Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell
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American Feminist group from the 1960s
W.I.T.C.H., originally the acronym for Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell, was the name of several related but independent feminist groups active in the United States as part of the women's liberation movement during the late 1960s. The W.I.T.C.H. moniker was sometimes alternatively expanded as "Women Inspired to Tell their Collective History", or "Women Interested in Toppling Consumer Holidays", among other variations.[1]
The first W.I.T.C.H. group was established in New York City in October 1968. Its founders were socialist feminists who had formerly been members of the New York Radical Women group. They opposed the idea advocated by radical feminists that feminist women should campaign against "patriarchy" alone. Instead W.I.T.C.H. advocated for feminists to ally with a range of left-wing causes, to bring about wider social change in the United States.
The most significant aspect of W.I.T.C.H. was its choice of central symbol: the witch. By choosing this symbol, feminists were identifying themselves with everything women were taught not to be: ugly, aggressive, independent, and malicious. Feminists took this symbol and molded it - not into the fairy tale "good witch," but into a symbol of female power, knowledge, independence, and martyrdom.
Within the women's liberation movement of the United States during the 1960s, there was a division between the "politicos" and the "radical feminists". The politicos were socialist feminists and attributed the oppression of women to capitalism, seeking to ally with other leftist causes – such as the New Left, black liberation movement, student movement, and anti-war movement– in a wider socio-political movement to bring about revolutionary change. Conversely, the radical feminists did not view women's oppression as a symptom of capitalism and wanted women's liberation to remain independent of the wider leftist movement.[3]
A number of these NYRW politicos then established W.I.T.C.H.; among those involved were Morgan, Florika, Peggy Dobbins, Judy Duffett, Cynthia Funk, and Naomi Jaffe.[6] Unverified claims have been made that the establishment of W.I.T.C.H. was inspired by the decision of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) to hold hearings investigating alleged communist involvement in demonstrations against the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The women who established W.I.T.C.H. were angry that while a number of male radicals were subpoenaed by HUAC, the female activists had not been.[7]
The group was established in New York on Halloween 1968,[8] at which point they adopted the name "Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell" and its acronym, W.I.T.C.H.[8] The group changed their name to suit their purposes, albeit retaining the fixed letters of W.I.T.C.H.[9] For instance, during a demonstration against the Bell Telephone company, the group used "Women Incensed at Telephone Company Harassment".[8] Other examples included "Women Infuriated at Taking Care of Hoodlums" and "Women Indentured to Traveler's Corporate Hell".[10]
Activism
W.I.T.C.H. is an all-woman Everything. It's theater, revolution, magic, terror, joy, garlic flowers, spells. It's an awareness that witches and gypsies were the original guerrillas and resistance fighters against oppression – particularly the oppression of women – down through the ages. Witches have always been women who dared to be: groovy, courageous, aggressive, intelligent, nonconformist, explorative, curious, independent, sexually liberated, revolutionary. (This possibly explains why nine million of them have been burned.)
Subsequent acts of protest conducted by W.I.T.C.H. placed a greater focus on women's issues.[12] The Chicago group staged protests in Chicago after hearing about New York City Actions, including actions at Chicago Board of Trade, the American Medical Association's annual conference, and the University of Chicago.[13] In one instance, the group's New York City members entered the legendary restaurant of the era Max's Kansas City, where they distributed garlic cloves and cards on which were written the motto: "We Are W.I.T.C.H. We Are Women. We Are Liberation. We Are We."[10] At the same time they chanted "Nine Million Women! Burned as Witches!" and questioned the women diners on why they were willing to have a man buy them dinner.[10]
In January 1969, a counter-inaugural protest was organized by various feminist groups, taking place in Washington, D.C., to demonstrate against the inauguration of Richard Nixon as President of the United States. W.I.T.C.H. members arrived from New York, appropriating some of the New York Radical Feminists' banners – which were emblazoned with the declaration of "Feminism Lives" – and replacing it with "W.I.T.C.H." in crayon.[14] Rumors circulated at the protest that W.I.T.C.H. members had planned to pull the radical feminist speaker Shulamith Firestone down from the podium when she had been planned to speak; they disagreed with her vocal criticism of those men who were involved in the leftist movement.[14] After the protest, W.I.T.C.H. members subsequently sent a letter to the Guardian repudiating Firestone's calls for women's liberation groups to divorce themselves from the wider left-leaning social movement in U.S. society.[15] In this letter, it described women's liberation as "part of a general struggle; we are as essential to the movement as it is to us".[15] It further reprimanded Firestone for her vocal attacks of men who were part of the movement, stating that "directing ourselves against men ... only reinforces the oppressive pattern of women defining themselves through men".[15]
“Double, bubble, war and rubble, When you mess with women, you’ll be in trouble. We’re convicted of murder if abortion is planned. Convicted of conspiracy if we fight for our rights. And burned at the stake when we stand up to fight.” – W.I.T.C.H. Hex, 1969
In February 1969, W.I.T.C.H. members held a protest at a bridal fair at Madison Square Garden. Wearing black veils, they chanted "here comes the slaves/off to their graves", and posted stickers around the area emblazoned with the statement, "confront the whoremakers", a pun on the common anti-war slogan, "confront the warmongers".[16] The protests also involved turning loose several white mice at the event, which fair attendees began scooping up off the ground.[16] Radical feminists criticized W.I.T.C.H. members for reinforcing the sexist stereotype that the assembled women would be scared of mice.[17] They also condemned what they understood as W.I.T.C.H.'s approach of promoting a message of "we're liberated and you're not" to other women, believing that in doing so they were distancing and alienating themselves from feminism's base constituency.[17] Later historian Alice Echols expressed criticism over what she saw as W.I.T.C.H.'s "contempt" for those women who were not involved in broader leftist activism.[12] The bridal fair event resulted in negative media coverage for W.I.T.C.H., and some dissension among members over goals and tactics.[18] After the incident, W.I.T.C.H. moved away from the shock tactics that they had previously employed and instead focused their attention on consciousness-raising.[17]
On August 10, 1969, a W.I.T.C.H. group, calling itself Women Incensed at Telephone Company Harassment, gathered at St. Paul's Churchyard in New York to protest working conditions at AT&T.[19]
Spin-off "covens" were founded in Chicago, Illinois, and Washington, D.C.,[1] and W.I.T.C.H. zaps continued until roughly the beginning of 1970. In 1969, a Chicago "coven" gathered in an action outside the Chicago Transit Authority headquarters to "hex" the CTA over a proposed transit hike, dancing and chanting.[20] In another instance, W.I.T.C.H. members protested the firing of a radical feminist professor by entering the sociology department of the University of Chicago and leaving hair and nail clippings all over the building.[10]
In February 1970, the Washington coven held a protest during a Senate hearing on population control. They interrupted Texas Senator Ralph Yarborough's testimony by chanting and throwing pills at panel members and people in the audience galleries.[18]
Understanding of witchcraft
In their leaflets, W.I.T.C.H. adopted the witch-cult hypothesis by claiming that those persecuted as alleged witches in European history had been members of a surviving pre-Christian, pagan religion which the Christian authorities then sought to suppress.[21] In their manifesto, W.I.T.C.H. propagated the erroneous claim that nine million women had been burned to death during the witch trials in the early modern period.[22] This claim had originated with the first-wave feminist Matilda Joslyn Gage.[22]
W.I.T.C.H. declared that any woman could become a W.I.T.C.H. by declaring herself to be one, and that moreover any group of women could form a witches' coven.[23] In one of their leaflets, it is stated that:[21]
If you are a woman and dare to look within yourself, you are a W.I.T.C.H.. You make your own rules. You are free and beautiful. You can be invisible or evident in how you choose to make your W.I.T.C.H.-self known. You can form your own Coven of sister Witches (thirteen is a cozy number for a group) and do your own actions ... You are a W.I.T.C.H. by saying aloud, "I am a W.I.T.C.H." three times, and thinking about that. You are a W.I.T.C.H. by being female, untamed, angry, joyous, and immortal.
The fluidity and wit of the witches is evident in the ever-changing acronym: the basic, original title was Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell [...] and the latest heard at this writing is Women Inspired to Commit Herstory.
However, soon after the breakup of W.I.T.C.H., Morgan repudiated her New Left-aligned politics, and embraced a kind of radical feminism that was strongly opposed to "the male left".[27] She later dismissed W.I.T.C.H. as a form of "clownish proto-anarchism" which had not "raised our own consciousness very far out of our own combat boots".[12]
Writing in 1979, the journalist Margot Adler expressed the view that while W.I.T.C.H. was considered to be "a fringe phenomenon" in the women's movement at the time of its founding, by the end of the seventies, its sentiments were embraced by a larger proportion of feminists, if still a minority within the feminist community.[28]
W.I.T.C.H. were a political rather than a religious or spiritual group, however several scholars of Pagan studies have considered them to be partial precursors to the Dianic Wiccans, members of a feminist-oriented form of Modern Paganism which developed in the United States during the 1970s.[29] According to Adler, W.I.T.C.H.'s key assumptions about the nature of witchcraft and its connection to women's liberation continued as the "wellspring" of Dianic Wicca and other forms of feminist-oriented Paganism.[21]
Red W.I.T.C.H., a socialist spin-off of W.I.T.C.H, was created by teaching staff at UC Berkeley after they witnessed the W.I.T.C.H. actions in Chicago. Led by Laura X, Red W.I.T.C.H. responded to the patriarchal elements of socialist organization in the early 1960s, criticizing the contradictions between ideals of radical males and their behavior.[13]
Revival
Members of W.I.T.C.H. Boston holding signs counterprotesting the Boston Free Speech Rally on August 19, 2017
In 2015, the Chicago chapter was reestablished by three women. Their first action took place in November 2015. Later actions targeted the lack of affordable housing, abortion rights and the Trump administration's condoning of racism and sexism.[30] Members staged a ritual in the Logan Square neighborhood in 2015 to protest housing inequalities throughout the city.[30] Participating members at this event included Jessica Caponigro, Chiara Galimberti, and Amaranta Isyemille Ramos.[31] In 2017, the group's members from the W.I.T.C.H. Chicago Coven group of 2015-2017 intentionally pulled themselves out of the public eye to make space for the creation of an anonymous W.I.T.C.H. chapter in Chicago. They still promote the continuation of the practice of performing rituals to fight against inequality in all of its form.[32]
Dianic Wicca, also known as Dianic Witchcraft, is a modern pagan goddess tradition focused on female experience and empowerment. Leadership is by women, who may be ordained as priestesses, or in less formal groups that function as collectives. While some adherents identify as Wiccan, it differs from most traditions of Wicca in that only goddesses are honored.
Wicca, also known as "The Craft", is a modern pagan, syncretic, earth-centered religion. Considered a new religious movement by scholars of religion, the path evolved from Western esotericism, developed in England during the first half of the 20th century, and was introduced to the public in 1954 by Gerald Gardner, a retired British civil servant. Wicca draws upon ancient pagan and 20th-century Hermetic motifs for theological and ritual purposes. Doreen Valiente joined Gardner in the 1950s, further building Wicca's liturgical tradition of beliefs, principles, and practices, disseminated through published books.
Zsuzsanna Emese Mokcsay is a Hungarian-American writer, activist, playwright and songwriter living in America who writes about feminist spirituality and Dianic Wicca under the pen name Zsuzsanna Budapest or Z. Budapest. She is the founder of the Susan B. Anthony Coven #1, which was founded in 1971 as the first women-only witches' coven. She founded the female-only style of Dianic Wicca.
The Goddess movement is a revivalistic Neopagan religious movement which includes spiritual beliefs and practices that emerged primarily in the United States in the late 1960s and predominantly in the Western world during the 1970s. The movement grew as a reaction both against Abrahamic religions, which exclusively have gods who are referred to using masculine grammatical articles and pronouns, and secularism. It revolves around Goddess worship and the veneration for the divine feminine, and may include a focus on women or on one or more understandings of gender or femininity.
Faerie Faith is a Wiccan branch from the "Old Dianic" tradition through the work of Mark Roberts and his high priestess, Epona.
Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America Today is a sociological study of contemporary Paganism in the United States written by the American Wiccan and journalist Margot Adler. First published in 1979 by Viking Press, it was later republished in a revised and expanded edition by Beacon Press in 1986, with third and fourth revised editions being brought out by Penguin Books in 1996 and then 2006 respectively.
Leo Martello was an American Wiccan priest, gay rights activist, and author. He was a founding member of the Strega Tradition, a form of the modern Pagan new religious movement of Wicca which drew upon his own Italian heritage. During his lifetime he published a number of books on such esoteric subjects as Wicca, astrology, and tarot reading.
The Feminists was a second-wave radical feminist group active in New York City from 1968 to 1973.
Reclaiming is a tradition in neopagan witchcraft, aiming to combine the Goddess movement with feminism and political activism. Reclaiming was founded in 1979, in the context of the Reclaiming Collective (1978–1997), by two Neopagan women of Jewish descent, Starhawk and Diane Baker, in order to explore and develop feminist Neopagan emancipatory rituals.
New York Radical Women (NYRW) was an early second-wave radical feminist group that existed from 1967 to 1969. They drew nationwide media attention when they unfurled a banner inside the 1968 Miss America pageant displaying the words "Women's Liberation".
The history of Wicca documents the rise of the Neopagan religion of Wicca and related witchcraft-based Neopagan religions. Wicca originated in the early 20th century, when it developed amongst secretive covens in England who were basing their religious beliefs and practices upon what they read of the historical witch-cult in the works of such writers as Margaret Murray. It was subsequently founded in the 1950s by Gardner, who claimed to have been initiated into the Craft – as Wicca is often known – by the New Forest coven in 1939. Gardner's form of Wicca, the Gardnerian tradition, was spread by both him and his followers like the High Priestesses Doreen Valiente, Patricia Crowther and Eleanor Bone into other parts of the British Isles, and also into other, predominantly English-speaking, countries across the world. In the 1960s, new figures arose in Britain who popularized their own forms of the religion, including Robert Cochrane, Sybil Leek and Alex Sanders, and organizations began to be formed to propagate it, such as the Witchcraft Research Association. It was during this decade that the faith was transported to the United States, where it was further adapted into new traditions such as Feri, 1734 and Dianic Wicca in the ensuing decades, and where organizations such as the Covenant of the Goddess were formed.
Modern paganism in the United States is represented by widely different movements and organizations. The largest modern pagan religious movement is Wicca, followed by Neodruidism. Both of these religions or spiritual paths were introduced during the 1950s and 1960s from Great Britain. Germanic Neopaganism and Kemetism appeared in the US in the early 1970s. Hellenic Neopaganism appeared in the 1990s.
Neopagan witchcraft, sometimes referred to as The Craft, is an umbrella term for some neo-pagan traditions that include the practice of magic. These traditions began in the mid-20th century, and many were influenced by the witch-cult hypothesis; a now-rejected theory that persecuted witches in Europe had actually been followers of a surviving pagan religion. The largest and most influential of these movements was Wicca. Some other groups and movements describe themselves as "Traditional Witchcraft" to distinguish themselves from Wicca.
Feminism is one theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes, even though many feminist movements and ideologies differ on exactly which claims and strategies are vital and justifiable to achieve equality.
A Community of Witches: Contemporary Neo-Paganism and Witchcraft in the United States is a sociological study of the Wiccan and wider Pagan community in the Northeastern United States. It was written by American sociologist Helen A. Berger of the West Chester University of Pennsylvania and first published in 1999 by the University of South Carolina Press. It was released as a part of a series of academic books entitled Studies in Comparative Religion, edited by Frederick M. Denny, a religious studies scholar at the University of Chicago.
Enchanted Feminism: The Reclaiming Witches of San Francisco is an anthropological study of the Reclaiming Wiccan community of San Francisco. It was written by the Scandinavian theologian Jone Salomonsen of the California State University, Northridge and first published in 2002 by the Routledge.
Never Again the Burning Times: Paganism Revisited is an anthropological study of the Wiccan and wider Pagan community in the United States. It was written by the American anthropologist Loretta Orion (1944-2022) and published by Waveland Press in 1995.
Living Witchcraft: A Contemporary American Coven is a sociological study of an American coven of Wiccans who operated in Atlanta, Georgia, US, during the early 1990s. It was co-written by the sociologist Allen Scarboro, psychologist Nancy Campbell and literary critic Shirley Stave and first published by Praeger in 1994. Although largely sociological, the study was interdisciplinary, and included both insider and outsider perspectives into the coven; Stave was an initiate and a practicing Wiccan while Scarboro and Campbell remained non-initiates throughout the course of their research.
The women's liberation movement in North America was part of the feminist movement in the late 1960s and through the 1980s. Derived from the civil rights movement, student movement and anti-war movements, the Women's Liberation Movement took rhetoric from the civil rights idea of liberating victims of discrimination from oppression. They were not interested in reforming existing social structures, but instead were focused on changing the perceptions of women's place in society and the family and women's autonomy. Rejecting hierarchical structure, most groups which formed operated as collectives where all women could participate equally. Typically, groups associated with the Women's Liberation Movement held consciousness-raising meetings where women could voice their concerns and experiences, learning to politicize their issues. To members of the WLM rejecting sexism was the most important objective in eliminating women's status as second-class citizens.
Modern paganviews on LGBTQ people vary considerably among different paths, sects, and belief systems. There are some popular neopagan traditions which have beliefs often in conflict with the LGBT community, and there are also traditions accepting of, created by, or led by LGBT individuals. The majority of conflicts concern heteronormativity and cisnormativity.
1 2 Bradley, Patricia (2003). Mass Media and the Shaping of American Feminism, 1963-1975. University Press of Mississippi. pp.63–64. ISBN9781578066131.
↑ Morgan, Robin, ed. (1970). Sisterhood is powerful: an anthology of writings from the women's liberation movement. New York: Random House. ISBN978-0-3944-5240-1.
Doyle White, Ethan (2016). Wicca: History, Belief, and Community in Modern Pagan Witchcraft. Brighton, Chicago, and Toronto: Sussex Academic Press. ISBN978-1-84519-754-4.
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