Volume 36, Number 15 · October 12, 1989
White Magic
By Rosemary Dinnage
Persuasions of the Witch's Craft: Ritual Magic in Contemporary England
by T.M. Luhrmann
Harvard University Press, 382 pp., $25.00
The word 'witch' still carries a tremendous charge, at least to those brought up on fairy tale and myth, who half-remember the stony gaze of Medusa; and the Graeae 'by the shore of the freezing sea, nodding upon a white log of drift-wood, beneath the cold white winter moon'; and mothers who turn out to be stepmothers, grandmothers who are wolves in disguise, godmothers who bestow a curse when they are not invited to the party. These witches are always women (the magician figure is different altogether) and often they seem beautiful—the cannibal witch in Hansel and Gretel lives in a house made of delicious sweets—beautiful enough to entice you into their power. In my dreams of witches in childhood you were safe as long as you pretended to be fooled by them. The word 'wicked' automatically goes with this witch; there are fairy godmothers, of course, and benign fairies, but in comparison they are rather wishy-washy figures. Whether the frisson is there for someone nourished only on TV and comics I don't know; I suspect it is, even if faintly. Even before the organized persecution of the witch hunts, there has always been an image in the mind of a dangerously powerful woman, either a beautiful Belle Dame sans Merci or a hideous hag. When Papageno in The Magic Flute is tricked into uncovering the false Papagena, it is the witch-hag he finds.
Review, 4518 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |