The Wild Hunt (https://wildhunt.org/tag/wicca/page/2)
When people ask “why do you want to become a Witch right now?”, I hesitate on answering. There are technically two truths to that answer. One is not sexy. The other is embarrassing.
I use models for what is “old enough” to consider seriously in my practice based on instinct and a vague understanding of the world “historiography,” picking up and discarding things from 1000, 1300, or 1800 as either “older than anything else I’ve found” or “too new” – all while the modern Witchcraft movement can be meaningfully traced to the 1940s.
The witch was a figure of both disgust and fear, but, paradoxically, also of sexual desire and temptation. The witch represented that which was forbidden in all its forms. And for that, she was reviled, even as she titillated the minds of the repressed. Very queer, indeed.
In this week’s Pagan Community Notes, “‘pagan and satanic” church firebombed in Texas, Republican candidate worried about Wiccan takeover, the August supermoon, and more news and announcements.
“Am I seeking, or am I being sought?” Meg Elison reviews J. Lee Thompson’s EYE OF THE DEVIL (1966), a classic of pagan horror that revolves around the myth of the Sacred King.