Witches: Wicked, Wild & Wonderful by Paula Guran

Author:Paula Guran [Guran, Paula]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Anthologies, Horror, Science Fiction, Adult, Fantasy, Anthology, Witches
ISBN: 9781607013501
Goodreads: 13057774
Publisher: Prime Books
Published: 2012-03-12T16:00:00+00:00

“The Way Wind” is set in author Andre Norton’s Witch World universe. In this alternate universe magic is performed (at first) only by female virgins; sex deprives a witch of her powers.

In much witchcraft lore, witches are involved with sex—love spells, magic worked to invoke or deny fertility or virility. Since the female witch was often an empowered single woman, in many cultures she was also seen as sexually alluring or intentionally seductive. By the Middle Ages, Western European Christianity equated witchcraft with serving Satan, an inversion of serving God. Sex, frowned upon by Christianity in general, was the Devil's turf, so witches were assumed to be lascivious. Witches supposedly sealed their deals with the Devil by copulating with him and frequently participating in orgies.

Still, the equation of virginity—or at least a life not dominated by love for a man—with magical power also has a place in witch mythos. Spinsters learn witchcraft in Mary Norton’s The Magic Bed-Knob (1943), on which the 1971 Disney movie Bedknobs and Broomsticks was based. Elizabeth Burton’s Miss Carter and the Ifrit (1945) has a similar theme. Gillian Holroyd in the 1958 film (and 1950 play) Bell, Book, and Candle sacrifices her magic for love. In Alice Hoffman’s Practical Magic (and in the movie based on it) the sacrifice for loving a witch takes a different turn: if a woman of the witchly Owens family finds true love with a man, he is destined to die tragically.

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