Facing Reality: an Aspect of the Witch Figure

I tend to identify more as Nanny Ogg (always get the young man's name & address), but there's also a Granny Weatherwax in me itching to get out. This has been prompted by my recent thinking about clerical (& other) sexual (& other) abuse. Granny Weatherwax is always totally sure of where she is - if anyone's lost it's the rest of the world - & emphasises the importance of knowing what's real, what's not, & what's the difference. For this reason she is a much more solitary figure than Nanny Ogg - as am I - because people like not to face reality: this is a basic human coping strategy.

I feel this is the single linking factor between all the cases of abuse I have ever heard of: people refused to face reality, which is why they continued as they did. A major event of my own journey into witchcraft - which I've posted about before - was as a young adult I experienced emotional abuse, & my mother didn't believe me. She only came to believe it was happening on the say-so of a family friend. The practice in holding firm to what I knew to be true despite all the pressure from my nearest & dearest was invaluable in preparing me to be a witch.  Apart from anything else, it's not reasonable systematically to disbelieve your own son & expect not to destroy the relationship.

Because this is the prevalent expectation in society: parents ought to be able to bring up their children without f*cking them up. Schools ought to be safe places. Teachers should be pillars of society. Babysitters should be reliable. Clergy also ought to be eminently respectable men of God.

The problem arises when people insist on believing all these things when they are not so. One of the reasons people don't like witches is that we are the -as it were - anti to everything in society. We are an anti-religion. We are figures of hatred & evil personified.

The reality is that abuse of children is most often by someone known to them, even their parents. The reality is we are all most likely to be abused, even killed, by our nearest & dearest over a stranger.

Yet society persists in painting some people as the goodies & others as the baddies. The reason for the hatred of witches is because the witch figure is the figure onto which all of society's ills are projected: we are a mirror for everything they don't like about themselves. We are the ones who are supposed to go around abusing people & eating babies. Eeeuuuuuurrch!

What we can do is keep ourselves grounded in reality, so that we can hold up the mirror when something is wrong. The priest in Scotland who has been dismissed fo whistle-blowing in the media (after *years* of trying to get the hierarchy to listen to him) is far closer to being one of us then he probably realises.

The other risk is this: because people like things clear-cut they then move on to another unreal model of good/evil which still ignores reality. There is a tendency to see a Catholic priest & think 'kiddy fiddler' - I would guess that probably Catholic priests are the most scrutinised profession & also the profession most frightened to be left alone with children. Because people don't look at objective criteria they fix on a target for suspicion, which may mean overlooking a real abuser.

The other thing about reality is that it involves being fantastically brave. Child abusers can spend years building up respectable reputations for themselves, & raising an alert to a suspicion means going against the grain. I do not think it is possible ever completely to prevent all abuse, but all the cases I've read about have in common that someone knew. Some more clergy records from California have been released - of religious priests - & once again their superiors knew.

If a major witch thing is knowing, then it also behoves us to do something when we know something. That's what being a witch is all about.

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