THE MAP > MUSE : THE WITCH
Dionysian & Apollonian
VERSE TWO: THE WITCH
The Witch.
A woman of great power and magic.
She can heal and destroy.
She is Dionysian and vital.
An outsider.
Feared, misunderstood and denounced for her power by the patriarchy.
Disempowering the Witch
The Kid feared the Witch. The Witch.
Taught to be Unnerved and repulsed by the Witch.
The Wicked Witch of the West terrified me. A woman that can only be killed by the purity of water.
Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead.
The Wicked Witch Is Dead.
The people, the me and you sing.
Good girls are Snow White. Loved by their communities and subservient to it. Snow White serves the littlest of men with enthusiasm and joy.
Snow White is not punk Patti singing Gloria or reciting Arthur Rimbaud.
Snow White serves, she is not free
Snow White yields to the patriarchy
Snow White is weak, Snow White is bleak
Safe from the violence of men because
Snow White yields to the patriarchy
As a boy curled up at night, I saw Witch shadows on the wall of my room. Heard her cackled laughter in my dreams.
Witch energy. Her spells and potions hurt the innocent and heroic. The Witch was the enemy of the community.
As a kid I was taken to see Clash of the Titans. Our hero Perseus needs the head of the Monster Medusa to save the maiden. She is a powerful Witch and if Perseus looks at Medusa, he will be turned to stone. He finds her in her lair. Using her reflection on his shield as a guide, Perseus pounces and beheads her.
He uses the head of Medusa to save the maiden, asserting male authority over the dynamic Dionysian female energy. The Witch is dead.
The Wicked Witch is dead.
As a young boy I remember feeling uneasy and frightened by her. She was monstrous but she was alone in her home, with only the bodies of men who had tried to kill her.
It troubled me.
Why did she deserve this fate?
The Monster Witch.
Medusa was disempowered by patriarchal Gods because of her beauty and individuality.
Raped by Poseidon and then blamed for it, the Gods of the patriarchy took her beauty away and deformed her. Then they shunned and tyrannised her.
The Monster Witch. Raped, persecuted, and then killed by a champion of men.
The Witch is Dionysian. The Sister to The Punk.
The individual exploring their own freedom and power.
Dionysian female energy is feared. Like Medusa, women resonating this powerful force are demonised and abused. For millennia’s the Witch has been exiled, butchered, and humiliated for holding this powerful form of Dionysian energy.
Witchcraft. Scientists are looking for a mole on the body of a witch, in order to pinch it and study the reaction. Illustration by E. Van Hoove. 1888
The Witch Hunt is the shadow of Witchcraft.
The symbol of the Witch is claimed by communities and used as a tool to disempower women and their unique abilities. The witch hunt condemns those who believe in the power of magic and spell.
Men punish women who can utilise Witch energy.
Traditionally those persecuted were elderly, widowed, spinsters or those seen as mad. Bag ladies of the village, town, cities.
In What Happened, Miss Simone, her old musical partner sees Nina pushing a trolly of plastic bags through the streets of a Parisian quarter. The High Priestess of Soul, overlooked, ignored because her passion and belief was unpalatable to the patriarchy. Now the madwoman of Paris. An invisible victim. Nina Simone!
Down centuries witch hunts have suppressed the freedoms of women.
From Salem to the great European witch hunts of the middle ages, women have been brutalised. Even today this barbaric activity is being used to discredit and dehumanise women. Dalit women of India disempowered by the state, oppressed by men, their lives as well as property taken by patriarchal greed.
Torture and burnings still occurring today.
Perseus killing Medusa again and again.
But we can claim the power of the Witch.
“Blue Fox” (1972-74), by Vali Myers, the Australian dancer and artist who built a studio and wildlife sanctuary in Italy in the 1960s, adopting the moniker “Witch of Positano.”Credit...The Vali Myers Art Gallery Trust
Top image: Titled “Ritual,” this 2019 work by photographer Psyché Ophiuchus shows a ceremonial circle taking place in Fairy Glen on the Isle of Skye at dusk.
Vic Oh, XV, France/Mexico 2019. A highly symbolically decorated witch by Oh is based on the Devil Tarot card. The pineal gland, represented by the pine cone, tops her scepter, expressing her connection to divinity. She wears the sacred ceremonial jaguar mask, to suggest her great power.
Francisco de Goya y Lucientes - Witches' Sabbath (The Great He-Goat)
Faust's Vision - Luis Ricardo Filaro
Caravaggio - Medusa
Recognising the Witch.
I always feel great personal pride and empowerment in recognising the Witch.
The Stage Witch
The Italian actress Eleanora Duse is regarded by many as the first modern actor. In the 19th century she rose to prominence and toured the world, leaving audiences spell bound by her transformative work. The great Russian playwright Anton Chekhov couldn’t speak Italian, but when seeing her exclaimed:
'“I had the feeling that I understood every word.”
The great Austian writer Arthur Schnitzler on seeing her perform for the first time expressed:
“To be caught by Duse….suddenly to be confronted by Duse,
to see Duse for the first time-what that means is beyond any power of words to express.”
There is a story that is told by many of the great theatre practitioners called the Duse blush. She is playing a heroine on stage and is surprised by an intimate friend who enters the room. When she sees him, she blushes on cue! She used her gift to blush every night on stage at the same moment.
The Duse blush. A Witch. She had magical powers.
Back then everyone in the theatrical world said they were there. The saw the blush! Bit like every cool rock star saying they were at the Manchester Free trade hall in ‘76 to see the Pistols.
The Punk Witch
Patti sings
Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!
Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!
The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy!
The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand
and asshole holy!
Everything is holy! everybody's holy! everywhere is
holy! every day is in eternity! Everyman's an
angel!
The bum's as holy as the seraphim! the madman is
holy as you my soul are holy!
The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice is
holy the hearers are holy the ecstasy is holy!
Holy Peter holy Allen holy Solomon holy Lucien holy
Kerouac holy Huncke holy Burroughs holy Cassady
holy the unknown buggered and suffering
beggars holy the hideous human angels!
Holy my mother in the insane asylum! Holy the cocks
of the grandfathers of Kansas!
Holy the groaning saxophone! Holy the bop
apocalypse! Holy the jazz bands marijuana
hipsters peace & junk & drums!
Holy the solitudes of skyscrapers and pavements! Holy
the cafeterias filled with the millions! Holy the
mysterious rivers of tears under the streets!
Holy the lone juggernaut! Holy the vast lamb of the
middle class! Holy the crazy shepherds of rebellion
Who digs Los Angeles IS Los Angeles!
Holy New York Holy San Francisco Holy Peoria &
Seattle Holy Paris Holy Tangiers Holy Moscow
Holy Istanbul!
Holy time in eternity holy eternity in time holy the
clocks in space holy the fourth-dimension holy
the fifth International holy the Angel in Moloch!
Holy the sea holy the desert holy the railroad holy the
locomotive holy the visions holy the hallucinations
holy the miracles holy the eyeball holy the
abyss!
Holy forgiveness! mercy! charity! faith! Holy! Ours!
bodies! suffering! magnanimity!
Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent
kindness of the soul!
(Spell by Patti Smith)
Marie Laveau the Voodoo Queen. The Witch of New Orleans
Marie Laveau, New Orleans infamous Witch. Powerful. A great symbol of black power. Illiterate, yet by the end of her life, she was awed and feared by the elites and impoverished alike. It is said she healed thousands from deadly diseases with her medicinal and magical knowledge. A great Witch. She gave potions and performed spells to cure afflictions of the heart and soul.
She cursed wickedness and made some people disappear!
Ah Marie. What a Witch. She advised the politician, the judge and counselled the broken hearted.
She helped slaves escape oppression. Many claiming it was her potent spells and charms that led them to freedom. Powerful, beautiful, black, the Dionysian Witch energy radiated from every pore of her skin. Ah Marie!
The Punk Witch cries..
put down your cell phones put everything away, and feel your blood pulsing in you, feel your creative impulse, feel your own spirit, your heart, your mind. Feel the joy of being alive and free.
Patti the daughter of Punk and Witch.
I am not scared of Patti, I am bewitched by her and her witch kin.
Who are the Witches that touch you?
Can you meditate on them?
Summon their image?
Can you conjure up their smell?
Taste them?
Sometimes my senses connect to a Witch close to me.
A smell or a breath of something provocative and transforming. Sometimes what the Witch does is overwhelming, but I’ll sit with it and let it resonate in me. Transform me.
Recently I sat in a rehearsal room with a group of young actors. They were bound and tired because the scene they had been working on was difficult. I was dislocated from them and tense myself. They needed to find ease, playfulness. A student observing the rehearsal, out of the blue, for no apparent reason, released her Witch cackle. It was discordant and provocative and took the actors by surprise. Then others began to Witch cackle until there was a cacophony of Witches laughing in the room. It made no sense, but the laughter of the Witch cleared the tension of the room and the students were then able to produce beautiful work. Since that experience, they use the Witch cackle as a spell to clear the room of negativity and fear.
The sound they each made was provocative. It represented the Dionysian.
They embraced the power of the Witch. It blew me away!
Do you recognise your Witch?
Can you find your Witch cackle?
What has it been lost to?
Let us take back the power of the Witch from the Patriarchy.
Let us empower those potent symbols of Witchcraft.
How do we embrace and empower them?
The Medusa head was used as a magical force.
The Medusa head was used in temples, placed on shields and even on the doorways of homes because the power of her gaze would ward off evil and be a protection against attack from enemies. In her essay
Medusa and the Female Gaze, by Susan Bowers, the Monster Witch is
An electrifying force representing the dynamic power of the female gaze.
Can you harness the protective power of Medusa?
She represents the powerful Dionysian female energy within you. Could you create a self portrait as the Medusa? Enmesh your image with hers and use it as a symbol of power, magic and protection. Claim the Medusa back from those communities who have diminished and marginalised her. There are many that felt the trauma of her dismemberment. Groups of people all over the world performed rituals to re-member her. They made headless bodies and decapitated heads. From cloth, clay, any materials they could find. And in holy rituals they re-formed the Medusa.
The Dionysian Witch energy is beautiful and potent.
Its power must not be diminished by the patriarchy.
I do not deny the power of the Witch can still make me afraid.
I can feel afraid of the Witch energy.
Her power is something as a man I cannot viscerally feel.
Her rage at me makes me enraged because I am afraid.
This Dionysian female energy can daunt and disconcert me
But I see her presence in this fucked up world is imperative.
Her energy to heal, to create, to lead, to transform is essential to the community.
Medusa was made loathsome by the Goddess Athena for being raped in her temple. Female envy fuelled by an inner male patriarchy is responsible for this act. But not even the violence of the Gods can destroy the Dionysian Witch energy of the Medusa. In death her gaze petrifies. The moving snakes that replaced her hair represent intellect and fertility. Her aesthetic moves beyond the shallow patriarchal concept of what beauty is. She is not a Snow White ready to subserve and be raped of her authority. She has experienced abuse and transcended it. The Medusa has depth and rages at those patriarchal communities that want to suppress her female energy.
The Monster Witch is a rebirth from the control of the Gods. She is a bridge between the forces of life and death, as all great Witches are.
Medusa was deformed by the Gods of man, but she still is dazzling. She, like any Witch that has suffered humiliation and strife from their communities, must be unshackled, her potency recognised, her position restored.
POWER, LOVE, SUSTENANCE FOR THE WITCH
Could we perform rituals, created by ourselves to make space for our Witches to be reborn whole, vibrant and free?
How do we do this as a community, as well as individually?
Reflect on the experiences that degrade and humble the Witch.
Recognise the Witches in your life
Empower the Witch
Empower the Witch
Empower the Witch
WATCH
READ
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Self Protection & Vortex Healing
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Orbit - THE WITCH
This Creative Muse was curated and penned by Dylan Brown.
I have worked as an actor/director/teacher for over 30 years. I am captivated by the behaviour and profile of characters and how they form within the landscapes they inhabit.
Socials: I’m not into them much
Artwork for this edition created by Sarah Jeffs - TCE Dreaming Team, artist, illustrator, photographer, Brightfeather Studio web maker.
