Show notes
I'm really excited today for this interview with Pam Grossman, who is the author of the book Waking the Witch: Reflections on Women, Magic, and Power. She's also the host of The Witch Wave Podcast - which if you are not familiar with, go over right now and check it out. You will not be disappointed.
Her writing has appeared in places like the New York Times, time.com, and HuffPost. Pretty much everywhere you can imagine. So I am so excited for this interview with Pam Grossman. Pam, thank you so much for being here with us today.
Pam Grossman: Thank you so much for having me. It's so nice to be here.
Ashley: As many of you listening know, I actually own a new age shop called Mimosa Books and Gifts in Madison, Wisconsin. We're always looking for great new books to carry in our store. Not long ago, when I came across Waking the Witch and read the description, I immediately fell in love. I really wanted to have this book on the shelves for our customers. Lo and behold, when I was checking my calendar for podcast guests, guess who was here... none other but Pam. It was divine timing. I'm thrilled to carry your book in the shop. The staff were drooling over it when we got it!
Could you tell us a little bit about what this book is all about? Why did you write it? What is the story behind it?
Disclosure: The link here is an affiliate link, meaning I may earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. Yay!
Pam: Absolutely! Well, first of all, thank you so much for carrying it in your shop. I am such a proponent of small businesses and indie shops. So, of course, order the book wherever you can get it, but if you can go to a shop like that one, please do.
Waking the Witch has the subtitle 'Reflections on Women, Magic, and Power.' I chose those words with a lot of intention because, to me, the archetype of the witch is one that is inherently related to our feelings about feminine power. I should clarify - people of all genders can be witches, and this book is for people of all genders. However it really does trace the history of how witches and women became interlinked.
For most of human history, witches were associated with evil and malevolence. Starting around the 14th and 15th centuries, they were associated with the devil himself. And yet, today we have a much more positive association of witches with women and with people of all genders.
I really wanted to celebrate the positive aspects of witches, which I think need to be celebrated more.
It's really exciting to see that witches are more popular than ever now and are being celebrated. I also wanted to really trace the history of them and explore the ways in which we, by which I mean society, depicts witches. Often, this is a reflection of how that given society or those given people feel about female power.
Spoiler alert - now that feminism is growing (and we still have a long way to go), people have a more positive association with complex, dynamic, powerful women. And guess what? Our witches are more positive now. That's kind of the thesis statement of the book. But it really is fun and it touches on the history and pop culture and some of my own story as to how I started identifying as a witch.
My book is a real amalgamation of a lot of things, but all surrounding that idea of power, femininity, and magic.
Ashley: I love this because it doesn't just focus on one thing. I think so many of the books in this area are so focused on just ritual, or just magic, or just that this or that. The thing is that this is so deeply ingrained into all parts of our culture. You can't separate magic or ritual or art or creativity out from any of the other things. They all blend together and the lines kind of blur.
I love that you've just looked at this concept, an archetype of this energy and you're taking it to a place where it can be really profoundly thought about and talked about in a way that I think is pretty illuminating. It's very exciting to dive into history, pop culture, all those different things at once, and be able to get a broader and deeper understanding of what the concept of a witch really is.
What was your personal journey that led you to realize that this work needed to be put out there?
Pam: Thank you. That's such a lovely thing to say. Honestly, the points you just brought up are the reasons that I felt compelled to write the book. As somebody who not only identifies as a witch but who's studied witches, specifically the image of the witch and fine art - that's an area of my specialty. But as someone who's very interested in gender and archetypes overall, I was hungry for a book that kind of wove everything together.
As you said, there are so many wonderful books about history. There are so many wonderful books about the witchhunts or Salem, or about Wicca. There are all of these different fragments. Of course there are also lots of books about the practice and spell books and how-to books, which this book is not.
I'm someone who not only identifies as a witch for spiritual reasons but also for political reasons. I also happen to love witches in pop culture. I have no problem with Sabrina and Hermione and I think even witches in horror movies are valuable and have something to teach us. As I said, I love witches and fine art and I love artists who identify as witches. So all of that, to me, feeds into our notion of what a witch.
Our notion of witches evolves over time - it really depends on the context.
Someone like you or myself might talk about witches in a literal sense now, where people who-- I mean, I don't want to put words in your mouth -
Ashley: Please do. [laughs]
Pam: - so, we practice, we engage in magic, we have a real, literal spiritual engagement with that identity. But then there are a lot of people who are just, really into the movie, The Craft, and I think that has value too. I really do, because there are a lot of interesting lessons that The Craft has to teach us about, such as our fear of young women who are coming into their own sexuality and power. So yes, I really just wanted to write the book that I wish existed, and it didn't exist. I had the -- frankly pretty difficult, and certainly challenging -- task of having to write it myself, but it was also such a gift to get to do.
Ashley: Why do you think it is that our societal and cultural perspectives have been changing about the view of the witch?
Why is it that we suddenly see the witch as this more positive archetypal image when historically, we know that it was not seen in a positive light? It was often something that people were fearful of. Does that have to do-- or has it been influenced by the rise in feminism? Because obviously, as we are the same, the lines between these things are blurred. You can't say it's just this one thing or that one thing. But where do you think this comes from? This shift into this more positive viewpoint?
Pam: I can tell you exactly where it comes from. Because a lot of that material is covered in the book. And really, we're looking at the 19th century. A few different factors are happening during this time. I should say, we're focusing on primarily Europe and the US, although certainly, witches exist, pan-culturally and pan-historically.
Essentially, in the 19th century, you had a few things going on that really influenced the perception of witches...
You have scholars who were starting to re-examine a lot of the texts from the witchhunts. They were looking at both the witch-hunting manuals, as well as a lot of the confessions of the people who were accused of being witches. Now we know they most likely were not witches. It was all essentially really awful propaganda that was birthed out of misogyny and xenophobia. I go into this in more detail in the book. That's one piece of it.
A big piece of it, too, is the burgeoning feminist movement. Without going too much into the details, we already had writers in Europe who were starting to do this work. However it got popularized in America, thanks to a woman named Matilda Joslyn Gage, who was a suffragist and an abolitionist.
Matilda Gage wrote a book called Woman, Church, and State, where she theorized that witches were in fact, the most brilliant women of their age. They were only called witches by the church because the church deemed them a threat.
Other people had this theory before her, but she popularized it in the US, specifically via her son in law, L. Frank Baum, who wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. This gave us the notion of good witches and bad witches.
Now I'm really simplifying this. There are a lot of other players in the mix, but that's really a big one. Another big one is a scholar later on in the early 20th century named Margaret Murray. She was in England, and decided that all of the confessions of the witches should be taken at face value. Now we know this is not very good scholarship.
She put forth this theory that there was actually centuries and centuries of a lineage of what she called a Witch Cult. These people who were accused during the witch hunts were actually witches. This was debunked for the most part, but not before she started influencing lots and lots of people, including someone named Gerald Gardner. He went on to start the religion of Wicca.
There are real lines and threads that we can follow, which I try to do in the book, that show so much of our notions of witches -even today for people like me who identify as witches - is this mix of scholarship. And some of its not great scholarship, but some of it is romantic notions of women and looking sympathetically at people who absolutely were oppressed by the patriarchy and really using the witch as a symbol for this usually female rebel, who now we have a lot of sympathy for, as we want more powerful, brilliant women.
We didn't really value powerful, brilliant women that much before the 19th century.
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