witchcraft, crazy witchcraft

[kleenexwoman]

I used to think I was weird because I wanted to be a witch when I was thirteen. Recently, people have told me that no, most girls go through this phase at some point in their adolescence. (I could ramble about the psychology behind this, but I think that it should be pretty obvious if you are a girl or know girls or have read books about them.)
Do all girls think this makes them weird? Why isn't this some sort of girly bonding thing?

"Hey, Heather, were you into witchcraft too when you were, like, in middle school?"
"Oh my gawd, I totally was! I went around, like, blighting crops and cursing cows to not give milk!"
"I put the pox on people! Oh, man, we were such dorks!"

Comments

[chiosayshi.livejournal.com]

okay 7th grade- kristen ventura and i had our own secret witch names and symbols to write the names. i was rose jasmine. she was mystical raindrop. we made potions and casted a love spell. we also had numerous seances and promised to visit each other if one of us died before the other.

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

Awww, you had a little coven! That's pretty cool. I didn't have anyone to be witchy with. I tried to cast weather spells on the soccer field so that gym would be cancelled, and thought that I had succeeded when it started to sprinkle when it was already a cloudy day.

[josephwaldman.livejournal.com]

I recall writing a bunch of stuff in runic when I was in eighth grade. Real runic, too, not just the fake Zep-runes that everyone practicies with. Oddly enough this phase coincided with my becoming an atheist or at least a strong agnostic, so I don't know what that means.

[anivad.livejournal.com]

With Harry Potter around, I think it's now a phase for both girls and boys.

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

I think it's more specifically that Harry Potter-obsessed kids just want to go to Hogwarts. I knew a few boys who thought they were warlocks and went around trying to "feel leylines" and cast Magic Missile on the jocks, but this was before Harry Potter. (They were really into Magic: The Gathering.)

[drworm.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but this was a thing even when I was 11. It's how Silver Ravenwolf makes a living.

I blame The Craft for the upsurge of it in the 90s, though.

[dmilanflash.livejournal.com]

Are you sure you heard these people right when they said most girls go through a witch phase? because i meet a lot of girls in a similar pahse...

PEACEMAKER

Don't Knock It ...

[fiat-knox.livejournal.com]

Guys go through that phase, too. Only, they tend to end up growing into big, middle aged balding men in funny aprons standing in big stone temples with chequerboard tiled floors with one leg of their their trousers rolled up, and calling the Chirf Superintendent "Master".

Re: Don't Knock It ...

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

That sounds sort of fun. Do they get to whack blindfolded pledges with paddles?

Re: Don't Knock It ...

[fiat-knox.livejournal.com]

Oh, I suspect most of them get their sadistic jollies out of arresting people ... :)

[josephwaldman.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's totally a silly teenage thing. Gals probably get into it a little more a little more than guys (maybe because hormones, menstruation, etc. make them a tad more irrational), but, y'know, everyone's searching for some sort of meaning at that point in their life (be it in witchcraft, heavy metal, or masturbation).

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

I think girls get into it because witchcraft is basically a sneaky, sexy, subtle, girly way of getting power, and they aren't encouraged to play sports or take up the guitar the way boys are.

[josephwaldman.livejournal.com]

Well, I definitely wasn't into sports. (I played floor hockey in elementary school and was pretty good at it, but I flunked outta Little League when I was nine, and was completely worthless at every kind of athletics except tennis, badminton, biking, and masturbation when I was a teenager.) I suppose I tried to make my own kind of electric magic out of my musical interests (played keyboards as well as guitar, and did some really interesting amateur multitracking in a little studio I had set up in the basement with two tape recorders and some echo arrangements). It gave me something to do so I didn't go insane from a total lack of female companionship.

[benprime.livejournal.com]

doesn't everyone _want_ to be weird at some point? Is that the age where we start carving out our own individuality, based on difference?

[josephwaldman.livejournal.com]

Or at least when we start to say: "I wanna be different, just like everyone else!"

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

It certainly is, which I think is quite a lot of the pansexual attraction to magic--it's a secret that nobody else has, a way to get an edge up on the social competition. (If only it really worked...but then we'd have magical arms races in 8th grade.)

[josephwaldman.livejournal.com]

THE DICTATORS!!!

You got the album, my dear? That's excellent.

JW, who sometimes wishes he were black

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

I...downloaded it! And then somehow lost it! And then downloaded it again! And I'm probably going to keep doing that until I open up the purse strings enough to go to an actual record store and settle the matter once and for all! :D

[josephwaldman.livejournal.com]

A word of advice, call around to make sure wherever you're going actually as a copy. I've very rarely seen any Dictators albums in stock and have always had to get 'em special ordered (or else order 'em from the band itself in New York, or buy 'em at their shows).

"New York New York/DFFD", which they released in 2001, is also pretty good if you find a copy. It came out just a few weeks after 9/11, and I tell you, it kept my head screwed on straight for that horrible autumn.

[butterduck.livejournal.com]

I went through the exact same thing. I think maybe it was Harry Potter's fault; I did a lot of role-playing and writing based on that series.

[butterduck.livejournal.com]

Reading some of the comments above, I see the point about younger kids, but Harry Potter was hardly the influence on kids when the first and second books came out as the media monster it has become today. And I did stuff like looking for witches and fairies in the woods behind my house and trying to do magic and call up Aslan and other weird stuff... I don't think it's now become "popular"; I think that magic is a really interesting idea and like many, I used my imagination to escape reality. Reading a lot just makes those other influences come out more.

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

Pretty much, that...I think the Harry Potter series became so popular because it catered to kids' secret wishes that way.