Studies: What is a Witch?  #1:

Contemporary witchcraft is one of the fast-growing spiritual movements in both Europe and North America.  A Pew Research study found that between 1990 and 2008, the number of self-identified ‘Wiccans’ in the U.S. alone grew from 8,000 to over 340,000, while current estimates say there may be over 1.5 million witches in the America making it more popular than many Christian sects. In the UK individuals identifying as pagan/wiccan/or witches has risen over 30% since 2011. But, what is a witch? What is it that unifies those of us that identify as witch?

I am going to refer to the witch as ‘she’ because of the historical association with women but I include men in this term as well.  Who is the witch? Is she evil? Is she a poor, old woman? A rich woman with property? A healer, mid-wife? Charlatan? Priestess? Servant of satan? Hallowe’en costume? Social media mem? Or just someone who dresses like Steve Nicks? 

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a witch as denoting a person, esp. one who practises witchcraft or magic, or a supernatural being.

1.a. Old English– A person (in later use typically a woman; …) who practises witchcraft or magic, esp. of a malevolent or harmful nature.

My own initiation into witchcraft was in the late 80s. This era of witchcraft for me was very much informed by late 2nd and 3rd wave feminism. There were few varieties of witches at that time. There was Dianic witches – feminist/goddess worshipping witches whose circles were generally women only, ceremonial witches Gardnerian, Golden Dawn and OTO (Ordo Templi Orientis), these circles were generally led by male practitioners – at this time referred to as priests, or warlocks. We had started using the term swamp witch to refer to a less formal but more embodied practice of witchcraft but that was it.

There was a belief in the general population that witches were satanists. This misconception was fuelled by the satanic panic that reached its peak just a few years earlier. 

There was no internet as we know it today, so information came from books typically only available in occult book shops. There was a lot of misinformation – and some of that misinformation is still influential today in the craft.

Within the past decade witchcraft has explode, witchtok, the witches of insta, facebook – witches are everywhere. There seem to be as many paths as there are witches (which is as it should be), trad, green, kitchen-witches, hedge witches, chaos witches, cottage-core, glamour, eclectic, secular and cosmic. 

But what is a witch?

I have been working on this question as the basis for my next video essay, and as I  have followed my research down the proverbial rabbit-hole I realize the answer may not be as straightforward as I thought…

In my experience there are certain ‘beliefs’ or ideas that are held by witches that form the basis of contemporary practice. That witches were persecuted through the ‘witch-burnings’, that there is somehow an unbroken lineage of witchcraft that pre-dates Christianity, that there is somewhere a core set of beliefs that constitute ‘witchcraft’.  But I don’t think any of these things are true. 

When my own studies moved from books that instructed one on how to practice witchcraft to historical and cultural investigations into the practice of witchcraft I quickly saw that this backstory was a misconstruction. At first I was disappointed, and disillusioned. Eventually came liberation and the realization that there was certainly such thing as a concept of ‘witch’; so what was a witch if it wasn’t what I had been told?

Over the next few months I will be exploring this question through books, films, interviews and conversations with other witches.  The series will culminate in a video-essay that will share what I have found.  

IMG Credit: Study of a Witch inscribed verso: Etude de Sorciere N.22 / par Louis Falero / de la collection d’ebauches / et oeuvres inedites / signe par son fils / R Falero