OOhED Entry: Witch
Witch, n. Pronunciation: British- /wɪtʃ/, United States- /wɪtʃ/
Etymology: comes from the Old English “wicce” (feminine), relates to “wicca,” or man who practices witchcraft. Both of these etymologies derivative from “wiccian,” a verb meaning to practice witchcraft or sorcery. The word wicche was used in Middle English as a genderless form of witch. Witch was eventually used instead of the Middle English wicche beginning in the 16th century.
Oxford, Ohio, definition:
The most common definition of witch is one where a woman is considered a female magician, sorceress, or magic wielder.
-There are also masculine prefixes, “men-witch” or “he-witch” that were especially common in the 1600s (Oxford English Dictionary).
-witch was later used to describe women in league with the devil or evil spirits/forces. In this way, these “witches” were be able to perform supernatural acts.
1906: The Miami Student, Vol. 026, No. 02 (Nov., 1906): “A bonfire and a 'real live witch' were features of the evening” (62).
1910: The Miami Student, Vol. 001, No. 21 (Mar. 3, 1910): “Kundry, a witch, tries to corrupt the knights. King Amfortas has been seduced by the charms of a sorceress, robbed of the holy spear, and wounded with it” (3).
1911: The Miami Student, Vol. 002, No. 17 (Feb. 2, 1911), in a section titled, “Week of Prayer”: “They [Puritans] did not hesitate to shoot down the rude savage of the forest, burn the witch at the stake, or drive out those opposed to their dogmas...Yet it was the puritan faith which laid the foundation of this great American republic. It was the Puritan principles which gave to womankind its rightful ‘position’” (5).
1914: The Miami Student, Vol. 039, No. 07 (Nov. 5, 1914): “In the corner of the room, an old witch with her pot brewed the fate of the guests.”
1916: The Miami Student, Vol. 041, No. 07 (Nov. 2, 1916): “The rooms were decorated with pumpkins, and black witches and cats” (6).
1922: The Miami Student, Vol. 044, No. 30 (May 19, 1922): “There was a time when the majority of the American people believed in witch-craft. Those days were dark and fearsome ones for the girl, who, more beautiful than her sisters, possessed a sparkling glance to which the jealous could ascribe power more than mortal” (1934: The Miami Student, Vol. 058, No. 32 (Feb. 9, 1934): “we pride ourselves upon our immunity to superstition, we cynically snicker at the witch doctors of barbarianism, we refuse to believe in miracles, and we vaunt our ability to explain the tricks of vaudeville magicians” (2).
1969: Burn Witch Burn (1962) movie showed in Oxford, Ohio, at Miami University: “Even today, in many parts of the world, people practiced black magic and witchcraft.”
1981: The Miami Student, Vol. 105, No. 23 (Nov. 17, 1981): Title of article: “Planned Parenthood President Wattleton compares pro-lifers to 17th-'century, witch hunters”“Wattleton sees the pro-life movement stemming from the same "fear, frustration and anger" that motivated the witch hunters” (1).
1984: The Crucible (1953) showed in Oxford, Ohio, at Miami University: “we cannot hope the witch will accuse herself,” “discover the Devil’s agents among us.”
2004: The Miami Student, Vol. 128, No. 38 (Mar. 5, 2004): “Howard Stern is off the air. Ding-dong, the witch is dead, the wicked witch, the wicked witch, ding-dong the wicked witch is dead!”
2013: The Miami Student, “‘Other’ Miami: Students Who Fall Outside Religious Norms”: “Some pagans may practice witchcraft, meditation, astrology, numerology (belief in the supernatural significance of numbers), herbalism, and some believe crystals have metaphysical properties.”
The Be-witch-ing Origin story
The word, witch, has a very complex history in the English language and culture. From its Old English origins, witch is said to be initially derived from the word wicce, feminine, and wicca, masculine. Wicce means “female magician or sorcereress,” and, later, developed to include the inclination of these women to work in tandem with the devil and other evil spirits (OED). Wicca, alternatively, refers to the male counterpart of wicce: wizard or sorcerer who cooperates with the devil to practice witchcraft/magic. The origin of wicce and wicca are not entirely understood, but many scholars believe these words initially meant “wise” or “wise one.” References to this connection can be found through the Old English context in that wicce and wicca were associated with teaching, fortune telling, and the like, which is part of the reason they took on mystical meaning later on through time.
Wicce and Wicca both derive from the verb wiccian, meaning the practice of witchcraft. This is comparable to the German words, wikken (v.), wicken (v.), wikker (n.), and wicker (n.). The German wikken and wicken refer to the practice of witchcraft; whereas, the nouns wikker and wicker loosely refer to the word, “soothsayer” (OED). According to the Laws of Ælfred in c.890, the practice of magic or witchcraft only referred to women. These women were, if condemned for witchcraft, expelled from their West Saxon villages: “Ða fæmnan þe gewuniað onfon gealdorcræftigan & scinlæcan & wiccan, ne læt þu ða libban” (Laws of Ælfred, c.890). Probably due in part to this Saxon definition, popular culture and Miami usage of the word witch also emphasize women in their depiction of the stereotypical witch. In my research of the etymology and the history of the word, I have found that Oxford, Ohio, mainly utilizes the word witch in discussion of theatrical pursuits, horror genres of film, popular culture allusions, and in reference to the Salem Witch Trials. I have also explored several religious groups who are actively trying to reclaim the word witch in a more positive light, relating to their spiritual practices.
Witches are poorly characterized throughout theatre, film, television, and popular culture. These characterizations have trained people to associate inhuman, evil, raggedy, old women as the perfect depiction of the word witch. Stereotypes of the word witch include, but are not limited to, pointy noses, broomsticks, children-eating, ugly, hags. The common stereotype of witches in Oxford implies green-faced hags who fly broomsticks with their black cats. In fact, several sororities on Miami University’s campus have subscribed to this depiction in their Halloween themed parties.
In The Miami Student newspaper, Vol. 039, No. 07 (Nov. 5, 1914), sorority Kappa Tau Sigma threw a Halloween party with these common “witchy” stereotypes. The paper describes the witch at their party as “old,” and psychic in that she told fortunes to the guests of Kappa Tau Sigma’s party. According to The Miami Student, Vol. 026, No. 02 (Nov., 1906), another sorority in Oxford, Phi Tau, “entertained a few of their friends informally on Tuesday evening, October thirteenth, at the home of Miss Glasgow. A bonfire and a 'real live witch' were features of the evening” (62). The presumptuous diction of “‘real live witch’” was an attempt by the sorority to excite their guests by claiming that guests will experience either a more mystical, realistic interaction or a more comical, ridiculing encounter with their stereotypical entertainment. Likewise, in The Miami Student, Vol. 041, No. 07 (Nov. 2, 1916), the Liberal Arts Club threw a Halloween soiree riddled with the stereotypes of an old crone figure with a warty face and mystical talents as well. They used the concept of “witches” as a means to decorate their haunted houses and to celebrate the ghostly, supernatural nature of Halloween: “Black Cats, bats, owls and witches bedecked the walls” (6). Connecting witches with black cats and other fiendish things implies that witches was a term associated with the fake kind of magic and witchcraft. I can claim, from looking through Miami’s student newspaper archives, that the vast majority of writers for this newspaper subscribed to dated, conservative, and Christian views. Therefore, these perspectives helped to define their understanding of words like witch and other words negatively portrayed in contexts like the Bible.
Before the growth of Christianity, there were many polytheistic faiths and religions scattered throughout the world: Norse/Greek/Egyptian polytheism, Druidry, Shamanism, Shinto, etc. Within these scattered faiths, witches, also known as wise men and women, acted as healers, herbalists, and midwives. Then, Christianity practices gained ferver in the Inquisition as differing religious practices came under attack. Many of these witches- healers, herbalists, and midwives- were accused as heretics who went against the proclaimed, “Word of God.”
In this, propaganda was a huge way to persecute witches in that many inquisitors portrayed them as evil, menacing, ugly, devil-worshippers. Because of portrayals like these, theatre and popular culture decided to adopt these characterizations, especially in early Oxford. For instance, The Miami Student, Vol. 001, No. 21 (Mar. 3, 1910), references witch in an allusion to the opera, Parsifal. The newspaper’s interpretation of Parsifal discusses the antagonist, Kundry, a witch, in relation to sinfulness as they attempt “to corrupt the knights” (3). The sinful implications of the diction “corrupt,” especially because knights are often considered holy soldiers, support the theory that Oxfordians believed witches to have a clear association with the devilish work. Additionally, in the February 1911 edition of The Miami Student, a Christian religious section of the paper dubbed “Week of Prayer” explained the Puritans’ murdering of witches as such: “they did not hesitate to shoot down the rude savage of the forest, burn the witch at the stake, or drive out those opposed to their dogmas” (5). By naming witches and other non-Puritan individuals as “savages” in reference to the witch trials, they buy into the negative characterizations of witches at this time. These portrayals of witches as exclusively Satan worshippers and ugly barbarians also extended to people who had physical disfigurements like warts, freckles, harelips, or abnormal body parts; basically, anything deemed unnatural by inquisitors could be seen as a witchy evidence. In Shakespeare’s MacBeth, Shakespeare portrayed the three weird sisters (witches) as hag-ish women with such witchy evidence: skinny, chapped lips, and other ugly features. Characteristics like these were considered as “witch-marks,” a term used in 1677 in John Webster’s Displaying Supposed Witchcraft to criticize the validity of signs to determine witchery. Indeed, most of those burned at the stake, tried, condemned, or accused were not, in fact, actual witches. However, these negative connotative stereotypes of witches remained.
There eventually was a shift from the ugly connotation of witch, when popular culture began to adopt a more sexualized version of the seductress. This could be seen as a different form of negative representation of witches in that they are now radically oversexualized. For instance, in The Miami Student’s March 1910 edition, the newspaper described how “King Amfortas has been seduced by the charms of a sorceress, robbed of the holy spear, and wounded with it” (3). The promiscuous diction “seduction” implies that witches are still considered just as evil and tricky as they were when portrayed ugly. However, there are some feminist aspects associated with this feminine trickery. For example, In Vol. 026, No. 02 (Nov., 1906), a student used “witchery” in a poem they wrote to describe a beautiful woman with physical attributes that will “almost drive you mad” (70). This poem titled, “Witchery of Eyes,” described a young woman who assumably possesses bewitching aspects and behaviors (70). This shift in physical portrayal of “witchery” and the root word witch is a welcome shift to many. Moving away from the negative “ugly” religious connotations derived by radical Christians, the 1900s were presenting a parallel meaning behind the word witch that can be considered through a modernized feminist lens.
Therefore, the word witch has been subtly changing throughout time, specifically since the 1970s. During the late 1900s, witches began to practice more openly, taking back words like witch as part of their craft. Neopagans, or new Pagans, in particular, have been reclaiming words like witch, “witchcraft,” “pagan,” and “wicca” from those who would perpetuate the stereotypes of green hags on broomsticks. Paganism is an umbrella term used to describe a plethora of earth-based faiths. “Wicca” falls under this umbrella to refer to a more specific branch of Paganism, which typically acknowledges the sacredness of the earth and follows a polytheistic faith. In these religions, the word witch is typically used to refer to both men and women practitioners of the faith.
In the 1970s, various witch collectives and organizations that practice the theological, nature-based religions like Paganism and Wicca have attempted to redefine this term. Groups like the Dianic Wicca, or Dianic Witchcraft, founded by Zsuzsanna Budapest, began gathering and openly lifting up the reputation of those with the title of witch in terms of spirituality and religious connotation. Additionally, the American Council of Witches organized in 1973 in order to more closely define Wicca, Witchcraft, and, by association, witch in America. They drafted principles and characteristics of witches to help their neighbors and communities break away from the aforementioned ghoulish stereotypes that denoted witches.
Even Oxford is noticing a shift in the way witches are represented. The 2013 edition of The Miami Student, in an article by Phoebe Myers, writes about an openly Pagan student who attended Miami University. In her article “‘Other’ Miami: Students Who Fall Outside Religious Norms,” Myers attempts to explore the idea of witches concerning the aforementioned minority religious sects of Paganism within Oxford, Ohio. The student, Hannah Clarke, identified as a witch and tried to explain her religious beliefs in relation to educating her peers on this subject matter. Myers discusses a survey presented to the 2013 Freshman class regarding religious beliefs. The majority of people surveyed, 34.9%, identified as Roman Catholics with other Christian religions close behind in number. Clarke’s beliefs were not listed on the survey, so she had to align under the “other” category. Myers patiently and respectfully shares Clarke’s side of the story, which has never really before been as openly acknowledged in Oxford. In this way, I can see Oxford and other places around America becoming more tolerant and less ignorant as Pagans reclaim the word witch in a more positive light.
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