Reclaiming the "W" Word
by Katherine Suppa
Art by Adriene Jenik
On May 19, 1536 (my birthday, but 460 years earlier), Anne Boleyn was beheaded by sword. The second wife of Henry VIII was accused of many things that ultimately lead to her execution—adultery, incest (two things which probably went hand in hand), treasonable conspiracy to produce the king’s death, and behind all these charges were whispers of witchcraft.
While she was never officially charged with witchcraft, the rumors only seemed to grow after her death. Her husband’s court was a viper’s den, populated by ladder-climbers and power-seekers. Her enemies—the likes of Thomas Cromwell—reported that she had six fingers on her hands, strange moles (or “Devil’s marks”), and a protruding tooth, whatever that may be (none of these, of course, have ever been corroborated). Henry himself claimed to have been “bewitched” by Anne, and the public clung to these statements; Anne had never been popular among them, and how else could the King’s desire to marry a commoner (and abandon his much beloved first wife, Catherine of Aragon) be explained other than through sorcery?
I always found Anne Boleyn to be the most fascinating of the Tudor Queens. She was ambitious, and she loved furiously, unable to let Henry go. She courted him for seven years, refusing to sleep with him before they were married, and in the three years after, she was prone to jealousy and to rage. Even as the end of her marriage approached, she loved her king, and for that, she was killed. But she wasn’t the first woman to be executed under the guise of witchcraft, and she certainly wouldn’t be the last.
Adriene Jenik, ECOtarot Deck, hand-painted with natural pigments on handmade plant-based paper
The night after the Women’s Marches in 2017, I was lying in bed, scrolling through Twitter, and I found myself pausing over an image. It was a picture of a woman, her face filled with righteous anger, holding a poster board on which she had written “we are the granddaughters of the witches you couldn’t burn”.
I didn’t attend the Marches; When I lived with my parents, there were only three things that would convince my mother to let me skip school: 1) I was crying because of some sort of pain in my body 2) I was vomiting or 3) I had the temperature equivalent to that of a Thanksgiving turkey. Other than that, I was expected to attend classes every day, with few exceptions. One of those was definitely not my desire to attend a march or protest. When the Women’s Marches were organized during my freshman year of college, they just happened to fall on a school day, and because my mother raised me to experience a considerable amount of anxiety due to missing class, I found myself sitting in a hard desk chair rather than protesting in the streets of DC. I didn’t regret this decision until I saw that poster.
I can’t pinpoint a time in my life where I haven’t been fascinated by witches. It isn’t the magic or the mystery that draws to me them; it’s the injustice. Women were—and still are—told that there was a way they needed to act to be accepted by society. Today, we hear “sit like a lady”, “don’t wear revealing clothing”, and “she was asking for it”. During the height of the witch hunts, they heard all this and more. Men weren’t exempt from the charge of sorcery either; even defending a women who was accused could land them in deep water as well. It isn’t surprising that men, thus, didn’t take more action to stop these horrors, especially for women who didn’t match society’s expectations.
Adriene Jenik, ECOtarot Deck, hand-painted with natural pigments on handmade plant-based paper
Anna Göldi was born in Switzerland in 1734. By 1782, she would be dead, decapitated by sword and followed by rumors of witchcraft. Anna was the perfect victim for society to accuse. She didn’t fit the mold that women are told they must squeeze themselves into; she had two children out of wedlock, and strange things were said to happen when she was around. When needles were found in the bread and milk of the family she was working for (said to have been put there by Anna through magical means), she was quickly fired. Not long after, one of the family’s young children became sick. While reports of the child vomiting up metal were greatly exaggerated, Anna was quickly arrested and a confession was tortured out of her. The sentence of death was soon carried out.
It is speculated that Anna’s true crime was having an affair with her married employer, Johann Jakob Tschudi. It’s easy to picture how the subsequent events would have occurred: Tschudi fires Anna, but instead of simply allowing this to happen, she stands up for herself. She threatens to reveal their affair if she isn’t allowed to keep her job. This, of course, backfires, and instead of getting her job, Tschudi accuses her of being a witch. It seems to me that something was rotten in the state of Switzerland.
It is said that Anna was the last woman to be executed for witchcraft in Europe. While historians have never been able to put an exact number on how many women were executed for this crime (it’s upwards into the hundred thousands, spanning a few hundred years), the reasons for these deaths have been more well-documented. A woman who was too beautiful, too ugly, too single, too introverted, too powerful, must have been a witch.
Adriene Jenik, ECOtarot Deck, hand-painted with natural pigments on handmade plant-based paper
Misogyny today presents itself through the lens of witchcraft; Hillary Clinton has been linked to a witch since her time as First Lady, Theresa May is said to have a “witch’s cackle”, and Nancy Pelosi has faced down a multitude of witch-related abuses. Although we have moved beyond the physical act of execution, the insult remains an indictment all the same.
There are a few words that feminists have begun to reclaim, “cunt” being one of them. I am of the opinion that “witch” should be another (I think the woman with the poster would agree with me). Witches of the past are women who were victims, women who were told by society that they couldn’t be themselves, and instead of lying down and allowing it, they stood up and fought for who they were. Witches are women who stand out, who aren’t afraid to cause a scene, and they are women that I admire. Witches are my mother, my grandmothers, my best friends, women who choose to have jobs instead of children, women who fight for equal pay, women who stand up against sexual assault and harassment. These are the women of today who would have been burned in the past for their desire to be who they are. Witches are feminists, and if being a feminist is to be linked with being a witch, than it is a title I will readily accept.
Adriene Jenik, ECOtarot Deck, hand-painted with natural pigments on handmade plant-based paper