Actually, **DrDeth **brings up a good point, although I don’t think he meant to. “Actual witchcraft” aka Wicca, has absolutely nothing in common with the public image green skinned warty nosed witch, nor the gorgeous corseted blackeyed make-shit-fly-around-the-room and lightening bolts witch of Charmed, Buffy, The Craft or Practical Magic. So why do Wiccans (and some other neopagans) call themselves witches? Conversely, why do Hollywood writers include Wiccan elements - circle casting, four elements and directions, salt, etc. - in their Hollywood witches?
Why on earth do we use the same word for two very different things?
There’s some historic data that early Wiccans decided to “Reclaim” the word, the same way homosexuals reclaimed “gay”, “queer” and “faggot” (to varying level of success). Reclaiming, in theory, takes the power of a negative word away from hate speech and empowers those to apply it to themselves. But what I’ve never understood is: why “witch”? Why not “elf” or “fairy” or “Oompa-loompa”? We have as much in common with those as we do with this
The only theory I’ve formed is that we all like to be persecuted, religiously. Gives us a history, and a certain cachet. Since we’re so new, we don’t have a history of being oppressed, so we picked a false history, and take the emotional baggage of the witchhunts of European and early American “Wytches” as our own.
Total bullocks, of course. But it sells books and gives us something to bitch about around the bonfire.
And Hollywood, of course, is inundated not only with nasty letters from Wiccans who want “a more realistic portrayal of witches” (Umm…think about it. No, you don’t. No one is going to sit through two hours of watching a group of overweight housewives realign their chakras, dearie, not even you.) but they don’t know their history or religion either, and just muddy it all up further for the sake of a decent story and a share of the ratings.
