Which Witch Is a Witch? | Language, Labels, and Lost Meaning

The word witch gets used casually now—
as metaphor, insult, or shorthand for fear.

But words don’t lose their history just because time passes.

In this episode, we explore how witches were transformed into villains, how language reshaped practice into accusation, and how stories—especially fairy tales—helped replace people with caricatures.

This isn’t about belief.
 It’s about how language shapes memory—and what gets lost when we stop questioning it.

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Transcript

Ask someone to picture a witch,
 and almost everyone sees the same thing.

A woman.
 Dark clothes.
 Something old.
 Something dangerous.
 Something to be feared.
 Sometimes even green skin.

That image didn’t appear by accident.
 It was shaped.
 Edited.
 Simplified.

And like most things that get simplified,
 something important was lost along the way.

So today, I want to ask a question that sounds playful—but isn’t.

Which witch is a witch?

Witches have always existed at the crossroads of fear and misunderstanding.

Not as creatures from storybooks,
 but as people who lived just far enough outside the lines to make others uncomfortable.

Some healed.
 Some observed the natural world.
 Some worked with symbols, cycles, intuition, discipline, and practice.

And some were simply different in ways that didn’t fit neatly into the rules of their time.

What we call witchcraft was never one thing.
 It wasn’t uniform.
 It wasn’t centralized.
 And it certainly wasn’t tidy.

But history prefers tidy stories.

So over time, complexity was stripped away.
 And what couldn’t be explained was reframed.

When the trials ended, witches didn’t disappear.
 They changed form.

In fairy tales, witches became villains.
 Safe ones.
 Contained ones.

The Wicked Witch of the West.
 The evil queen in Snow White.
Dark clothes. Sharp edges. Clear danger.

Stories where evil was obvious.
 Where fear had a face.

Those characters didn’t come from imagination alone.
 They were built on older fears—
 reshaped into something children could absorb
 and adults could dismiss.

But when a story is told often enough,
 it stops feeling like fiction.

And eventually, the caricature replaces the person.

The witch became less about practice
 and more about threat.

Less about knowledge
 and more about control.

And once that image settled in,
 it didn’t matter who practiced,
 how they learned,
 or why they walked that path.

The story had already decided for them.

For a long time, witches weren’t only women.

Men practiced.
 Men were accused.
 Men were executed.

But as fear intensified, language shifted.

Some men adopted new names—not to elevate themselves,
 but to survive.

Wizard.
 Warlock.
 Cunning man.

Different words.
 Same practices.

At first, those names offered distance—
 a way to separate what they did
 from the accusation attached to the word witch.

But language has a way of turning on itself.

Over time, warlock stopped meaning practitioner
and came to mean traitor…
something untrustworthy.

And wizard drifted the other way entirely—
away from discipline and practice,
toward fantasy, fiction, and spectacle.

Today, wizard means robes and spells—
 not study, responsibility, or restraint.

And in that drift, something important was lost.

Men didn’t vanish from the craft.
 They vanished from the story.

Once witch became a gendered word
and wizard became a fictional one,
the serious, lived practice was quietly pushed out of sight.

Not erased by force—
 but softened until it could be ignored.

Another argument shows up again and again:

Are witches born…
 or are they made?

Is it bloodline?
 Ancestry?
 Inheritance?

Or is it study, discipline, and practice?

Here’s the quiet truth most crafts share:

Very few things are inherited whole.
 Most are learned.

Knowledge passes through books, teachers, observation, failure, and time—
 and eventually, through personal adaptation.

Tradition isn’t broken when it evolves.
 It’s kept alive.

A craft that cannot change becomes a museum piece—
 preserved, untouched, and no longer lived.

There’s also a phrase people throw around casually:

“It was a witch hunt.”

Usually, what they mean is unfair treatment.
 False accusation.
 Public pressure.

What they forget is that witches weren’t hunted as ideas.
 They were hunted as people.

Words matter—
 not because they’re fragile,
 but because they carry memory.

When we turn real suffering into metaphor,
 we lose perspective.

And once perspective is gone,
 history becomes entertainment.

There’s a difference between choosing a path
 and being labeled from the outside.

Between practice and accusation.
 Between identity and projection.

For centuries, witch wasn’t something people claimed.
It was something applied to them—
often violently.

Today, the word still carries weight.
 Still carries fear.
 Still carries misunderstanding.

The question isn’t whether witches are real or imagined.

The question is who gets to decide
 what the word means.

So which witch is a witch?

Male or female?
 Born or taught?
 Real or myth?

Maybe the better question is why we ever needed just one answer.

Because the moment we insist on certainty,
 we stop listening.

And when listening stops,
 history has a way of repeating itself—
 just with different names.

This is How Did We Get Here?
A podcast about the choices, cracks, and crossroads that shape us.

I’m Jim Richmond.
 And I’m still here for a reason.
 Maybe you are too.