The Avidity Witch

  It’s Satire Saturday again! This is the day when we talk about odd things related to witches and witchcraft. Since we’re still in the middle of winter, I thought it might be fun to explore the origin of one of my father’s favorite phrases during the cold months. Have you ever heard the expression, “Colder than a witch’s brass tit!” when the weather is particularly cold? Have you ever wondered where that came from? Well, it has nothing to do with old women wearing metal bras, even though the words conjure those images in a modern mind. Instead, it has to do with climate change, witch hunts, and money. Let’s start with climate change. During a period spanning from the 14 th century to the mid-19 th century, our planet’s climate cooled substantially. Scientists think this cooling was caused either by volcanic activity, a drop in the frequency of solar storms, or a combination of both. This period is often referred to as “the little ice age” and it was a dark period for our species

  Hello! If you are reading this, I hope you are well! Today is Saturday, January 1, 2022, and the first Satire Saturday of 2022. For those who don’t know, Satire Saturday is the day when I share information to dispel myths about witches and witchcraft and help people to understand the origins of our modern rituals and holidays. It may also turn into a day where a share a good joke if I come across any. Have you ever wondered why we celebrate New Years Day on the first day of January every year? I have and I’m a bit of a geek when it comes to these things, so I looked it up to find out. I decided to share my findings here for anyone else who may be curious about the holiday’s origin. I may not have all the facts right, but I have done the best I could with the information that is available to me. If any historians stumble across this post and would like to correct anything I get wrong, please feel free to comment on this post. I welcome your input. In ancient times the beginning of

  SATIRE SATURDAY: Warlock This is a bit of a tricky one. When people hear the word warlock today, they are likely to think of a male witch. This isn’t quite correct. For most of history, male witches were called witches. It is perfectly fine for a man to be a witch, since the word is not gender specific. It wasn’t until the 1950’s and 60’s the word warlock became a commonly used word for a male witch. This was in no small part due to television shows like “Bewitched” and “Sabrina the Teenage Witch,” who used the word and ingrained it in pop culture. However, it is important to understand that this word has a dark history. Warlock is an old English word that originally meant traitor or oath breaker. Over time this became associated with denying the Christian god and therefore being league with the devil and being a sorcerer. I have also heard this word used by a few witches to describe a person who has betrayed their coven. It just goes to show that the history of the words we use is

  SATIRE SATURDAY: Nudity Many witches feel comfortable with their bodies and prefer to do their spell work skyclad or nude. Thankfully, you are not required to do your spell work or rituals in the nude. This is good because not all witches feel comfortable practicing in the nude, and clothing is helpful if you want to do an outdoor ritual and have neighbors. Have a great weekend! Blessed be! https://www.etsy.com/shop/TheAvidityWitch *Image stolen from somewhere on the internet. #theaviditywitch #satiresaturday #nudity #skyclad #witch #witches #witchcraft #pagan #ritual #spells

  SATIRE SATURDAY: Weather Despite years of being accused of draughts and famines, the idea of a single witch being to affect the weather is nothing but a myth. However, many of us can foretell the future weather and plant our gardens accordingly, which is why we probably get accused of causing bad weather. If we could change the weather to our liking, I can assure you I would not be dealing with the eight inches of snow that got dumped on my house last night. I hope you enjoyed this post and the photo of my back yard, and that you have a great weekend! Blessed be! P.S. Just a quick reminder that I have a Valentine/Galentine sale going in my Etsy shop. Everything is on sale for 25 to 70% until February 15th. Stop by and get something for yourself or someone else. https://www.etsy.com/shop/TheAvidityWitch #theaviditywitch #satiresaturday #weather #badweather #snowuptomyeyebrows #cannotfindthedoganymore #happyicanstayhome #moreiscomingtonight #cold #witch #witchcraft #witches #

  SATIRE SATURDAY: Familiars are not Demons in Disguise Familiars are animals that choose to share their magic with a witch. Yes, familiars have their own magic, just like all other life forms. While many people believe that familiars are entities that disguise themselves as a cat or a dog, they are just animals with a talent for magic. Most familiars are extremely intelligent and know how to manipulate the world around them to get what they want. They can be from any species of animal and be any size, shape, or color. The most common are cats and dogs, but there are people who have snakes, lizards, birds, and frogs for familiars. I have never heard of a witch having a fish for a familiar but that doesn’t mean it isn’t possible. The important thing to remember about choosing a familiar is that you do not choose your familiar, your familiar will choose you. You cannot force another creature to share their magic, and if you try you won’t get what you want out of it. Consent is importan

  Saturday Satire: Witches Don’t Eat People This is a myth about witches that goes back an awfully long time. It seems like every culture has a story about witches that eat people. One of the best-known tales is that of Hansel and Gretel. Most people are familiar with this tale of two children lost in the woods, who are taken in by a witch that wants to eat them. There are also the stories of Baba Yaga from Russia who eats her victims who are usually children. Call me crazy but the idea of eating something that picks its nose, eats glue, and doesn’t know how to bath properly is pretty disgusting to me. Seriously, think of every nasty habit humans, especially children, have and ask yourself if you would really want to eat something that acts like that. Then factor in the fact that cannibalism actually kills you slowly and painfully, and suddenly the legends don’t seem to have much merit. People have always feared witches because we are different. The idea of us being cannibals proba

  SATIRE SATURDAY: Witches do not Worship Satan This is one of the oldest misconceptions about witches. While the witches have been around for thousands of years, they have only been associated with the Christian ideas of Satan and the devil for about 1000 years. One can easily assume that early Christians wanted to deter people from the ancient art of magic and the pagan religions associated with them. The thing is the majority of witches don’t believe in Satan, the devil, or the Christian god. The word Satanist means one who goes against god. You can’t go against something you don’t believe exists. I’ve been a practicing witch for about 3 decades and I have yet to meet one of these “Satanic witches” pop culture talks about. Even the witches I have met that embrace the darker side of magic don’t call on Satan for help. I’m thinking they probably don’t exist. In conclusion, if you have a friend, family member, or neighbor who you recently found is a witch, you probably have nothing

  SATIRE SATURDAY: Witches and Wiccans Not all witches are wiccan, and not all wiccans are witches. Can I make it any clearer than that? Let’s try to clear a few things up. Wicca is a religion that was developed in the 1940s and 50s by a man named Gerald Gardner and a woman named Doreen Valiente. While the religion does have some roots in ancient practices, the religion itself is quite new. Today, there are many different sects of the Wiccan religion. Some are very free flowing and allow their members to do as the please, and there are others that tell their members how to worship, how to practice, and even what they can wear and eat. It all depends on the group. There are solitary Wiccans out there who practice their religion on their own as well. It is important to note that while the majority of Wiccans practice witchcraft, not all of them do. I have known a couple of Wiccans in my time who loved the rituals and the holidays, but they didn’t feel comfortable with using magic or

  SATURDAY SATIRE: The Witch’s Mark During the witch hunts of the late seventeenth century, someone came up with the idea of a witch’s mark (not to be confused with a witch’s teat). The witch’s mark was thought to be a place on the body that Satan had touched and marked someone as a witch. Accusers would claim scars, birthmarks, and other skin imperfections were these supposed marks. People that believed this thought that the mark would have little to no feeling and could be poked with a sharp object without the bearer feeling pain. This absurd for several reasons. For one, most witches don’t believe in Satan and therefore cannot be marked by him. For another, if witches actually had specific marks that showed they were witches they wouldn’t be hard to find. On top of that we now know that scarring that goes deep into the tissue and skin cancer can cause areas of the skin to lose feeling. Thankfully, this ridiculous idea died out fairly quickly and wasn’t taken seriously in many cour

  SATIRE SATURDAY: Dunking During the burning times, many people believed that only witches could swim. Because of this, they would throw people into bodies of water to see if they would float. Sometimes they remembered to tie a rope around the person first so they could pull them out if they turned out to be innocent. The process was called ducking or dunking. It was, of course, a ridiculous idea and many people drowned because of it. People in power even created a device to help them determine whether or not someone was a witch. This device was a huge lever that had a stool on one end. It made it easy to dunk the accused in water without the accusers getting wet. The device had several names: a dunking stool, a ducking stool, or a cucking stool. The reason I personally find the idea of being dunked ridiculous. This is because I am a witch, and I would have easily passed this test. Not only can I barely swim, but I literally sink like a stone as soon as I stop moving. I can’t floa

  Saturday Satire: Folk Names I’m dedicating my Saturday post to dispelling myths about witches, witchcraft, pagans, and magic. I hope you enjoy reading them. Folk names for herbs have been used for centuries, and there are many to describe herbs and spices. One of the reasons for this is that different regions would have different names for the same plants. Another reason is that it helped protect the livelihood of the witch or healer because they would be the only ones who really knew what was in their potions. Let’s say you boiled a spike, some gold, an Englishman’s foot, and some amber in a pot of oil and beeswax and slathered it on your skin. It probably wouldn’t do anything for you and might even make you sick. But if you knew that spike=lavender, gold=marigold, Englishman’s foot=plantain, and amber=St. John’s wort, then you could make a decent ointment for bug bites. Sadly, some of these names were most likely used to condemn innocent people during the burning times. For