CUEW Triad

I am a woman, married to a woman. I call her my WIFE and I call myself her WIFE. If I was afraid of using a word to describe myself and my family, it stands to reason WIFE would be the word. No one is trying to pass legislation in my country to make being a Witch illegal. Being a woman, married to a woman however, is something that people hate so much they want to make it impossible to exist by any means necessary.

Few people would dare call me a coward (other than myself) and fewer still would have the audacity to call me a liar, so I will tell you that when I refuse to use the word Witch, I am not doing it to dishonour someone or hide something, but to honor something and someone....somethings and someones, to be exact.

1. Gardner's religion of Witchcraft and the people he labeled as "Witches" and "those of the Wica" are NOT THE SAME people as the Wiccans who follow Wicca. The differences are as profound as the differences between Judaism and Christianity, or Traditional Hinduism and Buddhism, or Christianity and Islam, or Catholicism and Protestantism. Gardner's Witchcraft is an ancestor of Modern Wicca, but it is not the same thing. Indeed, the more astute of us will point out that Modern Gardnerianism and what Gardner practiced are also different religions. Where Wicca broke from Witchcraft on the phylogenic tree is up for debate. That it is an offshoot and not the same faith is debated by few. Why should the new faith share a name with the old? {Obviously, this is not the so-called "Christian" meaning of Witch, but the Gardnerian one, honeys.}

2. Wiccan was used as a PERJORATIVE by many of the Witches above. It indicated that one was not smart enough to know "those of the Wica" were properly pronounced "those of the Weesha" and that the religion was called Witchcraft and those of the Wica were its followers. Many of us called Wiccans perjoratively took up the title in part because we figured that any word that distanced us from the type of people who used the term Wiccan as a slur was probably a good thing. We went "fine, we are Wiccans, and our religion is Wicca....See ya, wouldn't want to be ya!"

3. In part because of flaws in their own religion, Wicca, not Witchcraft, caught on with the public. All of a sudden the Witches wanted their word back. All of a sudden the whiney pusses that wanted to kick the kids out of the pool and have adult swim realized the kids were having fun and they weren't, so to speak. They started to call THEMSELVES Wiccans, and their religion Wicca, even though these were the SAME PEOPLE who said "Wicca" was pronounced wrong and only idiots would use it. I guess we know what that makes them, huh?

4. This is why when these people use the word Neo-Wiccan to describe us we laugh at them. You can't leave the broken plasma screen television on the curb with a sign saying "take me" and then demand to have it back when someone fixes it with a fifty-cent piece of duct tape. Finders keepers. How about you use the term Antewiccans? It's nice and close to AntiWiccan, which is probably the most appropriate.

If you honor the early Gardnerians as the spiritual ancestors of modern Wicca , you should not use their terms. Wicca as the name of a religion and Wiccan as the name of the followers of that religion are not their terms. They are ours, and we have the right to use them without so much as a mumble from those Anti-Wiccan Antewiccans.

At the same time that the people who used to be Witches-not-Wiccans and now style themselves Witches-the-real-Wiccans were throwing the term Wiccan out with the bathwater and Wiccans were catching the baby and adopting it, another group of people were using the term Witch and Witchcraft in a way that ALSO pissed off the Witches-not-Wiccans-now-we're-the-real-Wiccans, they used it to mean a practitioner of various healing arts and magic and described themselves as RECLAIMING the word Witch.

The problem is, and this is where the so-called Christian defintion comes in, there is no evidence it was ever used as anything BUT a perjorative until those Gardnerian Witches came around. Since the Gardnerianesque Antewiccans were not yet claiming any word other than Witch to describe themselves, they couldn't be who the term was being reclaimed from, so the choice became the following:

A. Those reclaiming the term Witch used to have the word Witch and lost control of it. OR
B. They were "reclaimining" the word Witch like the Europeans "reclaimed" Africa and the Americas for the Abrahamic god....that is to say, they were discovering....errr.....STEALING IT.

Since the reclaimers haven't demonstrated A, most of us land on B, and that's pretty crappy. They are stealing it from the Antewiccans who stole it from earlier speakers of English who used it to mean people who practiced all sorts of bad magic.

Okay, screw the reclaimers and the Antewiccans. Lets look at those who both the Gardnerianesque Antewiccans and the reclaimers call Witches, the wise-women of the English speaking world before the modern age.

Lets look at their spell books.... (I have access to such things, so I assume they do, too)
What have we here? A spell to ward off Witches? How to prevent Witches from getting on your land?
Why would witches have such things?
Okay, so they have spells to ward off witches. Maybe they mean other witches...lets see what they call themselves.... hmmmmmm.
Well, here's a transcript from a heresy trial.... How does she describe herself?
As a...gasp.... god fearing Christian, and not a Witch.
Okay, maybe she was under duress. Lets see what else in in the spellbook to try to glean her religion.... hmm, here is a spell to cure blindness.... it says that one holds the poltice to the eye as our lord Jesus did.... Wait a minute?!?! Does this spellbook not only indicate this Witch was a Christian but those she was addressing were, too???
How can this be?
Oh, that's right, the people accused of Witchcraft by Christians were CHRISTIANS THEMSELVES!

Hmm. Lets have an imaginary journey. Let me just finish with this quicksilver and a little Xilca, and voila, the ghost of three women held in high esteem by AnteWiccans and the reclaimers are here to join me.

"Hello ladies," I say to them.
After the screaming stops and I give them some tea, we begin the interview.

"Helen, Rebecca and Isobel, I thought that as Witches you could explain to my readers-"
H:I am not a Witch! Why do people keep saying that?!?!?
R: Witch?! AHHH! Where's the Witch? Are these women Witches?!?! Jesus save me!"
I: I only said that to stop the torture! Jesus and I were having lunch! I'm no Witch!"

Hmmm. That doesn't work. Let's dismiss these spirits and get rid of the summoning circle.

Hmmmm. They didn't call themselves Witches.. They considered Witches their enemies and they took offense when I called them witches. Well gosh, it's a good thing I don't have a belief in respecting my ancestors.

OH CRAP! I DO have a belief in respecting my ancestors. Crap. That means I can't say that stuff I do based on stuff they did is Witchcraft unless I-gulp-embrace the so-called Christian meaning of the term Witchcraft.

Guess I'm still a Wiccan.
I'd reconsider the term, I suppose, if one of those antewiccans or antewiccanesque neowitches could actually address one of the problems above, but the best reason they have for calling nonantewiccan Wiccans witches seems to be saying "because we say they are" or accusing the Wiccans of being cowards or complicit with those who prosecute them.

What reason might they have for never refuting the real reason we use the term Wiccan?
Are they scared?
Are they afraid that our logic might crumple them up like little wads of paper?

Did our Great Auntie's spell keep them away from us?