The representation of witches and witchcraft I will discuss
today are amongst those I personally find the least interesting. Primarily this
is because there were no ‘wiccans’ in early modern Europe, yet I am with some
regularity asked about what Margaret Murray called the “Witch-cult” in early
modern Europe.[1] The
idea that the modern iterations of magic, occultism, Satanism, and wicca have
ancient antecedents, or have existed as an enduring culture in just plain
wrong. As with so many things we think of as being 'old' or 'traditional', they are recent inventions which use ancient
‘trappings’ to legitimise them.
In this post I will argue that most pop culture representations of a
female-dominated mystical religion/magical practise which is primarily benign
in nature, owe their underlying precepts to Margaret Murray, and to feminist
interpretations of witchcraft – some of whom still continue to trot out thismyth to attack ‘the patriarchy’ and the forces of social conformity. And that the use f these ideas in popular culture continues to influence some of the representation of witchcraft we read in books, and see on our television screens or at the movies, even now.
The most notable popular culture outcome of these ideas was
the TV series Charmed (1998-2006). Its
premise was that the Halliwell sisters were part of an ancient magical family,
and were supposed to use their powers for good, to defend and protect the human
race.
The series placed the three sisters inter-relationship to
one another at the heart of a female-driven series, which fed nicely into 1990s
girl-power movement, and embraced (or at least used) some aspects of Third-Wave
Feminism. It also gelled well with the other significant contemporary
pop-culture supernatural series, Buffy
the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003).
Charmed and Buffy the Vampire Slayer were joined by Sabrina the Teenage Witch, creating a triumvirate
of supernatural shows (each in a different genre, and aiming at a slightly
different audience) but all containing characters called witches, who were seen as benign forces on the side of the good guys(for
the most part, although going ‘evil’ is used fairly often in these style of
shows, for example see ‘Dark Willow’) .
Witches as persecuted outcasts also made an appearance in both
the novel and film of Practical Magic (1995
and 1998, respectively), when two sisters find that only together can they
overcome an ancient curse, and find happiness within a community that has
rejected and despised them. The themes of sisterhood, and the way in which they
must work together are echoed by Charmed’s
premise, though the genre differences are quite stark.
Both Charmed and Buffy the Vampire Slayer have been the
focus of feminist
discussion and have been studied by academics. I don’t intend
today to examine those shows further, not only because a lot already been said
about them, but because I want to look at the use of wiccans as the descendant of Murray's fertility cult outside of thse two Tv shows. Today I want to look in depth at an example of wiccans as 'witches' in a piece of popular culture which isn’t consciously attempting to be either ‘girl-power’
or feminist minded.
Jim Butcher’s Dresden
Files series has come in for quite a lot of serious criticism of incidences of casualmisogyny, usually as an outcome of the main character’s POV. It is an
urban fantasy series, centring on a wizard who is aware that others within his world view some of his behaviour as somewhat misogynist (as obviously, do may of his readers). Notably the wiccans in the Dresden Files appear as a victimised
group in only one book, White Night (Dresden Files, Book Nine).
In White Night,
the hero of the series Harry Dresden, is brought in to examine an apparent
suicide. He soon discovers that the killer has used some of the murdered woman’s
‘sacred water’ from her holy chalice on her shrine (no Da Vinci Code jokes
intended… I think) to inscribe Exodus 22:18:
Murphy furrowed her brow and
stared at it. ‘A Bible verse?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I don’t know that one,’ she
said. ‘Do you?’
I nodded. ‘It’s one that stuck in
my head: “Suffer not a witch to live.”’[2]
Dresden then explain to police officer who uses him as a
Private Detective-Wizard-Consultant, that while not all ‘wiccans’ are witches
(that is practise actual magic), their beliefs still form the basis of a
religion.
What follows is one of the more interesting interpretations
of religion and witchcraft in urban fantasy, after Murphy points out that the
biblical reference seems pretty straight forwards in its meaning:
‘I dunno. “Suffer not a witch to
live.” Seems fairly clear.’
‘Out of context, but clear,’ I
said. ‘Keep in mind that this appears in the same book of the Bible that
approves the death sentence for a child who curses his parents, owners of oxen
who injure someone through the owner’s negligence, anybody who works or kindles
a fire on Sunday, and anyone who has sex with an animal.’
Murphy snorted.
‘Also keep in mind that the
original text was written thousands of years ago. In Hebrew. The actual word
that they used in that verse describes someone who casts spells that do harm to
others. There was a distinction, in that culture, between harmful and beneficial
magic.
‘By the time we got to the Middle
Ages, the general attitude within the faith was that anyone who practiced any
kind of magic was automatically evil. There was no distinction between white
and black magic. And when the verse came over to English, King James had a
thing about witches, so “harmful caster of spells” just got translated to
“witch.”’
‘Put that way, it sounds like
maybe someone took it out of context,’ Murphy said. ‘But you’d get arguments
from all kinds of people that the Bible has got to be perfect. That God would
not permit such errors to be made in the Holy Word.’
‘I thought God gave everyone free
will,’ I said. ‘Which presumably – and evidently – includes the freedom to be
incorrect when translating one language into another.’
‘Stop making me think,’ Murphy
said. ‘I’m believing over here.’[3]
Butcher was far from the first fantasy writer to note a relationship
between his own work and the actual events of the early modern witch trials. For
example, Harry Potter engaged with the history of witch trials through Harry’s
study of the book A History of Magic.
In The Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry is
writing an essay which cited the history of a woman known as Wendelin the Weird who enjoyed the effects of being burned alive (she used a charm so that it
tickled instead of burning) so much, that she allowed herself to be caught
repeatedly.
But very few books, TV series, or films go as far Butcher
does, in trying to actually discuss the problems of belief, tolerance, and
interaction between the magical and the mystical in the present day, and relating it to historical events, ideas and theology (the series also includes allusions
to Dresden being a descendant of Merlin, and one of his allies in the series is dressed like
a modern day Knight Templar).
Of course, the basis of the conversation I quoted above is problematic,
as theology would suggest any use of magic magic (as opposed to God-granted miracles) is wrong. Nor was it solely because of King James that the term witch (with all its pejorative
and gendered meanings) was used in the English vernacular. In fact each
vernacular translation uses similar words, for example an
early Spanish vernacular bible uses the term ‘hechicera’, the later French translation
by Louis Segonde had ‘magicienne’, while an even later Italian translation in
1927, used the term ‘Strega’, and many German versions have used the term ‘Zauberinnen’
- all of which are terms for female users of magic.
To return to the way Butcher uses witches of the Margaret
Murray-type, my point is that although Butcher’s narrative denies the ‘wiccans’
in his narrative their agency by making them victims of a sadistic vampire who
feeds on despair, he uses the same rhetoric that led the character of Xander in Buffy
the Vampire Slayer to sing:
'Cause
witches, they were persecuted
Wicca good and love the earth
And women power and I'll be over here
Wicca good and love the earth
And women power and I'll be over here
Nor is Butcher alone in picking up on this concept and using it in a very different context. Similar ideas permeate several recent supernatural works,
including Angelina Jolie’s titular character in Maleficent (2014), which is a paean to female virtue overcoming hatred and
male greed, with rape metaphors thrown in for good measure. While Maleficent is
not technically a witch, but rather a fairy, her appearance (and that of the
cartoon character on whom she was based) owe a great deal to the iconography of
witches (and the original cartoon character was spiteful, vengeful and jealous
of young Aurora in a mode familiar to readers of last week’s entry).
There is so much more to say on this topic. For example Butcher’s
wiccans only appeared in a later book, while one of his earlier works featured
a vengeful trio of ex-wives (some of whom were pornographic film actresses.
Yes, really) murdering potential lovers of their husband (or ex-husband) under
the influence of a vampire (not the despair-feeding variety, but the kind that
feeds off sexual energy. Yes, really).
Butcher’s Dresden
Files books therefore manage to use and abuse both extremes of the witch trope: promiscuous,
greedy and vengeful in Blood Rites,
and a sisterhood of essentially good people, who are also victims in White Night. Later these minor
practitioners who are also wiccans become part of Dresden’s wider network of
allies, though they have yet to play any important role.
But what does this use of two kinds of witches, one bad one
good, have to do with witches in early modern Europe? You could possibly argue
that ‘good witches’ in modern fiction play the role of Cunning Folk, as sources
of magical lore who can also perform minor acts of magic (such characters have appeared in other series, for example Vorna in David Gemmell’s Rigante series).
But Butcher purposefully cites wiccan as separate from the
magic practitioners who were persecuted in early modern times:
[“]Three hundred years ago, it
made cream turn sour, disturbed animals, and tended to encourage minor skin
infections in wizards. Gave them blemishes and moles and pockmarks.”[4]
In other words it was practitioners, and there is no mention
of wiccan pre-existing modern iterations of the wiccan religion (in other
words, this is a modern development).
So what are we to make of this late nineties moment, when
witches were good, part of a sisterhood, and descended from those who were
persecuted during the early modern period? Was this just a moment of cultural
alignment, between a popular version of feminism in ‘girl-power’, and the
interweaving notions of wiccans on the one-hand, and Margaret Murray on the
other gelled? And what will its consequences be?
Witches of all kinds are present on TV, in movies, and
books. Since the successes of Harry Potter and Twilight a lot of authors have
written series for children, young adults and adults, that revolve around the
supernatural, and are set in the current era. On the big screen Nicholas Cage
has appeared in two horror/adventure movies, The Last Witch-Hunter (2015), Season
of the Witch (2011) which revolve around witchcraft, and on TV there are American Horror Story: Coven, and The Witches of East End on TV. Nor are they alone with series like Game of Thrones, taking high fantasy
from ‘nerd’ to ‘cool’, and subverting witch tropes in the process.
While The Witches of
East End features a female-centric cast, which features two pairs of witches
who are sisters, most representations of witches in recent media have tended to
be at least questionable characters, if not outright villains. Some would
undoubtedly argue that this is a backwards step for feminism, but I am left
unsure if building a positive female character on a basically flawed historical
theory (that witches were part of a female-dominated fertility cult of pagan
origin) was ever a good idea.
[1] Margaret Murray, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, (1921);
see also Margaret Murray, The God of the
Witches, (1933); Margaret Murray, The
Divine King of England, (1954).
[2] Jim
Butcher, White Night (Dresden Case Files):
p. 8. Note,
I personally still very much enjoy these books in spite of
needing to roll my eyes at the main character’s sexism. Which is, in my
opinion, is significantly less sexist than most stand-up comedy, and quite a few
prime time TV shows of the past decade – hell the past few years. Nor is it as un-self-aware as the sexism of Patrick Rothfuss.
