saw what happened to their weary boomer mothers, and they don’t like what they saw. If all feminist progress is dependent on the mother-daughter dialectic (as I believe it is), then we are in for a new generation of stay-at-home moms, whose problems will be closer to our grandmothers’ than our own. Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique will be as relevant in 2013 as it was in 1963—and our granddaughters will have to regroup and start feminist reforms all over again.
No wonder feminism has been ebbing and flowing ever since Mary Wollstonecraft’s day. We have never solved the basic problem that afflicts us all—who will help to raise the children?
4
WHY I WANT TO BE A WITCH
Women have been burnt as witches simply because they were beautiful.
—SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
When I was researching my book Witches, fifteen years ago, it was considered rather kinky to talk about female aspects of divinity or to attempt to rehabilitate witches from the libels perpetrated on them by their inquisitors. Witchcraft was a bog of myth, misinformation, and Halloween gear. There were people who called themselves contemporary witches, or Wiccans—and I met plenty of them—but they seemed as confused about their origins as anyone else. Some called themselves goddess-worshipers or contemporary pagans. Some were feminists rediscovering the female roots of divinity, and their rituals were as muddled as they were sincere. Nobody could quite decide whether to be a white witch and do good with herbs or—more exciting—to be a bad witch and go to bed with devils.
The popular image of the witch reflected this confusion. There were both good and bad witches in picaresque movies like The Wizard of Oz, and only bad witches in scary movies like Rosemary’s Baby. Did witches worship Satan, or did they worship a benevolent mother goddess? Hardly anyone would have posed the question that way. It fell to my book on witches to put the question to a popular readership for the first time—and that has been a large part of its appeal.
The truth is that the witch is a descendant of ancient goddesses who embodied both birth and death, nurturing and destruction, so it is not surprising that she possesses both aspects. But when religions decay and gods are replaced, there is a consistent dynamic: The gods of the old religion inevitably become the devils of the new. If serpents were once worshiped as symbols of magic power, they will later be despised as symbols of evil. If women were once seen as all-powerful, they will be relegated to pain in childbirth and obedience to men. The symbols remain, but their values are reversed. The snake sacred to the goddesses of ancient Crete becomes the incarnation of the devil in Genesis. The first female, Eve, goes from being a life-giver to a death-bringer. Good and evil are reversed. This is the way the politics of religion works.
The contemporary image of the witch incorporates detritus from many religious sects over many millennia. Like the wall of a Crusader castle in the Middle East, it rests upon a foundation of remnants from a variety of periods. Like Hecate and Diana, the witch is associated with the moon and lunar power. Like Aphrodite and Venus, she can make love potions and fly through the air. Each attribute of the witch once belonged to a goddess.
All over the ancient world goddesses were worshiped. These goddesses represented womanhood distilled to its ultimate essence. Ishtar, Astoreth, Aphrodite (as she was eventually known), held sway over love, procreation, fecundity—and most of the gods obeyed her urgings. Many-breasted, in charge of flowers, wheat, all blossoming, she echoed something primal in the human heart. Born of woman ourselves, we find godhead natural in womanhood. Any faith that renounces the mother is bound to see her creep back in another form—as Mary perhaps, the mother of the sacrificed god.
Witchcraft in Europe and America is essentially this harking back to female
No wonder feminism has been ebbing and flowing ever since Mary Wollstonecraft’s day. We have never solved the basic problem that afflicts us all—who will help to raise the children?
4
WHY I WANT TO BE A WITCH
Women have been burnt as witches simply because they were beautiful.
—SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
When I was researching my book Witches, fifteen years ago, it was considered rather kinky to talk about female aspects of divinity or to attempt to rehabilitate witches from the libels perpetrated on them by their inquisitors. Witchcraft was a bog of myth, misinformation, and Halloween gear. There were people who called themselves contemporary witches, or Wiccans—and I met plenty of them—but they seemed as confused about their origins as anyone else. Some called themselves goddess-worshipers or contemporary pagans. Some were feminists rediscovering the female roots of divinity, and their rituals were as muddled as they were sincere. Nobody could quite decide whether to be a white witch and do good with herbs or—more exciting—to be a bad witch and go to bed with devils.
The popular image of the witch reflected this confusion. There were both good and bad witches in picaresque movies like The Wizard of Oz, and only bad witches in scary movies like Rosemary’s Baby. Did witches worship Satan, or did they worship a benevolent mother goddess? Hardly anyone would have posed the question that way. It fell to my book on witches to put the question to a popular readership for the first time—and that has been a large part of its appeal.
The truth is that the witch is a descendant of ancient goddesses who embodied both birth and death, nurturing and destruction, so it is not surprising that she possesses both aspects. But when religions decay and gods are replaced, there is a consistent dynamic: The gods of the old religion inevitably become the devils of the new. If serpents were once worshiped as symbols of magic power, they will later be despised as symbols of evil. If women were once seen as all-powerful, they will be relegated to pain in childbirth and obedience to men. The symbols remain, but their values are reversed. The snake sacred to the goddesses of ancient Crete becomes the incarnation of the devil in Genesis. The first female, Eve, goes from being a life-giver to a death-bringer. Good and evil are reversed. This is the way the politics of religion works.
The contemporary image of the witch incorporates detritus from many religious sects over many millennia. Like the wall of a Crusader castle in the Middle East, it rests upon a foundation of remnants from a variety of periods. Like Hecate and Diana, the witch is associated with the moon and lunar power. Like Aphrodite and Venus, she can make love potions and fly through the air. Each attribute of the witch once belonged to a goddess.
All over the ancient world goddesses were worshiped. These goddesses represented womanhood distilled to its ultimate essence. Ishtar, Astoreth, Aphrodite (as she was eventually known), held sway over love, procreation, fecundity—and most of the gods obeyed her urgings. Many-breasted, in charge of flowers, wheat, all blossoming, she echoed something primal in the human heart. Born of woman ourselves, we find godhead natural in womanhood. Any faith that renounces the mother is bound to see her creep back in another form—as Mary perhaps, the mother of the sacrificed god.
Witchcraft in Europe and America is essentially this harking back to female
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