Who’s Afraid of The Big Bad Witch?

Talking about religion when that religion isn’t christianity in the Bible Belt is not the best of ideas. I’ve lied about it, well been completely evasive, on more than one occasion. I honestly don’t consider myself to be religious, maybe spiritual is more the word for what I feel (?). Either way it is not the norm here.

I grew up with religion all around me. The last thing anyone can say is that I didn’t try or that my family hasn’t tried to convert me. It just didn’t stick. I enjoyed studying religion from a more scholarly position, but when it comes to practice almost none of them appealed. The only one that I’ve been drawn to more than any other is the idea of being a witch.

I grew up surrounded by witches. My mother was obsessed with Bewitched and we watched it any time the reruns were on. I knew how badly she wanted to be Samantha. She talked about it all the time.

“If I were Samantha I could just twitch my nose and the whole house would be clean all the time,” she’d say.

My family was matriarchal without intending to be. It seemed to be a strange sort of destiny that all first born daughters would give birth to all girls or at least another first born daughter. It even seemed to defy biological law as all the first born daughters (myself included) married men who came from men who only had sons. Long lines of sons, broken by first born daughters. I’m sure someone could find a scientific explanation but I’ve always felt that sometimes life is better with some small magical oddities and mysteries. I like the idea that even in the womb we girls beat the boys.

When my sisters and I were little, playing witches with flowers and old bowls in the yard was our most common game. In fact, if I think on every girl I ever befriended, they all wanted to be witches more than any of them wanted to be princesses. It’s like the feminine in all of us is drawn to witchcraft.

Later it was Charmed. We were three sisters who pretended to live in a big house while playing “potions” and this show was like something from our most imaginative days. The Halliwell sisters will always be a special part of our childhood.

There were other witchy pop culture references that my sisters, and even my mother, were drawn to, but I’ll try not to go too much into the whole history of women and witchcraft. There are so many books by writers better and more experienced than I that explain the connection of women to witchcraft and you should definitely read and research a few.

My own experience just highlights this seemingly “new wave” of people being drawn to witchcraft. For the record, I don’t think it’s a new wave, just that it’s more in the open and people don’t feel the need to hide their interest. I myself feel more comfortable talking and writing about this interest now than I did before.

Witchcraft in the South, where the Bible Belt is cinched up tight, isn’t something that’s easy to be open with. Especially as a huge portion of the country, many of them in this area, tries to desperately pull the rest of the country back to the conservatism of the 1940’s (maybe even the 1840’s).

Religion is something that I’ve always struggled with. Everyone I knew was a christian of one sort or the other (Church of Christ, Methodist, Baptist, you get it). It seemed to be just the way of things, like the sky being blue and the grass being green. I thought that I had to go to church the same way I had to go to school, even though I hated it even more than the latter.

I was in my teens when I began testing the waters of being an agnostic. I tried one more time after my kids were born to find the same connection to God and church that everyone I knew seemed to be finding but I never did. It never stuck and I never felt the comfort or certainty that everyone else had. I enjoyed the sense of community and the way everyone gathered together for celebrations but I found myself often thinking that the God of the Bible wasn’t a God I wanted to worship, real or not.

So do I consider myself a witch?

I believe in science and reasoning. I don’t think that I have magical powers and I know I’ll never be able to twitch my nose and clean my house, sadly. I do however think that there are things that have not yet been explained by science, and even still when you really delve into scientific thought, it’s pretty magical all by itself.

I also collect rocks, love to garden, and connect with nature. I enjoy making the effort to flow with the seasons and plant by the moon. So am I witch? Maybe.

I’m sure some might say yes, anyone can be a witch, it’s just a sense of spirituality that comes from reclaiming our power over and within ourselves without a patriarchal rulebook. Others might say no, that there is a specific religion that you must follow. But I think the latter is rare.

I think for most people who call themselves witches it’s more about a natural connection than it is about twitching noses to clean houses. Although if anyone figures out how to make that work PUH-LEASE let me know.

I’ve seen a few people from my neck of the woods post on their social media accounts that they’re interested in all that is considered witchcraft. Maybe the aesthetics but also I think we all crave a connection to the natural world. Mother Earth if you’re witchy.

I’ve also seen others that think this “new wave of witchcraft” is what is going to bring an end to the world.

But let’s get real, if it’s 2020 and people still assume that women admitting they enjoy cool rocks, gardening, meditating, playing an ancient card game, and connecting to nature while occasionally reciting positive affirmations then I’m pretty sure ignorance is what is going to bring about the end.