It’s a logical start of the new season to try to perform and express the idea of a witch. Witches have been around forever, and I feel a strong kinship with their historic presentation.
First of all, witches have always been the centre of their community. The women with the wisdom, skill with herbs and healing, with a connection to everyone in the area. The first doulas were probably witches. The women who delivered the new humans into the community. The doctors who served their people all their lives. And finally the person to be there and bury the dead. Witches have always been at the fringe of the village that needs them — witches have likely been everything from sex workers to doctors, from advisors to the ones holding the dangerous truths.
Let’s repeat that. Witches have the dangerous truth. Shakespeare knew it. The Romans who campaigned across England and Germany knew it and wrote about it. Witches were the women with the dangerous knowledge, and you either made an enemy for life or, and this works out best for all of us, you learned your damn lesson. They can see the future — probably because they’re the only ones who learned from the past.
Witches have been a threat to Good White Christian Men for centuries, and that’s good too.
Witches have secret, special bonds. They have seen birth, death, healing and falling ill. Their association with these things has made them suspect to many people, but if witches have existed since the beginning of humanity, then surely there’s more to it than just death and misery. Gay men were ostracised in the eighties for their association with the AIDS pandemic, and we know better than to conclude that gayness is sickness. Witches, like other gay people, have a sense of dress style that comes with an undertone of the struggle to either show or hide the capital T Truth.
This year, we’re starting with witches because witches are everywhere and everything. I was born a witch and I’m proud of it. I live in an overgrown home with a bubbling pot and a devil dog. I curse men, regularly, and I look good in hats.
All trans women are witches. All trans people, for that matter, are magic. With or without the k. I’m not picky. All queer people have access to magic. We hold dangerous truths in our mere existence. We have the wisdom, and we have the skill. We’re powerful pinnacles of our communities. We’re the sex workers and the doulas, the doctors and the demons of our society, and without us there would be nobody else to teach people about the past. We’ve learned from our past — that’s how we became who we are.