The Witch

  The witch as a concept is simply another distortion created by a male dominated Christian culture that needs to vilify behaviors that can potentially wake us up to a reality that contradicts the delusional world view they have created. The dictionary defines a witch as ‘ a woman thought to have magic powers, especially evil ones … ‘ and here we are confronted with two words bible based religions love to use, magic and evil. Magic because it implies an ignorance of the actual forces at work so they can be attributed to whatever agents, either good or evil, that suit your objectives and further your agenda. And, of course, evil because it is a label that can be affixed to anything that those in charge fear might cause you to question their authority. So, if you want to control how someone perceives the actions of another, you simply need to convince them that magic is being used that originates from an evil source.

  Now imagine you are a woman living in a culture controlled by the church and married to a man who is working with the inquisition to identify and eliminate individuals who do not conform to the churches ideas of right and wrong, a real situation documented in a book on medical botany. As a female, you are already suspect in the eyes of the church as the temptress who listened to the snake and got us all thrown out of the garden by tempting Adam with the forbidden fruit. Your life is one of walking on glass least you do anything to indicate you might be in league with the devil. There are no children to occupy your time and so you find yourself out in nature collecting the plants and herbs needed for cooking and you cannot help but notice how this feels as compared to the stilted life that is waiting for you at home. And so you spend as much time as possible learning about the natural world and searching out other female teachers more knowledgeable than you until, one day, it is suggested to you that there are herbs that, if prepared and administered properly, can bring you into intimate contact with this natural world that has come to feel like your real home. You find yourself at a crossroads with one road leading to a life in a cage not of your making and the other leading to actions and experiences that will condemn you in the eyes of those around you but will take you to places you long to be.

  And for a few of these women, the need to transcend the ordinary was too strong to resist and they chose the road less traveled. They learned about the plants needed and the methods of preparation and the application of the resulting concoction to the mucous membranes on the body and, when the time felt right, used this knowledge to bring about an experience unlike any they had ever had before. These experiences involved ‘ flying ‘ to a location where they would experience the coming together in blissful union of themselves and what they perceived as the beloved and this would all take place while their bodies were unconscious back where the ointment had been applied. These experiences are similar in nature to those experienced by subjects who have been administered DMT and, like those experiences, varied depending on the subject. What did not vary was their perception of these places they experienced as real and indistinguishable from places experienced when they were awake. And those of us familiar with lucid dreams can attest to the reality of the feelings experienced in these dreams and know the bliss these women experienced was not imagined. But, having ventured to these forbidden places creates an untenable situation where they are confronted with having to live a life devoid of any of these feelings and are therefore drawn to repeating these rituals even at the risk of being discovered.

  And many were discovered and burned at the stake to discourage other women from yielding to these devilish impulses. By this yielding, they were not only conspiring with nature which is supposed to be subservient to man but were also allowing themselves to experience pleasure which they do not deserve after having tasted of the forbidden fruit and having to leave the garden. An image is created of a hag who brews evil concoctions in a cauldron and flies through the night on a broom stick to do evil things in far off places. Even riding a broomstick comes from this ritual since the ointment was often applied to a smooth stick that was rubbed between their legs to bring it into contact with the mucous membranes found there. And so we have all grown up with this incredibly distorted image of women who were simply evolved enough to experience an intimate connection to the natural world  and could thereby gain useful knowledge of the plants and animals to be found there. How is it that we can even buy into the idea of someone actually flying on a broomstick without wondering where such a crazy idea could have originated.

  What is truly sad about all of this is that the true story of these women is so much more interesting and fruitful than the one fabricated by the church in its attempt to eliminate anything that might bring into question the dogma in which they believed. But they have always been good at distorting nature based rituals so they could claim them as their own and we have been good at allowing them, to our own detriment, to do this. More information about this ritual and the herbs used can be found in a book called Medical Botany by Walter H. Lewis ( click on the cover below for one source ). Then there is a wonderful series by Terry Pratchett about a witch named Tiffany Aching that captures the true qualities a real witch would embody. The best novel is A Hat Full of Sky which is the second in the series but they are all worth reading and are available on Audible and done by an amazing reader. If you want to know how enjoyable listening to a book being read can be, then this would be a great choice. The diorama pictured above was created as an homage to this character and the idea of witches in general.