The Case for A Woman's Inner Witch

Let’s be honest. When you hear the word “witch”, the first image that pops into your head is a woman. And no, that doesn’t make you sexist. Witchcraft has been a field dominated by women for the majority of history, both in the West and other cultures as well. But why does it draw women so much?

The common explanation as per a preliminary Google search is that witchcraft is a form of rebellion against the seemingly Christian patriarchy, and the prioritization of logic over intuition in Western culture. It is a way for historically marginalized groups like women to gain a sense of sovereignty and power they can’t obtain the outside world because they are oppressed by the culture. There most certainly were times and places like medieval Europe when this was a probable explanation, but there have been circumstances in which the archetype of the witch is born into neither Christianity nor patriarchy. Women seem inherently drawn to the idea regardless of culture. This being said, “Rebelling against the patriarchy” seems like a cop out. There may be more to it than that.

The Magic Circle, J.W. Waterhouse

First, let’s discuss some global perspectives on witchcraft.

The Cailleach is a female goddess in Celtic tradition, an old hag appearing around Samhain, and is known for her wisdom. While sources say she is not connected to magic or regarded as a witch, she is a wise crone who is in tune to the natural world, and associated with a Celtic holiday that was a precursor to Halloween.

Ancient Egypt was a fairly gender equal place and they also practiced witchcraft. This being said both men and women used the practice and women were often midwives and nurses, or visited if someone believed they were being affected by a ghost or deity. Female witches were, like many witches around the world, often consulted as healers, and here they were used as support for uniquely female experiences, such as giving birth. And also, their magic was not feared, rather revered, so it is fair to say that witchcraft here was born out of rebellion or oppression in the culture.

Circe was the first witch in Greek myth and was a priestess who specialized in creating magical potions, and was a crazed seductress. Ancient Rome also burned witches in their pre-Christian days, and they were often old, ugly hags and associated with the deep wilderness. Brujeria is a form of witchcraft popular across the Latin America, and though it grew as an answer to European colonialism, its origins trace to indigenous practices and beliefs.

My point is, that patriarchal, Christian societies are not the sole catalyst for women turning to witchcraft practices. Many stories of the witch archetype predate Christian (or any monotheistic) influence, and not all of these societies oppressed women, though traditional gender roles prevailed. In the more patriarchal societies, witchcraft was demonized, which isn't surprising. But let's take a second to acknowledge that these cultures all attributed similar traits to their witches: sensuality, nurture, openness, and intuition. This being said, there is an almost universal consensus on where feminine power originates, regardless of the cultural attitudes surrounding them.

Now, let’s discuss the biological case for why women may be particularly drawn to witchcraft

1. We have a primal desire for inside knowledge

From a young age, female brains are wired to be interested in others, and yes, our evolutionary biology does posit us as more interested in gossip. The idea of accessing tacit knowledge is hard-wired into the female brain. And no, this isn’t a sexist statement that women are all gossipy and catty, it’s an acknowledgment that the ability to observe, and value insider information is part of what made our female ancestors successful in reproducing and raising their kids, and they passed it on to us. Some researchers believe that gossip amongst women was a way to cut down competition by tarnishing the reputation of other women to potential mates. Others feel that this may have been a way for women to form social bonds and rapport with one another, and this allowed them social advantages, such as keeping an eye on strangers and potentially untrustworthy people.

2. Women are generally more likely to believe in the metaphysical and spiritual

In more egalitarian societies, men tend to be less religious than women. Let’s discuss what this means, since it is a commonly accepted belief that religious societies are more beneficial to men, Traditional values aren't the reason that women are more religious in entirety. When women live in less religious societies, they choose belief at a higher rate than men. Women have a more general inclination towards belief in the metaphysical, whether that be organized religion, witchcraft, or other spiritual practices. There may be something innately spiritual about the experience of being a woman. The common argument for women being more spiritually invested is that women are oppressed by their external environment and therefore turn inwards for empowerment. But once again, this disparity is more prevalent in more egalitarian societies, so this doesn't entirely make sense. Perhaps it's not that feminine power is being forced to turn inward, it's that it is from inward in the first place.

Feminine physiology is largely implicit. When things are hard to logically explain, we find other ways of explaining them, like the supernatural

We rarely hear the phrase “masculine intuition”, and it’s because women are often posited as the intuitive, emotional decision makers, while men make decisions on their rationality. One study thinks that feminine intuition is the result of prenatal testosterone exposure causing male brains to be more analytical. This study used finger length as a proxy for fetal testosterone exposure, and it showed that men performed slower on a cognitive reflection test, as did women who had evidence of higher testosterone exposure in utero. So this would lend credence to a theory that masculinization decreases intuition and increases analytical thinking, implying that femininity is the inverse. But why? Evolutionary theories point to intuitive decision making as something that helped mothers ensure the survival of their children better. “Intuition” in this case is defined as the recognition and abstract processing of nonverbal social and implicit environmental cues that form recognizable patterns which allow us to predict an outcome. In other words, women are theoretically better at reading people and feeling out situations because in our cavewoman days, we couldn’t rely on obvious, explicit signs to protect ourselves or our babies. Babies can’t explicitly tell us if something is wrong, and dangerous people won’t directly tell us that they’re dangerous. Whereas our male counterparts often found themselves in physically dangerous situations and couldn’t let their feelings get the best of them, so they had to adapt to become more logical and agentic. There are plenty of studies and articles that show women being more sensitive to nonverbal social cues, and making more emotional decisions, but hard conclusions can’t be drawn, as we still have more research to do. However, there is a convincing and increasing body of evidence that is decoding the evolutionary utility of intuitive decision making in the female brain.

Witches are often associated with scary things such as Halloween, the night, and the moon. The feminine is also associated with symbols of darkness in multiple cultures. This isn’t necessarily because of the “patriarchy” or beliefs that demonize women. Much of this actually has to do with the beauty of female physiology. Biologically, women are the night sky, the darkness, and the void. From two halves of a zygote, the female body alchemizes an entire life, making something from almost nothing. The reproductive system can be seen as a void of chaos in our bodies, that we can turn to order in the form of a fully functioning and distinct being. What this all means is, that the concept of witchcraft could be particularly enticing to women because of the way we’re wired. Once again, more conclusive research needs to be done on this topic, but there is evidence that evolution and female biology plays a role into our attitudes on witchcraft.

Witchcraft is making a resurgence, and it doesn’t seem to be in response to the Christian patriarchy

This uptick in women subscribing to witchcraft, I think, has to do with women having a strained relationship to their own femininity, and projecting it onto their contempt of tradition and values. I’m sure that there are many women in which this isn’t the case as well, but I’m talking more about the cultural phenomenon. Since about the past 50 years in the West, women have been trying to “catch up” to men (a completely false standard, but that’s another rant) and we’ve neglected our feminine because we’ve been sold the lie that masculine power is “true” power. And what’s happening now, in my point of view, is that modern women are feeling the depths of their femininity struggling to get out because they’ve been ignoring it so long for the sake of progress. So, when they feel the pull of their intuition, or are seduced by the idea of secret knowledge and inner wisdom, they don’t recognize it as part of their feminine, and think they must be “witches”, or called to deviate from the traditional values our society was built upon. In reality though, it’s just the most primal parts of their femininity calling them home. All it means is our brains and bodies are the result of thousands of female ancestors, and the evolutionary funnel that led them to successfully create us. As women, we are imbued with the innate wisdom of our grandmothers, and their stories are told through our hormonal cycles, personality traits, and our beauty.

To me, a woman owning her inner witch doesn't (and shouldn’t) need to actually translate into the adoption of witchcraft at all. I think it it just means we recognize the deepest parts of our feminine essence and embrace it as what makes the feminine both beautiful and messy at the same time. We can integrate the deep parts of the feminine without compromising our grace, receptiveness and humility. Being a "witch" doesn't need to actually translate into paganism, occultist beliefs or behaviors at all. Perhaps it just means we use our feminine essence as a force of good. Maybe we could all own our inner crone, the part of us that carries the wisdom of the women who came before us.

Sources

Information About the Cailleach: https://historycooperative.org/cailleach/

Demographic Study of Witchcraft Beliefs: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9683553/

More detail on Ancient Witch Beliefs in Rome and Mesopotamia: https://www.bustle.com/p/how-long-have-witches-existed-these-ancient-myths-about-witches-will-give-you-nightmares-3067204

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2021.2474https://womeninantiquity.wordpress.com/2020/12/01/witchcraft-and-depictions-of-witches-in-roman-sources/

More Detail on Ancient Egypt's Witchcraft: historycollection.com/truth-witchcraft-ancient-egypt/

This was the study about Testosterone and Cognitive Results : Bosch-Doménech A, Brañas-Garza P, Espín AM. Can exposure to prenatal sex hormones (2D:4D) predict cognitive reflection? Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2014 May;43:1-10. doi: 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2014.01.023. Epub 2014 Feb 6.

Research about Evolutionary utility of gossip: https://time.com/5680457/why-do-people-gossip/#:~:text=Some%20researchers%20argue%20that%20gossip,as%20a%20means%20of%20bonding.