Before the Word "Witch" Ever Existed

Before ink carved boundaries between holy and forbidden. Before persecution gave the word its teeth. Before anyone was burned, drowned, or hanged for the crime of knowing too much—there was only the fire. And the people who sat close to it.

The Unnamed Pattern-Readers

In the Paleolithic era, long before religion organized our relationship with the sacred, there were those who noticed. Who watched the moon's phases and understood when to plant. Who knew which plants healed and which ones killed. Who read the patterns in smoke, in bone, in the way animals moved before the storm came.

They had no name for what they did. It wasn't magic—it was survival.

These weren't mystics in the way we imagine them now. They were the practical ones. The observers. The ones who remembered what worked and what didn't, who carried knowledge forward when there was no written language to preserve it. They were the first witches, though no one would call them that for thousands of years.

When Magic Became Dangerous

Something shifted as civilizations rose and religions formed. The knowledge that once kept communities alive became threatening to those in power. In ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome, magic became regulated. Criminalized. Weaponized.

The cunning folk of medieval Europe—healers, midwives, herbalists—became enemies of the Church. Not because they were doing anything different than their ancestors had done for millennia, but because knowledge outside institutional control is always dangerous to those who claim authority.

The witch trials didn't create the witch. They created the word as a weapon. Centuries of systematic persecution built on fear, power, and the deliberate targeting of women who refused to forget what they knew.

The Season of Becoming

This isn't about becoming something new. It's about remembering what we've always been. What the world tried to make us forget.

In Episode 22 of The Forgotten Familiar, I trace the complete evolution of the witch—from those unnamed fire-keepers through ancient civilizations, medieval Europe, the trials, Salem, feminist reclamation, and into today's paradox between commodification and genuine practice.

It's a 90 minute immersive journey through history, power, persecution, and reclamation. Because understanding where we come from changes how we move forward.

The witch was never destroyed. She was only waiting—waiting for us to remember.

Listen to the Full Episode for More About Before the Word Witch

Ready to walk this path? Episode 22: The Evolution of the Witch is available now on all podcast platforms.

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