Witch the Wild Ride from Wicked to Wicca

by Candace Savage

Book Overview

In an intelligent, richly layered and witty text, Candace Savage uncovers the many faces of the witch and the changes in her image over the passing centuries. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0714127604
• ISBN13: 9780714127606
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: The British Museum Press
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Dead right.....

The cover of WITCH by Candace Savage depicts a motly assortment of characters terrorizing a frightened youth. The scene is a reproduction of "The Spell" by Goya, who painted it in 1797 at the height of the witch craze. The picture shows a conjurer in a yellow robe bending over a youth in white. A group of old hags in the background (presumeably witches) are dressed in black. Icons in the painting include the traditional witch imagery of owl-light, bat-wing, and mangled bablies. WITCH is an extremely well-written and concise account of the "witch" story in the west. To label the book as a "feminist" tract is misleading, and a not so subtle manner of saying it is second-rate. WITCH provides the lay person with a solidly written and historically researched account. Many longer and more scholarly accounts by male historians tell the same tale in much more detail. WITCH is not propaganda, nor is it biased by a political agenda. The book is written for the layperson who does not wish to wade through the thousands of tomes written on this subject. Savage provides a nice bibliography if you wish to know more. She has sourced and cited her study from beginning to end. One drawback is that her work is based on secondary research, so if a primary source has an error she repeats it--but she cites the source so you can go to the original if you have a question. WITCH is an art book filled with beautiful drawings, paintings and depictions of witches and their trials and tribulations over the past 500 years. A picture is worth a thousand words.Other societies had/have witches, but the witch in the West is a direct out-growth of an amalgam of beliefs associated with the Bible. One of the most important points Savage makes is that the "witch craze" did not take place in the Middle Ages as most believe. The persecution of witches by the Roman Catholic Church was incidental. The Church was after heretics--such as the Cathars and Waldensians. Think of it as bringing in Al Capone for tax evasion. Witchcraft was a means to an end. The fact that the accused eschewed orthodoxy was the real issue. Savage says, "The Reformation began as a movement to cleanse the church of "pagan" superstition. Christianity had been corrupted by Satan, the Protestants said, and they found his mark even on the Mass..." Savage reiterates what many historians point out...the worst persecutions of "witches" took place after the Protestant Reformation, and in predominantly Protestant countries. One-half of all the people executed for witchcraft died in Protestant Germany. Scotland, Sweden, and Switzerland were dangerous places for old ladies with no friends. The night Shakespeare's play "MacBeth" opened in England, and three witches stirred their cauldron on stage, people were being burned and hung for witchcraft all over Europe. When the average person pictures a witch s/he visualizes a woman with a pale skin wearing a tall hat and flowing black cape--the typical dress of the 16th Centur

A Feminist View of Witches

Candace Savage's succinct history of witches, _Witch: The Wild Ride from Wicked to Wicca_ shows a real enthusiasm for her subject. It is also a fine history of how curiously people have behaved when confronting the supposed supernatural, and how fashions can change our view of history. Savage shows that black magic was for millennia subject to legal prosecution, but that the medieval church wasn't particularly worried about black magic or the women who supposedly practiced it. Priests who heard reports from women who said they had flown during the night and taken part in satanic rituals were encouraged to maintain disbelief. Reasonable men were not to take such things seriously. One priest of the time wrote of such dreams, "Who is imbecile enough to imagine that such things, seen only in the mind, have a bodily reality?" The church itself lapsed in its wise toleration when it opposed a couple of dissident sects in France around 1400. The sects allowed women to administer baptisms and so on, so in prosecution, the church tortured them until it got confessions of copulating with the devil, riding broomsticks, and eating infants. Witches were seen everywhere if something bad happened; they sowed disease and discord; they were the Devil in female shapes; they were Public Enemy Number One.Against the wishes of many Bible believers, the image of the witch was changed during the enlightenment from a vicious devil-worshiper to a foolish little old lady. Still later they became the subjects of children's literature and cautionary lessons about what roles women really should fulfill. Finally, through the faulty scholarship of one Margaret Murray they were erroneously revealed as priestesses practicing an age-old pagan cult and proudly defying the Christian church. Scholars agree there was no such organized religion practiced by witches, but of course that doesn't matter. Savage shows in this profusely illustrated book that whether we need a scapegoat on whom to blame barrenness, a negative role model with which to warn our children, or a high priestess of cultural renewal, the image of the witch will always be there to scare or inspire, reinforcing the regrettable idea that there is something anomalous, something otherworldly, something not quite human, about a powerful woman.

Not what I expected, but worth the read.

When I picked up this book I was expecting a history of witchcraft from an occult prospective. I was not expecting an examination of the Archetypal female witch through history from a feminist point of view. Despite my wrong expectations, I found this book to be extremely fascinating. The author follows the evolution of society's perception of the witch and how these perceptions helped to shape the roles of women. The material is presented is well written and insightful. The author's conversational style of writing draws the reader in, as she guides us through this sometimes-gruesome sometimes-funny history. While it is too short to a "definitive work," it does present all the information someone with a casual interest would want. Overall I thoroughly enjoyed this work and recommend it.