There’s a Little Witch in Everyone - Witch Week, Day 5

“Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake.
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Alder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
Double, double, toil and trouble,
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble”
~ Shakespeare’s “The Tragedy of MacBeth”

Thanks to Shakespeare’s vivid imagery, witches have been immortalized and “typecast” as cauldron-brewing hags cavorting with a pagan goddess and spirits for the past four hundred plus years.

Though “eye of newt and toe of frog” have come to be associated with witches’ evil practices, they also speak to the important use of objects and images. Symbolism is a keystone for practicing Wiccans. Plants, symbols, seasons, colors, and scents all represent important facets of life’s cyclical nature. Witches use these elements in food, meditation, clothing, and spells.

Here’s a shocker. It’s not so different from what the rest of the world does.

Every faith uses symbols to remind followers of specific people or events (Christianity’s crucifix, advent wreath, unity candle; Judaism’s Star of David; Islam’s crescent moon). It’s blatant in our holidays: Christmas trees, menorahs, clover, pumpkins, and cornucopia. Colors represent significant times of the year: red for Valentine’s Day, red/white/blue for 4th of July, black/orange for Halloween, blue for Hanukkah, and red/green for Christmas.

Colors and scents in candles are also popular among consumers who use them not only for ambient light but fragrance as well. Aromatherapy is a popular way to treat stress and other ailments as the scents help people relax.

Ok, so you get my point. Many of the tools witches use in their everyday lives and holidays are no different from the colors, scents, and symbols used by the masses to mark special occasions or aid in their daily routines. What sets the witches apart is that they combine these elements to maximize and bring about a desired effect. Combined with a spell, they’re able to envision the outcome and make it happen.

“Spells” sound mysterious. In reality, they’re the equivalent of prayers. The difference is that spells are said to the witches’ pantheons instead of one God. Witches often create their own spells. In order for the spell to work, they really need to believe what they are saying. If they’re just reciting words, nothing will happen. In Christianity, I’ve often heard the phrase, “The power of prayer.” The same is true of Wiccan spells. Spells/prayers only work if people truly believe in them.

Most spells contain the following: acknowledgment of the creator or a specific god, a request, and a tie to nature (earth, air, fire, water / north, south, east, west / sun, moon, stars, etc.). Spells are frequently repeated three times because one’s conviction grows with the repetition. Most importantly, spells are never (I repeat NEVER) to be used to harm someone else. For example, love spells can ask for love to enter someone’s life but it cannot be at the expense of the requestor’s object of affection.

If you’re interested or willing to take a plunge into witchy-ness, try the following to help relieve stress in your life. I’m not suggesting you pray to pagan gods, but you can use the elements below to strengthen your prayers and wishes to whomever you worship.
Candles: white to symbolize new beginnings and clearing mental space; turquoise to protect against negativity; blue to calm the stress, chaos in your life
Scents / Aromatherapy: lavender is a purifying scent and helps you relax; chamomile provides tranquility and peace; clove clears the mind; dragon’s blood cleanses negativity---WARNING: don’t use all the scents together. Pick the one you like best.
Things to do: take a bath with bath salts of the scents mentioned above, or make a dream pillow using a combination of dried herbs (or buy one online)

• Buy a dream pillow from Sonoma Lavender Shop
• Make your own dream pillow

Foods:

• Eggs symbolize many things. Seen as elements that bring about healing, protection, and the banishment of curses among other things, make yourself a dish that celebrates the egg (egg noodles with sauce of your choice, eggs over easy symbolize the sun, French toast, egg salad, etc.).
• Or you can try a drink instead: Joy Juice (6 large strawberries [or raspberries/blackberries], 5 crushed ice cubes, ½ a navel orange (peeled), ¼ cup orange juice, 1 tsp. sugar. Directions: Mix in blender until smooth. “Magical” properties: revitalization, health, and happiness (“A Kitchen Witch’s Cookbook” by Patricia Telesco)

Spell: Create your own spell (prayer) and ask for the banishment of stress and for happiness, contentment, and positive/productive energy to replace it.

None of this is evil. It’s merely a way to enhance your praying experience. After all, spells, prayers, and actions are only as good as the intent behind them.

"I'll Get You My Pretty..." - Witch Week, Day 4

Media’s Spell Casting

Stories of witches have terrified people for thousands of years. The 20th and 21st centuries brought with them a new perspective on this long-feared community. Perhaps one of the most significant reasons for this mass breakthrough can be attributed to L. Frank Baum’s character, Glinda, the good witch, in his novel from 1900's, “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.”

From big screen to small screen, scary to silly, below is a collection of a few of my favorite witches through the years.
Enjoy!
(Who are your favorite TV/movie spell casters? Leave a comment with your answer.)

Wizard of Oz (1939)


Trick or Treat – Donald Duck Meets Witch Hazel (1952)


Looney Toons’ - Bewitched Bunny (1954)



Alvin and the Chipmunks – The Witch Doctor (1958)


Sleeping Beauty – Maleficent (1959)


Bewitched (1964 – 1972)
Bewitched - Halloween Party



Scooby Doo, Where Are you? Which Witch is Which? (1969)



Witches (1990)


Hocus Pocus (1993) – Cat Spell


Hocus Pocus (1993) – I Put a Spell on You


Hocus Pocus (1993) – Come Little Children


Sabrina the Teenage Witch (1996 – 2003)


Practical Magic (1998)


Casper Meets Wendy (1998)



Charmed (1998 – 2006)



Scooby Doo and the Witch’s Ghost (1999)


Twitches (2005)



Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (2009)



All images, clips, and titles are the property of the production companies who own the rights to the movies/shows.

Witch Hunts...Today? - Witch Week, Day 3

Though 1692 marked a tragic year in early American history, it wasn’t the first or last witch hunt that ended in the murder of innocent people. The practice thrives in remote areas of the world including: South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Cameroon, Sierra Leon, and Papua New Guinea to name a few.

The accusers haven’t changed—zealous, naïve, uneducated Christians who interpret the bible literally. And the “witches” are still the easiest targets in the community. While some are elderly, the rest of these evil heretics may surprise you.

Children. Most are under ten.

Relying on priests and prophets to keep them safe from the devil’s workings and his followers, poor villagers follow “leaders” claiming to have a gift to identify witches. Children are accused of causing illnesses, death, famine…you name it. The parents pay priests to hire local villagers to beat, torture, or murder the children. The families then have to pay the priests for their family to be redeemed from the wickedness inflicted by the wicked child.

It’s a profitable business for the “priests” who own luxury cars and elaborate homes while their followers can’t scrape together enough money to eat.

The lucky children die. The ones who survive are left with psychological scars that often outweigh the physical disfigurement they’ve endured—being set on fire, whipped, and poisoned. And worst of all, these babies, toddlers, and young children have to deal with the knowledge that their parents abandoned them willingly because they believed a stranger’s lies.

Some charities are trying to intervene and even individuals have opened their homes to rescue these forgotten castoffs at great risk to their own safety.

In addition to the horrible brutality taking place, this generational and community-backed genocide raise problematic concerns. How do you change a faith-based belief that’s so ingrained? What will it take to show the masses that the real evil is standing right in front of their eyes…and, sometimes, in their own reflections?

Sources:
CNN
The Observer /guardian.co.uk
Suite101.com – anthropology
Suite101.com – paganism/wicca

Remembering 1692 - Witch Week, Day 2

The Hysteria of 1692

Imagine:
• choosing the unknown wilderness of a relatively new territory over the deplorable living conditions of another country for a chance of practicing a faith without being persecuted
• having never-ending property disputes with your neighbor
• following a faith which believes your fate is predetermined by God and spending your life trying to figure it out by living a severe, pious life to please your Maker
• being a woman in a rigid patriarchal society who is expected to tend to the house and children in virtual, submissive silence
• having little to no education and explaining the weird and unknown through superstitions believed by almost everyone around you
• enduring one of the worst droughts ever which produced very meager crops for the residents of Salem Village—many of whom were farmers
• being interrogated, tried, and convicted for a crime you know you didn’t commit and no one will come forward to defend you for fear of being implicated
• believing the devil and evil witches were very real malignant characters lurking in your small town biding their time to turn the unsuspecting into one of their wicked followers
• standing in your innocence beneath the gallows staring into the eyes of your virtuous Christian “friends and neighbors” who eagerly await your death as a means to rid the town from the devil’s evil clutches

It all started on a cold, dreary winter day. Tituba, a slave from Barbados working for Salem Village’s minister, entertained the Reverend Parris’s nine-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, and her eleven-year-old cousin, Abigail. While Elizabeth’s parents spent the harsh Massachusetts’ winter visiting members of the parish, Tituba recounted intriguing stories of voodoo to the young girls. Containing titillating details, the group soon grew to about a dozen children and young women who were completely captivated by Tituba’s tales, which covered subjects and experiences considered taboo by the Puritan belief system.

While there is no evidence, it is believed that Tituba demonstrated her skills in voodoo and hypnosis on her audience because Elizabeth and Abigail developed post-hypnotic reactions such as staring blindly into space followed by fits of seizures. The local doctor couldn’t diagnose the girls’ symptoms and attributed them to being cast under a witch’s spell.

Reverend Parris badgered the girls demanding to know who inflicted this hysteria upon them and they reluctantly named Tituba along with two of the village’s least popular women. The women were questioned repeatedly and kept proclaiming their innocence. Tituba, figuring she’d just tell the magistrates what they wanted to hear, eventually “confessed” to being a witch having been tormented by the other two women along with a strange man from Boston and two other unidentifiable women from the community.

With the idea that witchcraft was spreading like wildfire throughout their tiny community, the magistrates and villagers alike became suspicious of everyone. The girls began naming new women and the accusations expanded from the poor and lowly parishioners of Salem Village to men and women of means including a former minister of the village and a wealthy merchant. The youngest to be jailed was four; the eldest, 71, was hanged.

Wide-spread panic turned to finger pointing where neighbors with land disputes or jealous tendencies came to “realize” that the reason others were acting strangely or un-neighborly must have been because they were witches. Those who dared defend the witches cast suspicion on themselves and often ended up in jail as well.

The girls became celebrities of sorts and other towns invited them to visit to weed out the evil there too. Eventually, the girls’ accusations grew absurd when they named prominent people, including the governor’s wife. The governor who had tried to stay clear of the proceedings interceded and disbanded the court which examined and sentenced the accused. He also suspended the executions of those remaining in jail at the zealous hands of the Lt. Governor who insisted they were guilty and had every intention of carrying out their hangings.

The facts:
• An unsteady political climate influenced the towns in America as the change in English sovereignty over the decades impacted how government was handled on this side of the pond.
• 1692 saw one of the worst droughts in Massachusetts’ history until that point. Naïve in their understanding of nature, the people easily made the connection that somehow God was displeased with them or the devil was interfering.
• 13 young women and girls accused hundreds of people of torturing them to join the devil’s forces.
• 19 men and women were hanged; 1 was pressed to death to ‘press the truth from him.’ Giles Cory’s final words were “More weight.”
• Those who “confessed” being witches were not executed because they recognized the evil of their ways and God would ultimately have to forgive them.
• After the trials ended, Tituba claimed that Reverend Parris beat her into confessing her witch cohorts and that her accusations were purely a result of his actions. Parris refused to bail Tituba from jail until she recanted the accusation. She refused and eventually a wealthy Virginian purchased her.
• None of those executed were convicted of their crimes with actual evidence. The afflicted girls claimed the witches’ specters were assaulting them. (A specter was supposedly a witch’s ghost or spirit sent forth by the devil to attack the girls.) The admissibility of spectral evidence was banned by an executive order, which the Salem Village magistrates directly disobeyed.
• One judge and the jurors apologized to the victims and their families for the proceedings and outcomes.
• Only one of the thirteen original “afflicted” girls apologized publicly.
• In addition to the initial group of girls, other villagers began accusing their neighbors. Motives ranged from turning attention away from themselves and feeling as though they played an important part in this event to getting revenge for “wrongs” committed against them or their families.

The result:
As with most driving forces behind any major change, the tragedy in Salem inspired the creation of our “innocent until proven guilty” system.

Sources:
The Witchcraft Hysteria of 1692 (Old Saltbox Publishing)
Salem Witch Trials, Documentary (The History Channel)

Witch Way - Witch Week, Day 1

What would Halloween be without witches? The Hollywood evolution of the witch has made them ugly, glamorous, sexy, and just downright intriguing. It’s no wonder that witches are the number one costume on October 31st.

What I find interesting is that over the course of the last century perceptions of witches changed drastically thanks in large part to the romanticizing of them through literature and media. European “witches” were still being executed well into the 18th century and witch hunts still exist today in remote areas. For hundreds of years, fear, ignorance, religious fanaticism and conflict have led to the murder of about 50,000 to several million people.*

Thanks to the shift in public opinion, today’s witches—many of whom prefer to be called Wiccans—enjoy religious protection by some governments.

Why would governments protect these “evil” people? They’ve fought a long uphill battle to show their practices, though not mainstream, are not about boiling bat’s blood, collecting eye of newt, and killing children to keep them young and beautiful. One prevalent misconception is that witches are Satanists. These are two separate “faiths” of sorts with witches living harmoniously in nature with a pagan pantheon while satanic worshippers reject God and His rules and take a more hedonistic approach to the here and now.

Today’s Wiccans try to live at one with nature using herbs and plants in conjunction with the moon’s phases and four seasons. True Wiccans abide by one main tenet: Harm None. Their belief in a Karma driven system of sorts means that whatever you put out into the world via your words and actions will come back to you.

Did evil witches ever exist? Probably. If stories from around the world are to be believed, then, yes, there were women and men who killed and tortured others for their gain. Are there any misguided witches today? Most likely. Just as there are good and bad people of any faith, so too there are ones practicing some alternate form of Wicca.

As we enter the witches’ high “holy” season to celebrate the end of the harvest and cycle of life (winter leads to spring planting which leads to summer growth and the fall harvest), remember there’s more to witches than their Harry Potter incarnations. Real witches may not be able to fly, but their very real hocus pocus honors their ancestors and celebrates the beauty and purpose of each season.

* Worldwide documentation varies on the exact figure as many more people died in prison awaiting trials than those who were actually executed and oftentimes, executions in remote areas weren't documented at all.