Who are the Witches of the Sacred Why? We are the ones who remember, who dare to look behind the veil of prejudice and secrecy to see and hear our intuition and to break the mold of the fear persecution baked into our DNA. The Witches of the Sacred Why dare to ask why, why do we believe what we believe, how much of what we believe is inherited, how much is programmed and how much do we really believe or have we merely been taught to believe? We are the ones who question the authority of the Church, the hierarchy of the priesthood and why, why do women accept oppression under Abrahamic religions?
Who invented witches? We are not the witches imagined by frightened men with torches in their hands and guilt in their eyes. Those witches did not exist, they were conjured by the same accusers who invented them. Those women were the marginalized, the ostracized, the poor, the sick, the widowed and the strong women who couldn’t accept the position that was assigned to them. These women were falsely accused and tortured for confessions of crimes they never committed. The so called witches were not in league with the devil, they didn’t attend night time sabbaths, they didn’t eat babies. It was never the accused witches anyone should have been afraid of, it was the accusers, the perverts who imagined the existence of witches into being and saw women as a threat first to Christianity and then to the state itself. Witchcraft became a crime of treason against the government.
The reclamation of witchcraft, claiming to be a witch can cause you to be outcast today. Is it a plus to stand up and be an outcast for a cause? Maybe? Some witches, I have heard, like the power of “scaring people” who are afraid of women of witches, and honestly if I was being attacked I would invoke witchcraft and use it as a power to try to scare off my attackers. But the thirst for “power” is not me, I don’t need that and I don’t need to be considered different or “weird”. I do enjoy doing everything “witches” are associated with – crystals, spells, essential oils, astrology, herbs and the aesthetic – but by themselves they don’t need to be associated with witches either. I am not interested in demons, conjuring demons, ouija boards etc at all. I do like the idea of standing on “the other team” away from Abrahamic religions and standing up FOR women and giving them other options. The witch hunts were all driven by driving out heresy, I do accept that I would be considered a heretic. I do feel the need to legitimatize witchcraft because it is legitimate.
Witches of the Why stand against our oppressors, we don’t accept a status that was assigned to us thousands of years ago. The culture then was different and we should not be allowing discrimination against women to happen today even in our Churches. So we stand in the face of fear, in the knowledge we may be considered outcasts because people today still don’t understand what it means to be a witch. We value our intuition, we seek knowledge and understanding of ourselves and we seek to rebuild the stereotype associated with witches.
And we know, witches are a force for good.
To be a Witch of the Sacred Why is to reclaim the sacred feminine intelligence that asks, What is true? What is kind? What endures? It is to stand in that knowing — calm, grounded, and luminous — without needing to prove, frighten, or convert.