{"id":147,"date":"2010-10-28T14:26:02","date_gmt":"2010-10-28T21:26:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hotnerdgirl.wordpress.com\/?p=147"},"modified":"2024-02-27T07:50:41","modified_gmt":"2024-02-27T07:50:41","slug":"something-wicked-this-way-comes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hotnerdgirl.com\/index.php\/2010\/10\/28\/something-wicked-this-way-comes\/","title":{"rendered":"Something wicked this way comes"},"content":{"rendered":"
I'll getchoo my pretty!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Who does your hair?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Witches have had a pretty bad rap.\u00a0 Throughout history they\u2019ve been portrayed as ugly old hags bent on evil doing or using magic for profit.\u00a0 The Stygian Witches personify this stereotype.\u00a0 Three hideous crones sharing one eye and one tooth between them and practicing cannibalism (although how they managed to eat flesh with one tooth is beyond me).\u00a0 The Weird Sisters in MacBeth represent darkness, chaos, and conflict.\u00a0 They manipulate MacBeth into committing murder and destroying lives.<\/p>\n

Good times.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then witches went through a seductress phase.\u00a0 The Sirens in Greek Mythology were \u201ctechnically\u201d prophets\u2026a term used to distinguish young, pretty witches from old, ugly witches.\u00a0 Their mission in life was to make passing sailors jump into the sea to their deaths.\u00a0 Morgan le Fay in the Arthurian legend is bent on the downfall of her half-brother King Arthur.\u00a0 In later versions of the story she seduces him and bears him a son named Mordred whom she uses as a pawn in her evil schemes.\u00a0 In the 1996 movie The Craft, a group of young teenage hotties train as witches.\u00a0 It\u2019s all fun and games wrecking havoc at their Catholic School until Fairuza Balk goes off the deep end and ends up in the psych ward.<\/p>\n

You know you like it<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Good times.<\/p>\n

More recently witches have undergone a major public relations campaign.\u00a0 Hermione in Harry Potter, Amelia Broadway in True Blood, any number of characters in any given LJ Smith book.\u00a0 Good witches performing good acts and cute to boot.\u00a0 It follows in the footsteps of vampires morphing from bat-like monsters to creepy old dudes with bad hair to sexy young teenage thangs.<\/p>\n

Jail bait no longer!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We\u2019re so fickle when it comes to our mythological creatures.<\/p>\n

Somehow wizards have never suffered the same disdain.\u00a0 Merlin, Gandalf, Dumbledore\u2026all flawed but generally seen as good guys.\u00a0 And somehow they always seem to have a long grey beard.\u00a0 Talk about stereotypes.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s my theory.\u00a0 The above wizards are a result of the Days of the Druids.\u00a0 They represent a time long past when magic played a very real part in people\u2019s every day lives.\u00a0 When Christianity came along and communing with nature was no longer kosher, these wizards were created and idealized as a homage to a previous culture that is still held dear to many people.\u00a0 If you want proof of this, go to Ireland, where strict Catholics still believe in faeries.<\/p>\n

Burn me and I will cut you bitch!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Witches, on the other hand, have always represented the evil ways of women.\u00a0 (Somehow female druids got side stepped on this one).\u00a0 The story of Eve and how she screwed everything up for Adam is pretty old example of this.\u00a0 Women are stronger then men in every way except physically.\u00a0 Men didn\u2019t appreciate this.\u00a0 Strong women must be manipulative and evil, right?\u00a0 Eve. Evil.\u00a0 Coincidence?\u00a0 I think not.\u00a0 Hey!\u00a0 Let\u2019s suppress them!\u00a0 For centuries, any woman who was not subservient was suspected of and often accused of being a witch.\u00a0 They were burned and drowned and hung.\u00a0 Oftentimes only the manner in which they died could prove that they weren\u2019t a witch after all.\u00a0 But they still died.<\/p>\n

Good times.<\/p>\n

Then you get the Wiccans.\u00a0 In the strictest sense of the word Wiccans are not witches.\u00a0 Wicca is a neopagan religion that, while a relatively modern concept in and of itself, has been around since the dawn of man in some form or another.\u00a0 You can be both or you can be either\/or.\u00a0 Wiccans have a deep appreciation for Mother Nature and all she represents.\u00a0 Not to be confused with hippies (have I mentioned how much I hate hippies?)\u00a0 One perk of practicing Wicca for the ladies is that the Goddess is worshipped just as much as the God.\u00a0 In trying to convert the Pagans, Christianity elevated the Virgin Mary to a sort of pseudo-Goddess-like status.\u00a0 You know, kind of like how they decided to celebrate Christ\u2019s birthday in December instead of sometime in September.<\/p>\n

Good times.<\/p>\n

In short, my friends, witches represent magic and I think we can all agree that magic makes for a very good time.<\/p>\n

What were they smoking and where can I get some?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 Witches have had a pretty bad rap.\u00a0 Throughout history they\u2019ve been portrayed as ugly old hags bent on evil doing or using magic for profit.\u00a0 The Stygian Witches personify this stereotype.\u00a0 Three hideous crones sharing one eye and one tooth between them and practicing cannibalism (although how they managed to eat flesh with one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[65,276,279,355,406,425,547,607,636,664,666,870,872,916,953,1076,1087,1088],"class_list":["post-147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fantasy","tag-amelia-broadway","tag-druids","tag-dumbledore","tag-gandalf","tag-harry-potter","tag-hermione-granger","tag-king-arthur","tag-magic-schoolbus","tag-merlin","tag-mordred","tag-morgan-le-fay","tag-sookie","tag-southern-vampire-chronicles","tag-stygian","tag-the-craft","tag-wicca","tag-witches","tag-wizards"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hotnerdgirl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hotnerdgirl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hotnerdgirl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hotnerdgirl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hotnerdgirl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hotnerdgirl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hotnerdgirl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hotnerdgirl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hotnerdgirl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}