A Good Witch
By Jeannie Perry
Witches are real. Just like the fairy tales portray, they are old women who speak their minds and wear weird hats and dance around the house like no one’s watching; probably because no one is watching. At a certain age women become invisible in our culture. I remember my mom telling me about it when it happened to her, somewhere around 67 or 68. She said, “It’s wonderful, you can cut in line at the bank and no one notices.”
But unlike the fairy tales of our youth, witches are not a real threat to civilization. It’s monotheists who are the true villains. Think about it, all the religions that have believers who blow themselves up and hang people from crosses are monotheistic. I don’t think it’s natural to only worship one deity, because on Earth there are at least two genders for everything- no matter the creature, there’s a male and a female. Exceptions to every rule: many slugs and snails are both, so let the mollusks believe in just one god.
As my husband likes to say, “All you monotheists look the same to me.”
When we look back in history at the clans, tribes and troupes that had female leaders, they believed in more than one god. Way before some old priests, for whatever reason, got together and hijacked the customs of man and turned them all into one; one father, one son, one holy ghost (with male energy.) Christianity’s agenda seems pretty clear by now, women are meant to be subservient. As one faithful believer, Representative Justin Humphrey from Oklahoma, put it, “I understand that they feel like that is their body,” he said of women. “I feel like it is a separate — what I call them is, is you’re a ‘host.”
What with burning our ancestors at the stake, (sometimes while pregnant) perpetuating male dominance through marriage, and condemning a woman’s right to choose anything from sexual orientation to reproductivity, you’d think Christians hate women. Or, at the very least, begrudge us our personal freedoms (similar to another monotheistic religion that constantly makes the news for suffocating women’s rights.)
I’ve been thinking I should start wearing a burka when I travel. Not because of any religious belief, I just hate it when the TSA agents touch my hair with their filthy blue gloves. Aside from taking off my shoes, jacket, and belt, and being felt up in front of a bunch of strangers, it is my biggest pet peeve when traveling. Of course, I am getting closer and closer to my Witch Years; soon I’ll probably sail through security like a breeze… or Casper the friendly ghost.
Speaking of ghosts, I recently had an encounter with Frida Kahlo. (Ok, it was a dream.) We were both dressed in black from head to toe, except for white running shoes. We were rummaging through a stack of paintings in the basement of the Vatican, and I had the distinct feeling we were biding our time until something big was about to happen. Frida asked me if I could name five internationally renowned female artists. I named her, of course, and Georgia O’Keefe, but then I got stuck and so I rounded out the rest with less well-known but equally impressive artists: Carrie Kaplan, Staci Dickerson, and Kat Rich.
“Why do you think that is?” asked Frida. “Do you think there are fewer women interested in painting?”
“No,” I shook my head, slowly connecting the surrealistic dots. “Ah ha!” I had it. “Is this the point those women wearing gorilla masks to fancy art openings in New York are trying to make?”
The Guerrilla Girls are activists with a mission to expose gender and ethnic bias in the worlds of politics, art, and pop culture. They “believe in an intersectional feminism that fights discrimination and supports human rights for all people and all genders.”
Sounds like my kinda sisterhood. I have to ask myself if monotheistic religions aren’t really in the business of shutting down feminism, i.e., equality. Why we’re taught from such a young age to loathe, fear and ignore old women. Why they’re represented as witches, crones and sad little old ladies with ugly handbags. Why women disappear after a certain age and are only seen in the paintings, but never acknowledged as the artist.
Jeannie Perry writes a column titled Ps & Qs- mindyourpsandqsson.com. She looks forward to aging, becoming invisible, and using her powers for good.