Two photos of Starr Maddox that appeared in the Mobile Register on 8 September 1970. The caption run in the paper reads: “BEWITCHING BUNNY—Starr Maddox, 23, a member of a Miami cult known as Wicca, poses (top photo) in her witching outfit with black candles and skull. As a Playboy Club bunny (bottom photo) she displays her 36-24-36½ figure and a portrait of herself done by a warlock.”
28 October 2021
We all know the stereotypical image of a witch, an old woman with a wart on her nose, dressed in black with a conical hat, and riding on a broomstick—think Margaret Hamilton from the Wizard of Oz. But that image is very much a modern creation. Witch, meaning a practitioner of magic, can be traced to the Old English wicca (masculine) and wicce (feminine). Etymologist Anatoly Liberman goes further and traces it to an unattested, proto-Germanic root, *wit-ja, which is related to wise and wisdom. While this extended etymology is plausible, going beyond the Old English record is speculative.
We can see the Old English word in the law code of King Alfred, which dates to c.890:
Ða fæmnan þe gewuniað onfon gealdorcræftigan & scinlæcan & wiccan, ne læt þu ða libban.
(Regarding women who are accustomed to harboring magicians & wizards & witches, do not let them live.)
Liberman cites this as an example of the masculine form, but both wiccan and scinlæcan here can be either masculine or feminine—the accusative plural ending -an is the same for both; galdorcræftigan, however, is masculine. My conclusion is that the gender here is ambiguous and immaterial to the content. The practitioner of magic is to be condemned regardless of their gender. And indeed in early use, witch referred to men as well as women.
We do, however, get a reference to a female witch in one of Ælfric of Eynsham’s sermons from c.1000. Here he is referring to the Witch of Endor (1 Samuel 28:3–25):
Nu segð se wyrdwritere þæt seo wicce sceolde aræran þa of deaþe þone Drihtnes witegan Samuhel gehaten.
(Now the chroniclers [literally “fate-writers”] say that the witch shall call to raise Samuel, the prophet of the Lord, from death.)
In the Middle English period the final consonant became palatized and the final vowel disappeared (i.e., through apocope), and /wɪk-/ became /wɪtʃ/.
Also, in the fifteenth century witch starts becoming exclusively associated with women, and we also start to see use of the word to mean a disagreeable woman. In his poem The Order of Fools, written sometime before 1449, John Lydgate has this to say about one kind of fool, a man who marries an older woman for her money:
A lusty galaunt that weddit an old wicche,
For gret tresour, because his purs is bare;
An hungry huntere þIt handeth hym a bicche,
Nemel of mouth, for to mordre an hare;
Nyht riotours that wil no wareyn spare,
With-oute licence or ony lyberte,
Tyl sodeyn perel brynge hem in þe snare,
A ppreperatyf that they shal neuer the.(A lusty gallant that weds an old witch
For great treasure because his purse is bare;
A hungry hunter that hands him a bitch,
Quick to bite in order to kill a hare;
Night rioters that will no warren spare,
Without license or any liberty,
Till sudden peril brings them into the snare,
A preparation so that they should never thrive.)
In the medieval period, witches were without question evil and to be condemned. The distinction between good (white) and bad (black) witchcraft starts being made in the seventeenth century, although that is complicated in that all witchcraft, even that used for beneficial purposes, was thought to come from demonic and evil sources.
The present-day religion known as Wicca is a modern creation, not appearing until the latter half of the twentieth century. Its ceremonies and practices are also all modern inventions, despite claims by adherents that the religion is based on ancient, pre-Christian practices. In fact, we know very little detail about medieval or pre-medieval practice of witchcraft. Medieval writing about witchcraft, especially from the early medieval period, is primarily concerned with condemning, and not in detailing its practices, which would be considered sinful in and of itself.
The earliest reference to modern Wicca that I can find is from the Ottawa Citizen of 25 February 1964, which as an article on an English Wiccan, Sybil Leek:
Centuries ago “wicca”—craft of the wise, or witchcraft, was punishable by burning at the stake, and up to 12 years ago witches could be hanged for some offences and imprisoned for less serious crimes. When the English witch laws were repealed, Sybil Leek came into the open and discussed her religion and wrote books describing her life in the forest and her beliefs as a witch.
Note, the etymology given by Ms. Leek is a bit off. In Old English, wicca means witch, not witchcraft, and while the word’s root can be plausibly linked to the concepts of “wise” or “wisdom,” such a link is speculative.
And we have this Associated Press piece about a Wiccan Playboy Club bunny that ran on 8 September 1970 that illustrates both the spirit of the era and the general public’s reaction to Wicca, a reaction where misogyny has turned into sexism:
Starr Maddox is a beautiful Playboy Club bunny who’s on the verge of becoming a first class witch.
A stunning brunette with waist length tresses and spell-binding green eyes, 23-year-old Starr is a member of a Miami cult that practices a brand of witchcraft known as “Wicca”
“Witchcraft is really misunderstood,” said Starr. “Ours isn’t a Satanic religion. We don’t worship Satan...we’re interested in nature and good deeds and things like that.”
Sources:
Ælfric. “29. Macarius and the Magicians, Saul and the Witch of Endor.” Homilies of Ælfric: A Supplementary Collection, vol. 2 of 2. John C. Pope, ed. Early English Text Society 260. London: Oxford UP, 1968, 792.
Associated Press. “Miami Playboy Club Bunny Proves Bewitching in More than One Way.” Mobile Register (Alabama), 8 September 1970, 3-C. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Dunn, Sheila (Southam News Service). “Witchcraft Is Not Black Magic England’s No. 1 Witch Explains.” Ottawa Citizen (Ontario), 25 February 1964, 2. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
Liberman, Anatoly. An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota Press, 2008, xlvi, 215–24, s.v. witch.
Liebermann, Felix. Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, vol. 1 of 3. Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1903, Alfred § 29, 38.
Lydgate, John. “The Order of Fools.” The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, vol. 2 of 2. Henry MacCracken and Merriam Sherwood, eds. Early English Text Society OS 192. London: Oxford UP, 1934, lines 113–20, 453. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud Misc. 683, fols. 56–60.
Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. wicch(e, n.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2021, s.v. witch, n., black witch, n., Wiccan, n. and adj., witch, v.1.; March 2015, modified September 2021, s.v. white witch, n.
Image credit: Unknown photographer, 1970. Associated Press. Fair use of a low-resolution image to illustrate the topic under discussion.