I'm a witch, I'm not evil and I'm not your Halloween costume

This First Person column is the experience of Susanne McCrea, a Winnipeg-based writer and activist who practises witchcraft. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ.

Every Halloween we have the witch talk. A witch is not a costume.

I call myself a witch to challenge the stereotype of an ugly old woman with warts on her nose making deals with the devil.

My ancestors would never have even whispered the word.

It was used to kill an estimated 40,000 European people in the 16th and 17th centuries, for the things I do openly today. I conducted a death rite of passage last weekend. I offered a spiritual ceremony for a departed friend and his family, to pay tribute to his life and come together as a community — and to send him off to his ancestors.

I also perform weddings and handfastings in the old Celtic way. I honour nature and observe rituals during the solstices and equinoxes. I perform rites on the old Celtic ritual days. I practise divination and I make charms. I'm no different than others who pray or meditate. (For the record, I don't believe in the devil.)

I therefore use the word "witch" as an act of reclaiming. We can't forget how the word was applied in a near genocide.

The intolerance extended, in particular, to women on the fringe of society. Widows and unmarried women were especially vulnerable. Everyone was terrified of being accused of witchcraft because anyone could be.

The hysteria became a religious fever that had people turning in personal enemies and enemies of the church, in an effort to purge them from society.

[The people accused in Salem] were innocent of any wrongdoing. But they were hanged.- Susanne McCrea

There was one physical identifier that people would look for: a birthmark, the mark of a witch, said to be put there by the devil.

I was born with a raspberry birthmark in North America hundreds of years later, and my mother panicked and had it removed. 

The thing is, you could still be a witch if you didn't have the mark, so removing it didn't save you.

In fact, there wasn't much that could. A typical way of determining if you were a witch was to tie the accused up and drop them in a body of water. If they drowned, they weren't a witch. If they floated, they were a witch, and convicted and killed by being burned alive or hanged.

These witch hunts extended from Germany, Southern France, Switzerland and through Europe. 

In 1692, they spilled into North America during the infamous Salem, Mass., witch trials.

Mass hysteria, paranoia and religious intolerance once again ruled. More than 200 were accused of witchcraft. Twenty were executed and five more died in jail.

Some 200 or so years later, Halloween was brought to North America, when hundreds of thousands of Irish fled the potato famine. In Gaelic, its name is Samhain. It's the time when the veil between the living and our ancestors is lifted.

Some of the customs survived. Handing out candy, for example, comes from putting out a spirit plate for our honoured dead — and as an offering to those spirits who might cause mischief or harm, in an effort to appease them, so they will pass by our home without incident.

Witches still persecuted

In 1992, I attended the 300-year anniversary of the last "witches" condemned to death in Salem.

The Salem Museum had the usual depictions of cartoon witches, knick-knacks and tourist souvenirs that are on every street corner in town.

I attended a narrated re-enactment of a portion of the trials and it gave me shivers. These people begged and pleaded; they were innocent of any wrongdoing. But they were hanged and one was even crushed to death under giant boulders. 

The last of the victims was only exonerated in July of 2022.

This is what I think of when I see you in your witch costume. 

The costume is either a sexy witch (that implies a women's sexuality is dangerous and evil) or it's a hag to be ridiculed and disrespected (because she's no longer beautiful and past her usefulness to men).

I know the vast majority of people don't know the horrors that were done in that name. Or if they do, they think it was so long ago we should be over it or couldn't be personally affected. 

Challenge the icon of the evil witch.- Susanne McCrea

But as recently as 2013, 20-year-old Kepari Leniata was stripped, tortured and burned alive after being accused of being a witch, in Papua New Guinea. To make it even worse, a few years later, Kepari's child was herself abducted, tied up and and tortured with a hot machete to force her to recant the witchcraft they suspected her of practising. She was held for days before she was rescued. This happened in 2017!

There are a number of other such cases. In fact, the United Nations and Stepping Stone Nigeria both report that the number of contemporary witch trials are increasing. 

Challenge the icon of the evil witch. Witches were not and are not evil. Our creed is "For the good of all and to harm none."

Put out a plate for your ancestors on Halloween. But don't wear a witch's costume. I am not your costume.

This column is part of  CBC's Opinion section. For more information about this section, please read this editor's blog and our FAQ.

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