Storm in a Cauldron
22nd March 2022
There are now two main ways of reading the phenomenon of early modern witchcraft. One is the dogged academic research of scholars like Peter Maxwell-Stuart, Ronald Hutton and Keith Thomas. The other is an attempt to bend the reality of history to fit a modish exploration of feminine identity and the tyranny of the patriarchy down the ages. I Am Witch: Tales from the Roundhouse, recently staged in Lancaster, falls firmly into the second category.
The exhibition sets out its stall early on. It refers to “The Burning Times”, the title of a 1990 Canadian documentary which presented an unapologetically feminist reading of witchcraft in the early modern period and certainly one of the most laughably poor and ahistorical films of its generation. It goes on to state its purpose as explaining “how epigenetically inherited trauma from those times continues to affect us today, and how creativity, ceremony and sisterhood offer all of us a pathway to healing.”
Every ‘modern witch’ (and believer in astrology) I’ve ever met was a Democrat (or to the left thereof).