Time Travel, Remembrance, and Wearing the Word ‘Witch’
European witch trials, via Google
“Can you tell me what this says?”
She’s grinning, her eyes shine with impish mischief, and I look at the badge she’s waving in my face from the shadows – it’s her name, so I say it out loud.
“AN EDUCATED WOMAN!” she booms, a theatrical roar. “She’s a witch! She’s a witch! Get up here.”
And this was how I came to be put on trial as a witch on a cold January night in Edinburgh. It wasn’t just me of course – a young lad who could speak two languages fluently and who, according to his friends, likes to talk to his cat was also pulled up onto the steps in front of Parliament Square. We were to stand and listen to the details of our various tortures. This was part of a well-known ghost tour – there are dozens that run throughout the city – and even though I knew there would be scares and gore in store (why else would I have signed up for this?) the witch trial was unexpected.
Her choosing me – a modern magical practitioner – left me with adrenalin rising in my chest. All in good fun. A gruesome history lesson, right? For most, yes, I can see that – one relic of our brutal British past, something we should remember with horror. But for me it brought the cruelty home in a previously unexplored way. Even though I’ve read dozens of books, plus countless articles and essays about the history of witchcraft, about practicing witchcraft, witch hunts and trials, this was a new perspective. Even though I’d imagined many times before what it must have been like to be tortured in these ways, having the details applied directly to you – needles pushed under fingernails, being dropped repeatedly onto the cobblestones from the Mercat Cross, broken body thrown into a miserable prison cell, dunked in filthy water over and over again – as you stand in front of a waiting crowd was a brand new experience.
The history of witches, witch hunts, and witch trials around the world and over millennia is varied and long – and in some places it’s still in progress. Britain and the USA are the ones closest to me, of course, because those are the countries of my ancestors, and thankfully, things have moved on in those countries. I’m not here to consider definitive reasons why witches have historically been a source of dread and hatred; there is simply not enough space when entire books are devoted to single aspects of this horrid legacy. Everything I’ve read and everyone I’ve spoken to has a different explanation that they are familiar with, or that they have learned about, and really, that’s the closest thing to the truth – multiple truths. Not all accused witches were women, some were men; not all accused witches were poor, some were nobility; not all accused witches were old and frail, some were young and strong. And so on. Not all witches were innocent and falsely accused either, which we tend to believe is always the case – some of the Pendle witches, and Isobel Gowdie (a famous Scottish witch who proclaimed her guilt proudly, and gave details of her magic and rituals in her confessions) come to mind as examples of those who went to the gallows after openly confessing their craft, and sometimes their intent to harm – though it is true a great many of those famously executed for witchcraft never hurt anyone, and never cast a spell in their lives.
The point I take from it all and what I spend time contemplating is this: ‘witch’ was a label you really didn’t want in previous centuries, but now more than ever, many of us claim it willingly. And sometimes having a moment to remember this is worthwhile – it adds depth to our practice, honours people who usually very unwillingly sacrificed their lives as part of this story, and it works towards a collective healing.
During the mock witch trial in Edinburgh, I tried to confess immediately, in the spirit of Isobel Gowdie – but I was instructed to say no at each turn. You know, for entertainment purposes. Every torture had to be explained to the tour guests, each point of the typical process from accusation to arrest, from torture to trial to execution (for there was almost always an execution) had to be put in front of an audience. At last we could plead how we wished, at the end of all the tortures. Were we witches? she wanted to know. The young man on trial with me blurted out an indignant, incredulous “No!”, while I looked around at seven pairs of eyes and said “Yes.” The boy was to be strangled, then burned alive. My sentence was execution by hanging, followed by burning my corpse.
“You’re lucky!” the boy turned and said to me, wide-eyed.
Lucky indeed, to die a quick death, all because I confessed.
We both got a little caught up in it, our nervous laughter covering something more. For his part considering all this for the first time; for my part living this ten-minute mock trial as if I was really accused, as if I would shortly make the trip to the gallows on the Edinburgh Castle esplanade to breathe my last, for the final alchemy of my flesh becoming ash, the air in my lungs transforming to smoke.
Most of us are lucky these days. The witches among us who live at a time in history and a place in the world where at worst, we will be harassed or told we’re going to hell. At best, people will accept us. And somewhere in the middle, we get side-eye or laughed at by people who think we’re ridiculous. I’ve experienced all of the above, which is why even now I’ve been careful with whom I speak at length, one-to-one, about my beliefs and practices.
Several men in my past have been reminiscent of a witchfinder, of the superstitious or superior misogynists of old who pale at the thought of a woman with power – threatening or denying or fetishising, or maybe all three: “don’t you dare do tarot readings when I’m in the house, it’s evil”; “there’s no such things as witches, and if you tell anyone you are one you’ll be sorry”; “I hope I’m not in love with you because you cast a spell on me” (don’t flatter yourself); “ooh if you’re a witch where can I find you dancing naked around a bonfire?” (nowhere, my dude). There are those I haven’t spoken to in many years, who are fixated on the fact that I’m more public about my path now, some of whom have sent me hateful messages out of nowhere about this very thing.
None of this is public torture, or trial, or execution. It’s important to remember when we are wearing this word, this very weighted word, that people died for it. People who didn’t want any part of spell-casting or charms. People who were singled out for myriad reasons. People who did practice magic, healing, divination, but didn’t want to harm anyone, who just wanted to get on with things.
I am not the first person to say it and won’t be the last. I’m simply adding my voice in their memory, in gratitude, and in grief for each person who has ever worn the word ‘witch’ and suffered for it.
via Google
Born in Southern Ohio, but settled in the UK since 1999, Kate is a writer, witch, editor and mother of five. She is the author of several poetry pamphlets, and the founding editor of four web journals and a micropress.
Her witchcraft is a blend of her great-grandmother's Appalachian ways and the Anglo-Celtic craft of the country she now calls home – though she incorporates tarot, astrology, and her ancestors, plus music, film, books, and many other things into her practice. Her spiritual life is best described as queer Christopagan with emphasis on the feminine and the natural world. She believes magic is everywhere.
Find Kate on twitter and IG - @mskateybelle - and at her website.