[HPforGrownups] Re: Hi everyone -- banning the books, Harry and the Dursleys

[Janette]

No: HPFGUIDX 159444

On 10/10/06, Jordan Abel <random832 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> What I don't understand is this. Wouldn't it have been better for them
> (that is, Wiccans in general) to simply stop co-opting the term
> "witch" (and thus avoid being stereotyped as "witches") rather than
> trying to fight a much older meaning of the word?


montims:
and yet they (we - as a wiccan I must declare an interest) are using a word
and a meaning that existed centuries before the stereotype, which really
developed to placate James VI and I and the Catholic Church.  A witch is a
Wise One, a lover and observer of nature, who uses natural energies to
achieve a change, hence magic.

The evil hag caricature is as representative of witches as Nazi propaganda
images were representative of Jews, and for the same reason.  JKR's witches
are, in fact, more similar to the everyday witches I know than most other
literary depictions.  (And I would add that a 15 year old would not be
considered to be Wiccan by others, however self-initiated she is - people
are not accepted for study in the RW until they are adult...)


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