I’m unashamedly embracing my inner witch tonight, jumping on that bandwagon full of broomsticks, and off to see Practical Magic 2 at the cinema.
I used to think witches were scary and should only be seen at Halloween.
I used to believe witches were ugly, cackling women with gnarled fingers, cowering over bubbling cauldrons full of potent spells.
So when a psychic told me a few years ago I’d been a witch in a former a life, I was a little unnerved.
But I may have been duped by what Poppy Jamie calls history’s most ingenious marketing campaign, which suggested these women were dangerous.
And as I’ve become a little wiser after embracing those menopausal, speak your truth years, I’ve also realised witches were never the ones who should have been feared.
Witch Wound
In her poem The Witch Wound, Donna Ashworth said witches were women merely punished for shining too brightly.
‘You are not a witch, my friend,’ she wrote. ‘You are quite simply, or complicatedly, a woman.’
To be called a witch, according to Poppy Jamie, is a compliment. A witch, she believes, is just a woman standing in her own power.
In The Book of Magical Living, Poppy explains witches were never evil casters of spells but were our earliest herbalists, healers, pharmacologists and midwives. In the eyes of religion and those vying for political power though, they were deemed to be too powerful. So, Poppy adds, the persecution of witches became a strategic method of control.
No, I realise now, witches never should have been feared.
It’s the men who hunted them, gleefully burning them at the stake, who should have been feared more.
Former Life
Maybe I was a witch in a former life.
Maybe this is why the ardent feminist rhetoric, repeated on a daily basis at my all-girls secondary school, used to spark a fire in my belly.
Maybe it’s why the thought of injustice still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.
And maybe it’s why the amateur production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible I saw at 14 years old, is forever imprinted on my mind.
Practical Magic
If I’m honest, I only watched the first Practical Magic film because Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock were the actresses I admired at the time. But rewatching it the other night, 28 years later, I now truly believe there is a little witch in all of us.
And maybe this is why the new film is so popular. Amongst the viewers there’s a generation of middle-aged women who are learning to stand in their own power, flicking a middle finger up at the patriarchal world we live in.
We no longer give a shit and can see through all the bullshit that has restrained us for so long.
It’s as if we’re reaching back in solidarity for the hands of the generations of women, wronged by history for practising the everyday magic we all have the potential to create.
Historical prejudice is slowly changing though, Poppy Jamie says, because wise women’s persecuted wisdom is now becoming quantum science.
So that's why at 54 years of age, I am bravely embracing my inner witch. And as a much wiser witchy woman than me once wrote, being normal is not necessarily a virtue. It rather denotes a lack of courage.
I’ll let you know what I think about the film.
I’d love to hear your thoughts too.