#salelza

The all black dress code is a more modern convention since most depictions of witches, at least the ones in which they are wearing clothing, have them in normal day-to-day wear of the time. However, it is worth noting that sumptuary laws were common in many parts of western Europe in this period and these restricted the clothes certain classes, professions and groups were allowed to wear. This meant that if you were not a nobleman, and you lived in Milan, you couldn’t own leather gloves. If you were a nobleman of a certain rank you could only own one pair, a different rank got two pairs and so on. Sumptuary codes worked as a means of controlling class and ensuring that it was that much more difficult for people to enter or leave their God ordained rank within society.

Black was reserved, depending on when and where you lived, for certain professions such as lawyers, bankers, professional mourners, executioners, doctors and certain groups such as lepers and Jews (it is no coincidence that in Christian societies most money lenders were Jewish due to the ban of usury [charging interest on a loan] by the Catholic Church which obviously did not apply to Jews and so they filled that gap). Many of these professions were regarded with suspicion and a few – such as executioners – were actively shunned within society. This is all to say that black was a colour associated with death, disease, questionable professions, and distrusted minority groups. Obviously, tacking it on to a figure of evil is not that far of a leap. Not to mention the cultural association of the colour black with evil, darkness, untrustworthiness, contagion/plague and so on.

As the early modern period marched on, by the fifteenth and sixteenth century much of western Europe had either exiled, killed, or “converted” most of their religious minorities – with pockets in certain major cities like London, Paris, Seville, Amsterdam etc. As the sixteenth century brought massive religious and social upheaval with the Protestant reformation there is, simultaneously, a significant rise in witch trails. Yes, pogroms and Islamaphobic activity still occurred with regularity, but the group that began to bear the brunt of blame for any negative changes shifted, for a time, from Jews and Muslims to women (and “sexual deviants”, at least in England this is the case in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries). While there were witch trials in the medieval era, it was not until the sixteenth and seventeenth century do we see them on a large scale. With the rise of Protestantism, and the shift in power, society and culture that resulted from this we see, at the same time, the rise of the Witch. The new “Other” who adopted the stereotypes and stigmas previously (and still) associated with Jews and lepers. (Other things added to the stereotypes of witches that have long been associated with anyone perceived as a threat to the health of Christendom include delightful activities such as drinking the blood of babies, poisoning wells, killing cattle etc).

Not that pinning the blame of social disruption on women was new in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Far from it, women had long been associated with the (in)famous dichotomy of whore-virgin, temptress-innocent, purveyor/creator of chaos/evil and general disrupter of good, social, masculine order. The language of "woman as evil" or, at the very least, as something to not be trusted, can be seen well before the beginnings of Christian Western Europe. We can find a multitude of stories from ancient socities of women creating evil or being associated with it - Pandora's Box being one of the more famous instances of this.

However, the witch trials of England, Germany and parts of France brought both the hatred of witches and, consequently, a fear of women, to a level that had not truly been seen before. Women became not just something to be vigilant against for the sake resisting temptation – but rather a source of evil itself. It became woman who had the power to remove a man’s masculinity and virility (usually by means of hiding his penis in a well). It became woman who could change the seasons and weather and impact agriculture and economy. It became woman who could remove and bestow health and social order. It became woman who suddenly had an apparently unseen control over both temporal and ecclesiastical powers. Therefore, it became woman who must now be contained.

Relating back to the above notes on the appearance of the witch. In a fantastic article on Bitch Media, Andi Zeisler comments on the use of the ugly female ghost as a means of controlling the woman, even in death, as she extracts her revenge on a world that has hurt, abused, and betrayed her. I believe a similar effect can be applied to the Witch. Especially when considering the traditional fairy tail Gingerbread-House-in-the-Forest witch. She is ugly both outside and in. There is a twofold reason for this – the first is an ancient tradition of portraying the internal through external means and the second, it is a means of continuing her “other”-ness. She is a crone, not a mother or a wife (both of which are the appropriate role of a woman) but an unmarried older woman who is seen as being only a burden upon society. Not only is she that! But she has the gall to be a witch as well. To be outside of society, separate from the 'norm'.

The charge of witchcraft, both legally and socially but we’ll focus on socially, became one of layers. Not only did it speak of heresy, sin, and the damnation of soul but also something more physical – it spoke of sexual deviancy (witchcraft, heresy, and sodomy charges were usually lump charges laid upon a person regardless of their veracity. Sodomy at the time meant any sex, even within marriage, that was not for the purpose of procreation), of treason, of having some form of evident voice against the well ordered society and expectations therein. More to the point, charging witchcraft was akin to calling a woman crazy in the modern day. It worked to silence her voice and made her story and defense of self and actions irrelevant if not actually harmful.

Witchcraft, as understood at the time, relied on action, intent, and voice — both written and spoken. A witch signed a black book, a witch spoke a spell, read or wrote down potions. Witchcraft was an incredibly literary and voice-driven act. In a society where social order depended on control of knowledge as a form of maintaining social cohesion the idea of illicit knowledge creation was a fearful one. So, not only does the Witch tempt and lead astray and cause disease (metaphorical and literal) she also creates knowledge. When illicit knowledge it must necessarily be silenced. Yelling “She’s a witch” did exactly that.

So, where does that leave us at The Grimoire? I do not claim that we are witches in the sense of practicing magic or a witchy way of life in the post 1970’s Wiccan sense (although, some of us may do so). Rather, we seek to use Witch as an identity of bringing power, voice, and space back to those who had long been considered Other. It is a claiming of what is powerful and feared and turning a word that has for so long silenced and oppressed women and other minorities upon its head. It is allowing the Witch to act without societal restraint which was long thought to wreak havoc, if not overturn, the social order. But who does this so-sacred social order represent but men?

The Grimoire seeks to create a safe space where we, Witches, we women, gender queer, trans, two-spirited, and other marginalized peoples may express ourselves in any which way we want.