#IfLifeWereLikeAHorrorFilm
If life were like a
horror film, that’s a notion that stirs the imagination. When I was a child,
Witches were
monsters just like vampires and mummies. The numerous movies detailing the exploits of the wicked
witch underscored that point. And fairy tales like Sleeping Beauty seemed to be a primer into the belief that witches were monstrous. Of course, I believed this. If it were in a book, it had to be true.
I was born into a Christian home. I had been christened as a Catholic at birth, but after my parents’ divorce at age six, was raised in the Pentecostal tradition of my mother’s family. In spite of this, I always felt a spiritual calling that was outside of my upbringing. I felt a kinship with nature that was alien to the teachings of my youth. I felt an energy that seemed to course through me at all times. And I felt the pull toward an image and relationship with God that had nothing to do with the church. Who knows why I was born into such a dichotomy? Regardless, it was many years later that I discovered a spiritual model that fit experiences I had been born. It was one that I didn’t know existed before, and one that seemed to be completely backwards to the way I was raised. That path was witchcraft. And stepping onto that path, I became a Witch.
Suddenly, those monsters of my youth became images of defamation that cut across the face of the beautiful reality I was experiencing, and had in fact always experienced. The face of evil that was part of the propaganda to further the ideals of a constrictive social structure that masqueraded as a religious one, a religion that didn’t lift the spirit, but rather like a boa constrictor, squeezed the life out of it, swallowing the soul in the process. Propaganda that made anyone who was different appear evil. Much like the church-taught "evils" of homosexuality, which I had had to deal with after I came out. Apparently, that's another fictitious monster story, but not one for this post.
And so, #IfLifeWereLikeAHorrorFilm, what then? There are as many depictions of good witches in films and literature as bad so, as a witch in a horror film, would I then be a villain, or a savior? One thing is certain. I would not be a victim.
