Breaking The Spell of Superiority: A Challenge to Witches
I am a Witch. I became a Witch four decades ago, when as a 23-year-old feminist, I turned to nature for healing after three sudden familial deaths within three months. It was the only spirituality that made sense. I found solace in the idea of Goddesses, as opposed to the punitive father God I had grown up with. Holding nature as sacred, being comforted by her cycles, having a personal relationship with all the elements of life, and tuning into the Divine Feminine, this is what drew me to the path and keeps me walking it.
What did not draw me, and now confounds me in this most disorganized of all religions, is the idea of seeing myself as special just because of my spirituality. The idea that Witches are more “extraordinary” than other humans, with special powers outside the realm of “normal” folks is not one I can ascribe to. It is not true, and I am against it.
I grew up loving Bewitched and Bell, Book and Candle. I waited every year for the annual television showing of The Wizard of Oz and Glinda’s arrival as the Good Witch in the magic bubble. I raised a son who at the age of seven expressed great relief that Harry Potter made being the child of Witches cool. There’s clearly something fun if not downright necessary in imagining and fantasizing humans with magical powers, especially females with magical powers. After centuries in which the word Witch was an epithet of evil, tales of heroines with magical powers empower young women and encourage older ones.
Yet, how does the myth of the Witch with special powers play out when you actually are a Witch? Especially in times when the pervasive spell of superiority so badly needs to be broken? Across the ideological spectrum, narcissism is on the rise in the U.S. We have a leader with all the traits of a disordered narcissist, who is emboldening outright white supremacists to unleash violence and extremism in the name of their imagined “superiority.”
Starhawk, who wrote the first book on my tradition’s beliefs, is mostly to be found dressed in a stained t-shirt and worn jeans, and is happier building composting toilets than creating astral portals. Her glamour is not one of velvet capes, leather corsets and heavy jewelry, but relies on her writing, priestessing skills, and knowledge of permaculture.
Decades back, our small collective crafted our tradition’s Principles of Unity. These principles aimed to create a tradition in which hierarchy was questioned and we furthered the idea that all humans embody the divine. Our organizing principle was to break that spell of superiority.
Nevertheless, like the wider Pagan world in general, this spell increasingly permeates the tradition I called my own and helped create. It’s hard to call yourself a Witch and not fall under this spell. Don’t Witches have special powers? Aren’t we extraordinary, being able to talk to the dead, move between the worlds, armed with psychic powers and herbs that heal?
There’s No Place Like Home
Witches do work with our beloved dead, traveling in trance to visit them at Samhain (otherwise known as Halloween). But as so beautifully portrayed in the movie Coco, so do ordinary people in other cultures. We hone our psychic skills and practice divination, but this too comes naturally to many humans and can be learned by almost all. We cast spells, which I experience as prayers with props. Most of us practice some form of a healing art, but like all other healers, this involves lifelong study and learning.
As a child, I was drawn to making altars, and collected all manner of rocks, shells and feathers. I plagued my parents and Sunday school teacher with my obsessive question, “Who was God’s mother?” I was an oddball. Looking back, it makes sense that Witchcraft called to me. And in answering that call, it never occurred to me that I was better or in any way superior to my friends.
My first wave feminist hero was and continues to be Matilda Joselyn Gage, author of Women, Church and State. She fought long and hard with Susan B. Anthony against joining with the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, believing that Christianity was not good for women. She gave us the first research on witch burnings and invoked Goddesses at suffragette gatherings. She wrote eloquently about there not being a supernatural, because the natural is full of magic and power. Almost written out of history, she lives on in her son-in-law’s stories. Frank Baum’s protagonist was an ordinary farm girl. Dorothy found her power within, and desired nothing more than to return to her own dusty backyard.
Matilda would be amazed today to see how her vision of a female spirituality movement and the reclaiming of the word “Witch” has come into being. With her love of the natural, the ordinary, I’m sure she’d shake her head at the ongoing portrayals of us as supernatural beings.
The longer I’ve been a Witch, the less I’ve set myself apart from other humans. My work as a psychotherapist has grounded me in the everyday miracles and yes, magic, of the human spirit. It’s not just Witches who “change consciousness at will” (Doreen Valiente’s definition of magic). The courage I’ve witnessed in seeing clients face their shadows, delve deep into their pain and transform poison into medicine has been as mighty as what I’ve witnessed at Pagan gatherings and in the covens I’ve been part of.
My tradition’s largest gathering is a week long “Witchcamp.” These occur in many places, but began in Northern California. At Witchcamp, “campers” take paths focused on learning magical tools, and each night there is a ritual usually aimed at personal and political transformation. For many years, California Witchcamp has carried the tag line, “An extraordinary event for extraordinary people.” I am alarmed by this, especially in our current cultural moment. How can Witches help break the evil spell of superiority when we set ourselves apart from other human beings and claim to be extraordinary?
When I’ve challenged this spell, what I’ve heard has alarmed me more. We hold all humans as sacred, as divine, I have been told. But we Witches are “wyrd”, are different, and are magical and not mundane. In other words, in George Orwell’s brilliant language, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” Is this any different from Christians who believe they are special because they are saved?
Others have told me that daring to be extraordinary is something we all should strive for, that it’s part of empowerment. But I don’t want to be extraordinary. I want to align myself with the ordinary, which is magic enough. I want to dare, like many ordinary people do, to have courage to stand up against tyranny, to be kind in the face of cruelty, to persevere and to resist what is happening in the USA with all my might. But to strive to be extraordinary? Quite simply, it’s against my religion, which is to worship the natural, the ordinary.
Over four decades, I have witnessed a rising culture of narcissism and an entrenched narrative that we, the Witches, are the ones we have been waiting for, the people who will save the planet. Witchcamp teachers are the closest thing my tradition has to clergy — or rock stars. One former Witchcamp teacher now actually claims herself to be “one of the greatest priestesses of our time,” another markets her “extraordinary healing and leadership arts.” Just like being a rock star, situational narcissism ensues for those with fragile egos. A fragile ego as a teacher (or therapist) will pull for idealization and feed it. Add magic to what is taught, and the spell of superiority is cast.
It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
At 63, it comes as a bit of shock that I identify more with Presbyterian Minister Fred Rogers than the majority of those who teach at Witchcamp. As Mr. Rogers stated, “As human beings, our job in life is to help people realize how rare and valuable each one of us really is, that each of us has something that no one else has — or ever will have — something inside that is unique to all time.” Mr. Rogers eschewed stories of superheroes and superpowers, preferring to help children (and adults) see themselves as perfectly fine just as they are. We all are special, not because we are better than others, but because every single one of us is special. Mr. Rogers had no truck with the extraordinary.
In my lifetime I’ve seen the Craft and my own tradition grow by leaps and bounds. My tradition started as a handful of us in the Bay Area. We now have communities (and Witchcamps) across the globe. Pantheacon, the once small annual conference on modern Paganism, now fills up several San Jose hotels with attendees.
We have reclaimed what it means to be a Witch, transforming it from an archetype of evil to the archetype of a healer. What strong woman wouldn’t want to be in our ranks? Now is the time to create new narratives, ones in which Witches are no more imbued with special powers than Buddhists who chant or Christians who pray. Because we aren’t. Chanting and praying can be just as effective as casting a spell or creating an altar. Seeing everyone as divine doesn’t result in you yourself becoming more divine than others. Or extraordinary. Forty years of being a Witch has taught me that.
I will be a Witch the rest of my life. My house will always have altars, one of which will reflect the turning of the wheel of the year. I will daily look at my life as a dream and find the meaning in it. When unsure of what course to take, I will turn to my tarot and open to information from the deities I work with. As a therapist, I will continue to sit with clients knowing I am sitting with someone who is divine, who is holy. The Principles of Unity that I helped craft years back still sing to me and are my organizing principles.
I will also dare to be ordinary, to do what I can to break the spell of superiority by letting go of grandiose narratives that make anyone’s DNA, including that of Witches, somehow just a touch different and better than other human beings. Paradoxically, the more I believe in magic, the less I believe that we as Witches are the only ones who work it.
To me, this is the magic that is now the work of this Witch. The light is as important as the lightning. And the real magic and mystery is in the mundane.
