartoon cutout characters.

Yes, being a witch is fun, and it offers access to the kind of power that patriarchy doesn't like to see women possess. But that power comes with a responsibility to the community of people -- women and men -- who have kept the identity of "witch" alive and vibrant and viable for you. Many labored to open this path and make it available to those who come after them. Honor their labor with your respect and your loyalty.

If you can do that, I will proudly call you sister.

Blessed be, witches.

* And here is where I insert a plug for Enfys Book's new work, Queer Rites, just out this week, on queer rituals. An absolute must for anyone in the LGBTQ+ community who is interested in magic and wants to move past much of the cis-het binary of Wiccan based traditions. Buy it here.