Don’t Fear the Coven
I have a confession to make. Although I’m now a proud Dubber myself, for a long time before applying to the house, I had been intimidated by the Dub. There was nothing scary about the individuals that I met– they were all kind, down-to-Earth, generous, and fun. But still, there was something inexplicably scary about walking into the Dub for an event or discussion. It felt like– even if I would never see them– there were spell books hidden under the beds, wands in the silverware drawer, cloaks in the closets, and strange, forgotten concoctions brewing in the back of the refrigerator. It felt, in essence, that I’d just walked into the belly of a coven.
For those of you who were never forced to go on a school field trip to Salem and learn about witches, here’s the brief, (very) simplified lowdown for you. Witch hysteria began in the United States when Puritan people began freaking out in the late 1600s because of religious intolerance. In just one month, 20 women were executed (and one dog), and over two hundred people were imprisoned based on hearsay and false accounts that they were practicing witchcraft. Thus began a long period of hysteria, in which Pagan witches were intensely sought-out and condemned.
But the Salem Witch Trials are actually just a small point in the history and experiences of witches. Despite many of us only thinking about witches when October first hits and we don’t have any other ideas for Halloween costumes, witchcraft is, in fact, a religion that many people practice regularly year-round. There is also sometimes the misconstrued belief that being a witch means you’ve been Doin’ it With the Devil. Worshipping the devil is Satanism, though, not witchcraft. Witchcraft itself is a religion with many different sects within: Gardnerian Wicca, Feminist Dianic witchcraft, hedge witches, and Faerie witchcraft are a few to name, according to the article Witchcraft in Local and Global Perspectives. Wicca, one of those sects, came into existence as a rebirth of ancient Pagan beliefs. Wicca is multifaceted and subjective; people who are Wiccan may believe in monotheism, polytheism, animism, atheism, or a number of other things. It is mostly practiced by people who identify as women (approximately 65 percent, according to Christian Smith’s book Religion: What It Is, How it Works, and Why it Matters), and is characterized by a strong connection to the natural world, paranormal beliefs, magic, etc.
So witchcraft is alive and well. People actively practice and identify as witches. But witches have also been embraced by a wider, non-practicing demographic. When I asked one of my housemates why she loves witches as a symbol for the Dub, she said “because they were the original feminists.” And there you have it. In the era of Twitches,American Horror Story: Coven, and Twitches Too, witches have become romanticized feminist icons– they are womxn who do not need to be in a heterosexual relationship or validated by men; they band together with other womxn instead. They have power. They have intelligence. They have the ability to take vengeance on those who have wronged them, and protect the ones that they love. They have nature on their side. They are unstoppable, badass, takes-crap-from-nobody forces to be reckoned with.
So while we Dubbers may not be practicing witches, and you won’t find us dancing in white nightgowns around a fire, nor casting hexes on campus cuties that ghost us (or do we do this…? You’ll never know), we nonetheless embrace witchcraft for its feminist symbolism. We want to foster a close-knit intersectional community of campus womxn who support one another, raise one another up, and are badass takes-crap-from-nobody forces to be reckoned with.
That’s not so bad, right? That’s not so scary? I’ve quickly come to learn that no place is better than in the belly of a coven. It’s warm and inviting and empowering. I’d urge you all to come hang out in the belly–– we Dubbers will be waiting for you, without cloaks or crooked noses or pointy hats, to welcome you.