Feminists Reclaim the Crone

I enjoyed reading Rountree's academic essay on feminist witchcraft and regaining the "agency" of the crone. On the whole, I found the article very accessible because it enumerated on concepts that I heard about before in other classes. My current class “Sociology of the Body” often focuses on the ways that our bodies are not just anatomical structures but also cultural ones: and that women’s bodies are often labeled and oppressed by patriarchal structures. Also, an assignment in last semester’s “King Arthur” class acquainted me with the concept of the goddess and the divine feminine. For me, Rountree’s thesis was a clear way to bring together these concepts I had heard about but was not totally understanding of. After reading “The New Witch of the West” I feel that I am more educated on the current women’s movement’s treatment of the terms “witch” and “goddess.” I also understand their attempt to reclaim these words and their biased definitions from patriarchal agencies. These feminist witches are showing solidarity for those persecuted women who were labeled witches in the past. They were women who did not fit into the gender roles prescribed by a patriarchal society, and who ostracized and demonized for their independent thoughts. By calling themselves “witches” these new feminists are not casting spells and stirring cauldrons, but are showing a solidarity for their female predecessors while simultaneously expressing their disdain for the rigid norms set by a male-dominated society.

Rountree asserts that Western culture is intent on defining life through dichotomies, and that the archetypes of the witch and the goddess are examples of this. She states that the pre-Christian figure of the Goddess was a multi-faceted figure who was both good and beautiful and chaotic and dangerous. Furthermore, Rountree says that, in the Christian world, the negative aspects of the Goddess were separated out and made into their own purely wicked archetype: the witch. Therefore the goddess was left as pure and her negative traits were cast out so that they could be more clearly punished by society. The “goddess” of pre-Christian religion, as well as feminist witches, want to see the world as holistic, where everything is related and things can be multi-faceted instead of black and white. Therefore, their attempt to regain control of the word “witch” comes with the simultaneous quest to reunite the “crone” with the “goddess,” creating the whole that once existed in one figure. This is what Rountree is expressing when she says that modern feminists believe that a contemporary woman can be both witch and goddess.

The article which we read was plainly written through a feminist lens, though it raises many good points about the nature of our society and the consequences of domination by one sex. Rountree’s writing showed me the pervasiveness of patriarchy in the Western world, and how it shades all aspects of our society from medicine to religion. I had never before considered that witches were a threat to the male-dominated medicine field because they offered alternative less scientific treatments. It suddenly made sense that these women were to be so harshly persecuted: they were standing in the way of profit! Her article also made me reexamine the place of the female in the Christian religion. It is a sad fact that Christianity views God largely as male, and that most important characters in the Bible are masculine. The Church has been one of the main avenues for the persecution of women and for their relegation to subservient roles. This made me think back to a movie called “The Mists of Avalon” that I saw in my King Arthur class. The women in the film were ones that our culture would label as sorceresses or witches: they were more powerful than the males are worshipped a feminine goddess. The movie was interesting because it showed the gender and religious struggles that resulted when the Christian and “pagan” ways met. The result was the almost complete eradication of the Goddess figure. Women who continued to adhere to these “pagan” beliefs were often cast out from society or killed.

The sad truth is, that like many things in the world, the titles of witch and goddess, and the persecution of women who fall under these delineations, is all about power. The modern feminist is trying to reclaim power, to take back agency, by redefining these masculine marked words. In contrast, patriarchal society was trying to secure their power in creating these terms and splitting the goddess and the crone into two distinct roles. I think it would be better if we as a society could think of things more holistically. Perhaps then we would not be so apt to persecute those who fall outside of our self-creating lines of “good” and “evil.”