A historian's critique of popular conceptions of witchcraft
I gotta say I don&#x27;t get the article.<p>The paragraph with the quote by Dakota Bracciale about witchcraft being practiced by people who were outliers -- may or may not be true. But how does this claim impunity for magical attacks, as the author states? Some witchcraft was practiced by rich and famous people -- they wrote about it in books -- and some of them attacked people magically (or tried to depending on what you believe). What does being an outsider have to do with launching magical attacks? Does this parse through the bit about being arbiter of their own justice? It seems a bit presumptuous -- what do attacks necessarily have to do with justice?<p>Say I substitute Christian in for witch. &quot;I will argue that modern [evangelical Christians in the US] are themselves prodcuts of the very globalized, commercial, urban and anywhere culture which they set out to resist, because rather than reacting against those trends, they are turning what might once have been a genuinely radical alternative into another form of self-care.&quot; I&#x27;d stand by that sentence.<p>One of the primary problems with the article is conflating Pagans who are pagan as a primary religious affiliation, goddess-worshippers, people dabbling in planetary magick, people who just want to make a nice herbal face cream that reminds themselves of some idealised quality, Wiccans, people who decorate with crystals (she doesn&#x27;t even mention crystals!! Big business, folks!), etc. Moreover, I don&#x27;t understand her wish to distinguish &quot;spells&quot; from &quot;prayer&quot;. Yep, they&#x27;re meant to do the same thing: concentrate the will and the heart on something. She seemingly admits that with her hail Mary give me a parking spot riff (which I too have used!). So why does she think this conflation of spell and prayer is going to upset the Oracle of Los Angeles?<p>It seems to me that the author simply doesn&#x27;t know a lot about modern witchery and its variety. One internet witchy guru I&#x27;ve read talks reasonably often about &quot;the queer witch Jesus&quot;; the intertwining of Christianity and heterodox&#x2F;local&#x2F;pagan&#x2F;witchy habits and belief systems is unavoidable to anyone with even a cursory knowledge of European beliefs and fairy tales. The author&#x27;s portrayal of modern witches as denying this intertwining is simply ignorant.<p>And then there&#x27;s the bit saying, witches historically didn&#x27;t practice sisterhood, because other women accused them of being witches (? non sequitur). Follow it up with the claim that it&#x27;s seers and healers who most often accuse other women of witchcraft. Ok. Could be true, could be false. Then &quot;Any professional woman will understand that she and not her male colleague is likely to be the subject of accusations from below.&quot; I&#x27;m an almost 40 year old professional woman. This is news to me; I haven&#x27;t really seen any accusations from below other than &quot;she&#x2F;he is an ineffective manager&quot; and &quot;he slept with that undergrad,&quot; which was true and also ignored by everyone ever. What am I going to be accused of? Ah -- like Hillary Clinton, I&#x27;ll be accused of killing Vince Foster. The beginning of the paragraph though implies I should be accused of killing Vince Foster by a seer or healer. Hm. And then we swing to, &quot;by contrast [...], the medieval Green Knight -- despite his appearance -- is not a baddie or an evil overlord.&quot; Where did the Green Knight come from?! How do we then get to Beowulf in the next sentence?! One paragraph that claims feminist solidarity is a joke among medieval witches that careens through Vince Foster to Beowulf without any argument made? Where is the editor for this thing????!!!! This is reading like one of the more poorly-written student papers I&#x27;ve graded -- use enough big words in grammatically-correct configurations and surely someone will think you&#x27;re eloquent and&#x2F;or actually making a point. It works fine if the essay is graded by machine [1].<p>I give up.<p>If anyone understands how Beowulf and Vince Foster relate to feminist solidarity, let me know.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=20834379" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=20834379</a>