25 | September | 2014 | Adventures and Musings of an Arch Druidess

I disagreed with someone on their blog last night and I’m afraid they didn’t like it. I won’t mention their name because I respect them most of the time but this time I think they are waaay off the mark. They wrote a very well documented post on why they were of the opinion that the stereotype of the witch in black with the hooked nose was anti-Semitic and I strongly disagree.

A lot of things in this world are anti-Semitic but this ain’t one of them. This is just plain misogynistic and it always has been. Around the world and in every ethnic community you go to you will find old women dressed in black. Sometimes its from cultural standards, sometimes it’s because that’s what widows wear. The fact is old women out live their husbands and if they have been the people who know herbs they may actually be the healthiest people in the village.

The pointy hat? Had a good look at the pictures of Mother Goose? That sort of hat was a traditional piece of headwear in Wales and other areas about the time the witches started to have problems in Britain and let’s face it a lot of what immigrated into the Eastern areas of what became the US was from Britain, many times like some of my family with no choice. It was “get on the boat we’re burning your house down”.

The hooked nose? Take a look around the ethnic areas of you city and look at the older women who have immigrated from the Old Country. A lot of them had no access to good dental care or for that matter look at any old member of your own family when they have removed their dentures. How does their face look? Usually the chin juts out more and their nose looks a bit more pronounced because of the facial structure changes.

This is what old women have looked like for eons. They look kind of scary to someone who is superstitious or gets paid to turn in a witch. Throughout the documentation of the witch trials of the period the people they went after were old women with property and beautiful women. Most of the stereotypes are of the old ugly women variety.

Sometimes in the effort to claim scholarly reasons for pagan things, pagans forget common sense. Sometimes an egg is just an egg and not a chicken yet.