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 Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2007 9:14 pm
Double, double toil and trouble...
Cackling old hags hunched over bubbling couldrons?
Pointed black hats and flying broomsticks?
Seductive sorceresses?
Secret castle strongholds?
Melt when drenched with water?
Teenage girls with sarcastic talking cats?
Witches are an ever present force in many fantasy genres. They take many forms, have many faces, and just as many personalities. They are the witches. Love them, hate them? Either way this is the place to discuss them.
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Posted: Sat Aug 04, 2007 6:57 pm
I used to know a woman who claimed to be a witch. I was very sceptic about it, but when I stayed with her, too many things happened that can't be put aside as coinsidence.
For example: a friend left us one night, but I was pretty upset because he had left with the wrong "friends".
In that moment of despair I looked upon her and she knew somehow what I was thinking. "Let me get my spellbook" she said calmly, as if she were in trance. When she returned the doorbell rang. We both knew it was him, allthough he wasn't supposed to come back for hours.
Weird, uh?
But anyway, I am still a little suspicious to anyone who claims to be a witch. It is after all a common fairy tale character in general.
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Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 1:22 pm
Wicthes and wizard may not be real, but some magic is. Most magic is just knowing how to us your Chi, or Ki wich ever you prefer...
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Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2007 6:01 am
This subject always interests me, mostly because my religion is wiccan/pagan and so I would be classed to be a witch. Although I do not worship satan or such like. Actually I have a few friends who are witches but none of them fall into the fairy tale seterotypes of dancing naked, using blood, killing animals etc. I believe the different ways witches are shown is often fun and interesting. Always with the seterotypical good and bad witches.
Witchcraft is also very interesting to me, although against belief you do not have to even know a single thing in the way of casting spells and potions, like any other religion you do as much or as little as you wish. Most wiccan is to do with earth, unless of course you go into the darker side of it. I am not the most informed on witchcraft and I admit that, but my friend Hills is very much so. Maybe I will get more information from her to post in case anyone wants to know.
Witches in fantasy however have always interested me because they are often either overly good or overly evil which often shows a compelet and utter made up side of the witchcraft and wiccan and pagan and so gives people fixed ideas.
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Posted: Sat Aug 11, 2007 8:28 am
As people have said, witches both real and fantasy are interesting. It seems that in real life the term "witch" is a catchall for many different forms of spiritual and herbal practices. Wicca is one, and so is Voodoo. As herbalists witches of past and present might be looked at differently depending on their attitudes. Some old witches today might be called herbalists or healers, others might simply be called potheads. I find it likely that the witches who danced naked in the moonlight were high on something. Also, sometimes witchcraft had accidental sources, such as the ergotism from contaminated rye that many believe helped fuel America's infamous Salem Witch Trials. I only have ever once personally seen someone who claimed to be a witch, and old lady I passed on the street on a trip to Boston when I was about 13 years old. She claimed to have a potion shop, but I did not have the opportunity to look inside. I think that fear of witchcraft is a lot less today as people do not generally believe in magic, and science understands botany a lot better. However I know that some still consider it satanic - perhaps even some practitioners.
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Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 4:25 pm
I could be wrong, but maybe the term "witch" was phrased to give a name to the Celts that acted suspiciously and seemed to brew "potions" which were in fact medicinal concoctions. The townspeople wouldn't listen to the explanations and instead burned or hung the witches. Also, witches have to blend in so they won't be persecuted, so I don't think that they are the stereotypical image.
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Posted: Mon Sep 03, 2007 8:55 am
I think in the real world, "witch" was a bit of a catchall phrase for people who practiced pagan beliefs. Sorcerors and fortunetellers are also techically looked down on by very traditional Christian societies (just look what the extreme southern Baptists were doing with Harry Potter books.) I think that the early Christians assumed (sometimes correctly but often not) that these practices were associated with the occult. However these once feared stereotypes are commonly made fun of in our modern scientific age, relegating sorcerors to roleplaying games, fortunetellers to cheesy telephone services, and withches largely to halloween novelties.
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Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2007 2:22 pm
I do SORTA believe in them, but not fully. but, i took a test, and it said that i am one (hence my name), so yeah i love them. and im into witchy stuff, like Charmed, Harry Potter, Sabrina, etc. i was even thinking of decorating my room to look like some sort of witchy chamber-like thing, as soon as my parents let me.....lol well anyways, I LOVE WITCHES!!!
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Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 10:07 am
They're an interesting concept, but horribly stereotyped. They've been done so much in exactly the same way that even if you tried to create a non-stereotypical witch, there's pretty much no way of escaping it.
What SK says about seductive sorceresses is interesting though. I have magic users in my world, but they aren't "witches". There's one I have who could, I suppose, be called a sorceress, and through use of some kind of magic, one of her eyes has gone white. She doesn't have normal vision with it, but rather she sees in a different way. She also has a rather seductive tone of voice.
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Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 3:46 pm
Well, and then there's the whole stuff about the word witch coming from the Anglo-Saxon word 'wicca' or wise one... any time a person (especially in a primitive society) is wise to the ways of the earth, herbalism, healing, or whatever, they will have eventual detractors who are jealous or wary. That can lead to persecution... which it has. The Salem witches, for instance, were all normal people in a bizarre set of circumstances--possibly drugged by the very grain they ate as bread flour--and in most cases people against whom someone else had a grudge. That's been the case in many other lands and times too.
What a species we are sometimes.... sad
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Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 8:01 pm
Try living around 25 miles away from one of the "witch" towns of America. Cassadega Florida. Its very cool, and around this time of year, all of the towns citizens go all out. It's amazing to see.
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Posted: Mon Oct 29, 2007 4:08 pm
Well I don't know about stereotypical witches but, I'm not sure if they've all been done in a similar manner, have they? To me, the stereotype is of an ugly old hag with warts but, that is nothing like the type of witches I saw on Bewitched and Sabrina.
I made up a witch once and I couldn't stay away from the stereotype I'm afraid, he-he. I guess I could rewrite it so it could be a different looking witch, right?
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Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 4:19 pm
I moved this topic here in hopes of reviving it by talking about the idea that witches are considered users of "black magic" or "witchcraft".So...discuss away.
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Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 9:22 am
It's something I know a bit about but not a great deal on. I am interested in the subject, but wouldn't ever practice it as it goes against my faith.
Even fortune-telling is a form of witchcraft and is shunned by Christianity. The same goes for astrology in some forms. Apparently daily horoscopes fall into the same genre. I have a horoscope on my facebook page, and I only look at it out of interest. Most of it tends to talk utter rubbish, but on some occasions there's a little bit of truth in it. Aside from that, I don't delve into it.
If this discussion could be revived though, I'd like to read a bit more about it as I don't know a great deal at this stage.
You know that saying, "you're damned if you do, and you're damned if you don't?" You could alter it a bit and apply it to witches in the past. "You're damned if you are and you're damned if you aren't."
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Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 2:52 pm
Aye, that'd be true seeing as if you were suspected to be a witch of any sort you would most likely be killed either way.
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