What Witches Wear

When Emily told us about the Witches Walk in Pownal Vermont last weekend, she also said that people would be dressing in their idea of what a Witch would wear.

It was at the same time that I was working on my Not Going Back quilt and on the Wizard of Oz piece specifically.  While doing research into the best words to go with the Dorothy embroidery, I came across the article  Why Do Witches Wear Pointy Hats.  The History Behind the Costume,by Elizabeth Yuko.

The pointy witch hats, which precede the Wizard of Oz movie, had two origins.

In the 1600s Quaker women wore tall pointy hats.  And because the Quakers were seen as outsiders for their beliefs, “especially the idea that women and men were spiritual equals, and that women were permitted to be preachers, ” they were often imprisoned or accused of being witches.

The pointy hats are also associated with the cone shaped hat that Jewish men began wearing in 12th century Europe.  At the time they were a sign of distinction the men chose to wear.  But eventually there was  “a papal decree requiring Jews to wear an identifying item of clothing when appearing in public.”

For centuries after that came the caricatures of Jews in pointy hats.

This got me thinking because I’d recently been given a hankie that had some Victorian rhymes on it.   One of the images was confusing to me.  When I first looked at it, I was sure the figure was a witch, but the rhyme was about a little boy going to school. This implied that the person wasn’t a witch but a teacher.

Yet the androgynous figure has a pointy hat, hook nose, long black coat and pointy boots.  They  look like they are holding the brush of a broom under their arm. It made me wonder if the person wasn’t a derogatory stereotype of a Jew.

After reading the article by Yuko I understood it a little better.  In it she quotes Fashion Historian Vi … “When the push to portray Quaker women as witches got going, applying this familiar antisemitic witchy imagery was an efficient way to do it, especially in context with the panic over Jewish resettlement and Quaker support for it.” 

Suddenly it was clear to me that the depictions of  witche’s, that we still see on Halloween decorations today, came from the persecution of two separate groups of people hundreds of years ago.

When I was thinking about what I would wear to the Witches Walk, I thought about the clothes I had and how I could put them together in a way that would bring out my feeling of the word “Witch”.   What I found was that when I thought of my witch-self, it was in context of my art.

I may not know how to heal with herbs, or cast spells, but my art and how I create has always had a touch of magic and mystery to me.  It has also often been healing to me and to some of  the people who buy it.

So I began by looking around my studio and pulling things off my walls.

These are the things I choose to surround myself with.  The bones and feathers I found in the woods, the wool from my sheep, a wooden thread spool, my dog Frieda’s collar, the red doll shoes my friend Cindy gave me, LV’s painted clothes pin, and a pouch that someone sent me with her Bellydancing Zills.

I sewed these things, to the back of my jacket. I wore it over a simple gray T-shirt, a black skirt that Julz, my Bellydancing teacher gave me years ago, red checkered knee socks and my red sneakers (easier to dance in than my boots).  Around my waist I tied a sash that I wove from 2007-08 made of my used tampon strings and used tea bag strings.

On my head I wore my fedora.  It already had a feather and bird pin made my Emily Gold, but I added a bone and sage to it for the dance.

After we danced a woman came up to me and said that I looked like I was well protected.  I had’t thought of it that way, but that made sense to me.

I had dressed in those things that have personal mojo and bring me comfort.  The things I wore on my body and the dance we did were both art and ritual to me.

I believe the ritual worked so well because the women I was dancing with also had strong feelings about what they wore,  and about being a part of the Witches Walk and Dance.

Emily, who helped organize the day, made herself a crown of rose hips and sedum from her garden.  Julz just recently came out as a witch on her blog. “I was excited to finally dress the part of my recent coming out. The outfit put itself together.” She wrote about what she wore to the dance.  And Kathleen, who doesn’t identify as a witch came to the dance as one of the Three Muses.

Julz believe the four of us have danced together as witches in another life time and we’d finally come back to dance together again.

I like the idea of past lives and sometimes it seems to be a good explanation for things that occur in my life.  But other times I feel like it’s hard enough to deal with this lifetime without having to go back to others.

What I do know is something special happened at the Witches Walk last weekend.   All four of us felt it when we danced and many of the people who were there, felt it too. I think you can see it in some of Jon’s photos.  Julz described it as us being in a vessel for the music,  a song called Song Of The Witches by SJ Tucker.

Just before I left the for Witches Walk last week, I sat on the front porch meditating on Margaret Krieger.  She is the woman who we were commemorating in the walk, who was accused of being a witch.

It was a warm still day,  but suddenly it got windy and at the same time I heard the call of a crow.  At that moment the words, “I was a witch” popped into my head.  The wind was gone as quickly as it came as was the raven.   It was as if Margaret Krieger was making herself known to me.

Although I had my eyes closed, I don’t doubt I heard the wind and the crow.   The words I heard in my head…I’m not as certain where or who they came from.