Throughout my life, I have searched for a religion that defines who I am. It has not been simple to arrange my views into a cohesive definition, a religion that is tailor-made for my rather topsy-turvy belief system. The religion had to be something that I could wholeheartedly embrace, a faith that I would follow without conviction: a black and white belief system that was simple enough to define and defend. Imagine my surprise when I found the religion of my dreams…only to discover that it was packaged in shades of gray due to years of ignorance and stereotype. I had found my religion, but its modern definition was rather mystifying…in more ways than one. I was born and raised into the Roman Catholic faith. Each and every one of my friends, cousins, aunts and uncles attended Sunday mass and recited the same hymns that were sewn into the soundtrack of my youth. Each and every one of those same cousins attended the same private Catholic school and we were always made to feel that God and the Devil were sitting on each of our shoulders, looking on to see if we were appropriately devout. Though rarely discussed in lecture, witches were seen as something in league with the Devil; their relationship and sordid past with the Roman Catholic Church was also never discussed and we were never taught that the World of Witchcraft was anything but a dark and shadowy layer hidden beneath voodoo and spells and hexes…terrifyingly located somewhere beneath our feet, far away from Heaven’s pious regard. Of course, I never really bought into any of those descriptions…I knew that there was much more to the word “Witchcraft” than was quoted from scripture and clergy. The Oxford English Dictionary (or OED) reads like a textbook from my uniformed past; its definitions of Witchcraft are shrouded in bewitchment and satanic stereotypes. The OED cites two major classifications of Witchcraft: the “practice of one who is in league with the devil” and “a bewitching or fascinating attraction or charm”. I went further and split the word into its two original compounds “wicce” and “craeft”, hoping that these root words would yield an answer to this mystery. The word wicce originally meant wise in Old English. The term referred to a sage-like healer, England’s own version of an earth shaman….a midwife of sorts. The word has now evolved into another: the word Wicca is what modern pagans term themselves, hoping to break free of the stigma that the word Witchcraft has come to convey. The word “craeft” hasn’t changed its meaning since antiquity. It was then, and still is now, considered to be a trade, a practice in which one could utilize their talents: in this case, their herbal and spiritual healing talents. Thus, the word Witchcraft originally meant “Craft of the Wise”! Amazing, isn’t it? This word that has, through the millennia, instilled fear and prejudice in the hearts of so many … initially referred to a people that sowed the earth and tended the land with a reverence for a bounty that would bring about healing and spiritual harmony. These were people that had a vast knowledge of medicinal plants - and knew the seasons and moon phases as well as they knew their own voices. With the words Craft of the Wise running in my mind like a mantra, I then sought a definition for the compound word Witchcraft. There were two definitions of this word given in the OED. The first was defined as “ the exercise of a supernatural power supposed to be possessed by persons in league with the devil or evil spirits”. This is the stereotypical term generally applied to a witchcraft seen everywhere in our culture. This is the definition that conveys the idea that witchcraft is something to be feared, a power that is not found naturally on the Earth; a power that is channeled in from some ghoulishly demonic force. The second definition given for the word Witchcraft is “Power or influence like that of a magician; a bewitching or fascinating attraction or charm”. It is from this definition that songs like Love Potion No 9 and the television show I Dream of Jeannie arose. This description encompasses all that is be-spellment: hexes, voodoo and love potions. This is the lighter, more harmless of the two OED definitions; it is almost whimsically humorous. This is not the Witchcraft that popes and clergymen chased into a bath of blood and ashes, nor is it the modern version of the practices of Wicca. This is a fairytale definition, seemingly created to castrate the once sacred into mere folklore. It is always astonishing to me how one simple word can be at the root of such ignorance and hate; people seem to have a tendency to twist words and meaning around to suit their own agendas. As mentioned previously, witchcraft was not seen as an evil form of channeling the devil until Christianity swept across Europe and “civilized” its heathen inhabitants…desecrating sacred ground and building mammoth cathedrals where open groves once stood in homage to the Old Ways. The word witchcraft has been so powerful that it energized an entire era of Inquisition and mayhem. It has been so powerful that it affects us today, here in a place where someone is supposedly innocent until proven guilty and where one is assured freedom of all religions (or lack thereof)…even though a Bible is still found in every hotel room and every dollar bill says “In God We Trust”. Hopefully in the future people will begin to delve more and more into world history and do their own research, as I have for this project. Maybe some will come to find what defines them, instead of just blindly accepting a label and a uniform.
Written Fall 2003. All writing (c) comicfairy. Please do NOT steal...Ask & ye shall receive. :)