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inspiration & closing thoughts

Recently, I was going through my camera roll and I stumbled upon the thing that sparked my interest in this topic when I was brainstorming what I should even make this blog about.  *** warning : sappy post ahead ***

Anyways, I knew I wanted to do something a bit different and out of the ordinary, and when I was scrolling through fb and I saw this specific post I finally realized what direction I wanted to go in, the post said, “One of my friends told me about a powerful lesson in her daughter’s high school class this winter. They’re learning about the Salem Witch Trials, and their teacher told them they were going to play a game. “I’m going to come around and whisper to each of you whether you’re a witch or a normal person. Your goal is to build the largest group possible that does NOT have a witch in it. At the end, any group found to include a witch gets a failing grade.” The teens drove into grilling each other. One fairly large group formed, but most of the students broke into small, exclusive groups, turning away anyone that they thought gave off even a hint of guilt. “Okay”, the teacher said. “You’ve got your groups. Time to find out which ones fail. All witches, please raise your hands.” No one raised a hand. The kids were confused and told him he’d messed up the game. “Did I? Was anyone in Salem an actual witch? Or did everyone just believe what they’d been told?” And that is how you teach kids how easy it is to divide a community.”

That post really made me question a lot more than just my blog topic choice. I can’t say why exactly, but the message really hit home inside of me. After all, that’s all the Salem witch trials and all of the witch trials occurring afterwards truly were. Neighbors turning on neighbors over what? Pure suspicion! No facts or truths or attempt at understanding whatsoever. Time and time again throughout this blog and my research, I have found the goodness and magical hope that surrounds witchcraft and the actual true history, yet it still remains a mystery for most people. Not because the resources to learn more aren’t out there, but because no one wants to make that effort to be accepting and give something as bold as this a chance.

We, as humans, all make that mistake at some point over something. It may not be over witches, but it may be over the color of someone’s skin or their outward appearance. But, I’m not here to warn you of the consequences of prejudice, (that’s another research topic for another day) however I do sincerely hope this post may make you double think next time you want to make a judgment about something or someone before you attempt to see it a non-biased view. I myself, am in no means perfect, and I need to work on this too. But, one thing is constant and I know for sure, being accepting and loving is so much more rewarding than having hate in your heart!

*signing off* :)

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I wanted to incorporate some real opinion from a modern practicing witch herself. Watching this video turned my mind to see all of the stereotypes that media truly inflicts upon its audience. The simplest of things that you wouldn’t bat an eye out can start a long line of lies based on an entire group of people. Although this particular witch, handles it all in good fun, carefully explaining the reasoning behind the possible offense some witches might take to it, while still informing the audience about some of the things the media got right!

One thing I noticed that the practicing witch in the video didn’t exactly fit the “mold” of what i had pictured in my mind. That’s simply because there is no mold to fit into. Anyone and everyone can practice the craft, it’s widely diverse and accepting and that is one of the reasons behind the success of it all. 

Just very interesting to get that firsthand opinion from someone that is directly effected by the media’s perception of “who they are”, so enjoy the video !

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Media Manipulation

I previously already discussed the popular film The Blair Witch Project, however this article I found re-sparked my interest on the topic and gave me a new perspective to add to my blog. The academic article, “The "witchcraft" of media manipulation: Pamela and the Blair Witch Project”, written by Martin Harris in 2001. The article was included in the Journal of Popular Culture (Volume 34, Issue 4). In summary, the author compares the witch-based film and Pamela, a popular novel written by Samuel Richardson. The author especially deals with the reasons behind the great success of both media pieces, dealing with the media manipulation directed towards the audience’s perspective.

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Harris and the references he uses as research in his article claim that the success behind these media pieces have to do with how they used the unusual point of view to keep the audience involved and wanting more. If you’ve ever watched the famous film, then you’ll immediately see what he’s talking about, the movie is shot entirely by the three amateur campers that have gotten lost in the woods and tormented by the witch that haunts the area. The camera angles, shaky at times, and very real in a sense, display the fear and raw emotion the director wanted each audience member to feel heavily. Not actually revealing the “witch” or appointed villain in the film, but allowing it up to the audience’s imagination to paint the story in a sense. Also allowing the audience to truly believe that it is a true story, not fiction.

One of the articles Harris uses is an article produced by New York Times, “A Witch’s Cauldron of Success Boils Over”. The article discusses the disbelief most people felt after the film’s initial burst of success that wasn’t expected by most. Since the film is such an iconic film regarding the famous witch character in horror films. I found myself questioning why due to the lack of actual witch representation in the film. Instead of actually giving the audience that visual, they leave the fear to build your own personal image in your head. Is that fear so distinct that they could construct an entire film out of fear and shaky camera angles? Well, apparently so, because the media manipulation found everywhere has struck again within this film.

This is just a common trend I see overall through everything, when people don’t know much truth about a topic, in this case a cultural phenomenon like witches, they tend to just build their opinion off of a stereotype and run with it. I can’t say I’m surprised in the slightest that they took the witch character and branded it into the villain of the story, without really knowing anything about witches at all.

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After an excursion to the German Heritage Center Museum with my class, I had the opportunity to learn more about the Pennsylvania Dutch Culture. What I wasn’t expecting to hear however was a brief mentioning of WITCHES!! I know, I was surprised to. But, as were were looking at the hex signs painted on the outside of the barn at the location, our tour guide told us about how there were legends that the word “hex” signs was rumored to relate to witches hexes, and meant to ward off their evil relation with the devil from their houses. Which, you guessed it, is entirely not true!!!! Here is, though, a brief list of some of the actual meanings behind hex sign designs! We can see that the false depiction doesn’t even solely fall in the media realm, but over many mediums. I just found it so interesting that although media does help with spreading rumors quickly and more effectively, even without it, “old wives tales” will somehow arise anyways!

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fake news

Since I now want to focus on the “WHY?” behind the inaccurate portrayal of witches and witchcraft, I decided to dive into the mass media world and get a taste of just how they are being portrayed. So I went on a bit of a witch-like TV binge from Wizard of Oz, Hocus Pocus, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, and American Horror Story : Coven. From almost every portrayal of witches I can think of and that I’ve watched, the three stereotypes they usually fall in are as follows : comedic figure ,scary figure, or just a modernized and feminized “cool figure. After studying the history and modern aspect a bit more, I realized it all fell into a timeline of sorts.

Of course, when a religion like witchcraft has such a negative and misunderstood reputation from the past, the media will take that image and run with it. What I’ve noticed is in the beginning of media, of old fairy tales, nursery rhymes, Disney films, and earlier movies, they were painted in that villainous way. Most of the time they were depicted that way to teach lessons in children’s stories or simply create a sense of fear regarding some topic, as it was not yet widely talked about and practiced modernly. In fact the idea of modern witchcraft and wicca hadn’t even been created up until the 1940's/50's. So movies like Wizard of Oz (first released in 1939) stuck with that beginning false representation.

The next stage in this timeline would be after the modernized religion started to come out of the shadows and into light (of socially accepted norms). You can see the portrayal took a turn from villain-like to comical (and even fun in ways)! Movies like Hocus Pocus, Teen Witch, Halloweentown, and the original TV series of Sabrina the Teenage Witch started to surface as media companies started to realize that people were interested in the ideas behind witchcraft. And with that, the transition slowly started, along with more people accepting the craft as a religion, dressing up for Halloween, and modeling more positive-focused media on the topic.

Finally, this brings us to modern-day depiction of witches we now have, where entire blogs (just like this one) are dedicated to personal experiences with witchcraft, wicca stores are not an uncommon thing to see on the street, and people openly convert to the religion of witchcraft. We also now see media has fully transitioned to shows like AHS and a newer version of Sabrina to showcase that modern witchcraft is okay, not only okay but a social fad with quite a huge following. Although wicca and witchcraft may not be accepted by everyone quite yet, you can’t deny the leaps and bounds that modern witches have jumped through today. To me, this proves just how easily the media can sway opinions and how we, as the public, view things. I encourage you all to do your own research on things like this, you never really know what new topics you can educate yourself on and learn to widely respect.

I can say that I never thought this blog would lead to my opinions being changed so greatly , however i’m very grateful that they did !!!!!

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Teenage Witches Book Review

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I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book because it tackled the perspective of actual people practicing the religion of witchcraft in today’s age. And yes, you heard correctly, witchcraft is a religion, contrary to popular belief, and not one that glorifies the devil and hexing others. It’s quite the exact opposite actually! The book, a monograph, written by Helen A. Berger and Douglas Ezzy interviewed multiple people, all coming from different walks of life, on how they made their decision to become a witch in their teenage years. The book dives into how witchcraft is portrayed vs. what the religion actually entails. I found the interviews that they included were wonderfully varied in many ways, but they all came to the religion through the same trials, most were overcoming something in their life and needed help on the way. One chapter that really drew in my interest was dedicated to a minister’s daughter that had gotten in contact with her spirituality group ( other women that were also practicing witchcraft ), through her own minister father. Typically, people with a traditionally religious mindset are very close-minded to these ideas, but that’s because they don’t know what these teenage witches truly celebrate!

The religion of witchcraft sees life as a cycle, and they don’t actually believe in the existence of Hell or the Devil. There is a focus, however, on positivity and environmentalism ( taking care of the world and giving out positive energy ). They also use the term “coming home” instead of converting like most religions do. It’s not changing your ways, its finding a name that all of their prior beliefs already fall under. Something I hadn’t considered before, however, is why do people turn to witchcraft? Well, the book broke it down into 5 general reasons. 1) there’s so much accessibility and information through media and technology nowadays. 2) Popular beliefs like feminism and environmentalism already follow the same basic core beliefs. 3) It promotes self-reflexivity which is not typically seen in most religions, but it is something most people look for. 4) A lot of the gathering and groups occur online which once again makes it easily accessible. And 5) With the decline of other common religions, more and more teens are looking for a more modernized religion to follow.

Areas where the book fell a bit short in my opinion was the lack of illustrations. It being a whimsical topic such as witchcraft, you would typically envision some sort of artistic examples included. The book, being written in 2007, is very well written in my opinion, and the topic still relates heavily as the portrayal of witches in media has only grown since the days of Charmed and Buffy the Vampire Slayer that the book does reference. The book accomplishes its goal of explaining the theology behind witchcraft, while simultaneously breaking it down for anyone that is open-minded to the topic to read and further their knowledge. The information included throughout the interviews corresponds heavily with all of the research I have already done. For example, the confusion associated with beliefs witches actually stand for and where the confusion heavily stems from, modern media. The structure is laid out very cleanly, into background information, introduction of the topic, interviews being broken down into chapters, and a conclusion to wrap it all up. After furthering my research through this book, I think my research question has slightly altered from the idea of “when did witchcraft transition from a crime to a social fad?” To “Why is witchcraft depicted as everything that it does not stand for? Women, overcome by the devil performing hexes, or clothed in all black and made into a sex symbol in media, or a comical character easily defeated by a bucket of water?

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Opinions on the Craft

When researching a topic like witches, most of the opinionated articles tended to deal with portrayal of witches in media and not the actual practice of modern witchcraft like I wanted to investigate. This really proves how big witches are in media, even if they are mostly seen as something that is “not real”. Both of the articles that I did eventually find did deal with the same general topic of what is the actual definition of witches and do people have the correct perception of what they stand for. My first article "The Blair Witch Was Justified", written on August 21, 1999 by David Grimes for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Ohio, was an opinionated article on why modern day witches should not be offended by the portrayal of witches in the popular movie “The Blair Witch Project”. The article goes into a very overdramatic outlook on how the “potty-mouthed”, “nicotine addicted”, “losers/morons/bozos” depicted in the movie (*Spoiler Alert Ahead if you haven’t somehow watched this movie already*) should have been killed off by the witch much sooner in the movie. On the flip side of the argument my next article, "Modern - Day Witches", written on August 29,1993 and published in the Tampa Tribune in Florida, argues that we have to be very wary of how we stereotype modern-day witches and actually goes into the common misconceptions between witches and wiccans. The article describes “witch” as having some Satanic connotation, while “wiccan” has none whatsoever, in fact they are firm believers in spirituality.

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The first article regarding the Blair Witch topic provides little to no evidence besides the author’s own personal opinion. In fact, the author over exaggerates almost every aspect of the movie to reinforce his opinion that modern-day witches in fact should not be offended by the picture of witches this movie paints. The author, David Grimes, fails to take into thought the emotions of these offended witches for even one moment. The bias in this opinionated article is clear, by failing to see both sides of this argument. In the introduction, it says the movie, “exploits and reinforces the negative stereotypes against witches” and then fails to dive any farther into any research regarding this statement. On the flip side of the argument, “Modern - Day Witches” refers to these same stereotypes as “misleading” and does a much better job of at least attempting to cover both sides. While he promotes awareness of how we view witchcraft and wiccans and also claims that even though he was disappointed in that portrayal of the movie “Hocus Pocus”, he knows “it’s all in good fun”. I feel as though this author depicted a fair opinion without showing bias towards any one side.

Some interesting things that really popped out to me in both of these articles was the difference between witches and wiccans, I formerly thought they followed the same basic beliefs, which I clearly was wrong. This also gave me a whole new meaning to the idea of modern witchcraft or practicing wiccans, as a legitimate religion and a religion that has high respect for Mother Earth and the natural world. All of this new information and research stems back to my research question of How did the idea of witches stem from Wicked to a respectable religion?

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The Story of Salem

To truly dive into the answers I want to come to throughout my research I felt as though I needed a good foundation of general knowledge on the beginning of witches. This is why I chose the documentary, "The Witches of Salem : Horror and Hope" to hopefully accomplish this while also sparking some new ideas in my research. The documentary explored one of the biggest witch trials documented in history which occurred in Salem, Massachusetts in the year 1692. The colony’s minister had a slave woman known as Tituba, who had previously practiced witchcraft and knew of the powers behind it. The minister’s two daughters along with a few of their friends became intrigued by the ideas and demanded for her to tell them more of the craft. After their conversation the girls all began showing signs of possession (screeching, choking, sobbing, not talking for days, uncontrollable laughing). As the doctor of the colony attempted to treat the girls they all began blaming Tituba, the witch, for their possession along with other “witches” in the colony that were making them do these things. All of the names that the girls gave were immediately arrested and sent to trial where they were all pronounced guilty for the crime of witchcraft, although there was no actual evidence of their crimes, other than the accusations and actions of the “possessed’ girls. The entire town was turned upside down as neighbors and friends began accusing each other of being witches, and by the end of the chaos, 19 people were hung in the town of Salem before the witch trials were put to an end.

After watching this documentary so many questions popped into my head. Were the girls actually possessed or was it all an act ? Although many of the accused were not actually witches, was Tituba actually a witch? So I jumped into some more research of my own to find out. I found out that there was an abundance in research of the reason behind the mass hysteria, reasons including economic hardship, food shortages, undiagnosed encephalitis, and even food poisoning from a fungus found in bread, which can all be found here. Tituba, the slave of the colony’s minster, actually was the only accused witch to admit to her crimes and dealings with the craft, although there was no actual evidence of her practicing these things. Her confession is what led to the witch trials to continue in the first place, however many believe that she only confessed to save her life from the gallows, being a slave with no social standing. She served the rest of her sentence in prison, where she later admitted her confession was a lie to save her own life.

Since the documentary I chose was more of a historic recreation and not a traditional research documentary including interviews, I had to look into it a bit more to find the credibility and possible emotions it was trying to evoke. The whole point of the documentary was to retell the story and give a mental picture of the scenario in colonial times, the credibility is very apparent, all of the information is taken directly from historical accounts and sources. Although throughout the duration of the story the “witches” of the town are painted as the villains in the story and punished, by the end, the audience feels pity for them, considering most of them were wrongly accused and murdered for something that really wasn’t a crime at all. It simply didn’t agree with the religion that was mainly practiced so the church officials felt as though it was their duty to destroy it and the people accused.

This documentary, not only opened up so many routes for me to take with possible research in later blog posts but also gave me a great base knowledge to build future opinions on!

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The First Step

I can say without a doubt in my mind, at least for me, that the hardest step in researching, writing, and being involved in something is starting the research. The fun of brainstorming my blog topic, personalizing my page, and diving deep into what Tumblr  has to offer came screeching to a halt once I realized I hadn’t spent much time finding actual research. And the few articles I had managed to find just didn’t live up to the standard I held my blog at, sadly the pieces just weren’t fitting together. Luckily, my campus has librarians specializing in the library’s resources and specific subjects so they graciously guided me through this brief period of writer’s block. I met with Dr. Flatley, the History Specialist at my university’s library.

Once I was made a little bit more comfortable with the resources my university had to offer I got to work finding resources that fit into what I envisioned my blog being. One of the resources I knew I had to include in my research is “Teenage Witches : Magical Youth and the Search for Self” which can be found here.  This book interviews multiple women, currently practicing witchcraft as young adults, which is what I really want to dive into, that being the modern aspect of the craft. This also happens to be the area that I have little prior knowledge of so I’m hoping this book will help me get to the answers I want to know!

Now that I had some background information on that aspect of my blog, I also really wanted to hit on the portrayal of witches in the media, so naturally I looked up some articles of influential witchy figures in recent novels, movies, television shows, and other media and I found some of the following. Women, leadership, and power revisiting the Wicked Witch of the West dives into the musical of Wicked and the portrayal of biases against powerful women leaders. Being a lover of Broadway and this musical, I immediately gravitated towards this article!  

The last thing I wanted some advice on was just blogging tips in general, luckily I had the opportunity to read through a blog that Dr. Flatley wrote himself on Veganism. Even though it had nothing to do with my topic, it still gave me a good idea of blogging basics, for example properly citing and quoting resources and being creative throughout the whole process. The one thing that really stuck out to me from the consultation was the importance of research and staying true to yourself as an author, making sure there is a balance between facts, discussion, and personal thoughts.

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* Blog Debut *

This blog is dedicated to the background of witches throughout History and their portrayal in the media nowadays as a sort of "social trend". The reason why I came across the idea of this topic was through seeing quite a lot of witchy related things - quite literally - everywhere! Netflix, Etsy, Fortune & Tarot card readings, Movies soon to be releasing, Room Decor, and more. What used to be a crime worthy of death has now blown up into a fad with a huge following.

Even if you don't quite remember, the topic of witches has led its way into your life at some point. Maybe when you were a child watching Sleeping Beauty and Maleficent, clothed in all black slinked her way onto the screen, or watching one of your first Halloween movies, like Hocus Pocus or Halloweentown, or even reading a book like Hansel & Gretel, The Chronicles of Narnia, and Harry Potter. My first memory of witches and witchcraft would have been when I was watching the Wizard of Oz with my family and the “Wicked” Witch screeched her way into my thoughts, threatening Dorothy “and her little dog too”. That very well could have scarred me for life, however at some point the portrayal of witches and the world of witchcraft did a complete 180.

Since witches have been portrayed in both lights, good and evil, how do we classify witches into a definition? Merriam Webster Dictionary depicts  witches as, “one that is credited with usually malignant supernatural powers especially : a woman practicing usually black witchcraft often with the aid of the devil”. Since witches are associated with the devil and black magic, when did the idea of witches become a fun social trend to follow?

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To answer this question and the many others I currently have, I want to go all the way back to the beginning of the history of witches and their “magic”. Who was the first recorded witch or witches? Where did the word originate from ? Was the craft created for any specific reason or purpose?

The most important question I want to answer in this first post of my blog is, Why is this important? I’m sure some of you are wondering how this will benefit you and if you should even continue reading along in the first place. Although typically witches are seen as nothing more than the villain in a fairytale or a common Halloween costume, their history has impacted our history greatly. Dating all the way back to colonial times, throughout great works of literature like Macbeth, and into today’s generations through media and more people following the craft.

I encourage you all to be, most importantly, open-minded while reading and forming your own opinion. Now, let’s begin .....