What Is a Witch?

March 8, International Women’s Rights Day, is a deeply meaningful day that reflects the long struggle of thousands of women throughout history to assert their rights and freedoms.

On this significant day, we wanted to speak about a powerful symbol of women’s rights and the fight for equality: the witch.

For centuries, long before the arrival of Christianity, witches were women who helped bring children into the world, healed the sick with medicinal plants and soothed pain. They were often educated, able to read and write at a time when such knowledge was reserved for scholars. They sang the songs of the people and preserved their memories, rituals and beliefs. These women possessed vast knowledge and skills that most people could not always understand or explain. They were able to interpret signs in nature to predict storms, harvests and changes in climate. Gifted with strong intuition and inner strength, they were free and determined women. They rarely married, often living on the margins of society to cultivate their medicinal plants and their wisdom. These women were respected and influential, and their words were listened to.

Today, we call them witches, but across cultures they have carried many names such as herbalists, midwives, healers, shamans, wanderers, druidesses and many others.

During the Middle Ages, the power, knowledge and influence of these women unsettled the Christian Church and men who sought to monopolize the practice of medicine. It was during this time that the Church undertook to demonize witches, portraying them as malevolent beings and twisting their different way of life into something unhealthy. The witch hunts were launched to crush these women over whom they had no control. Thousands of healers, midwives, herbalists, educated women and innocent individuals were burned at the stake, and fear of witches spread.

In the 1970s in the United States, a movement of women fighting for their rights and freedom reclaimed the witch’s hat as a symbol, along with the word witch and everything it represented. It became a symbol of powerful and untamable women. Women who, despite the violence of the witch hunts, continued to pass on their knowledge and skills, preserving them until today. From this movement emerged a return to roots, and renewed interest in the knowledge, rituals and beliefs associated with witchcraft.

But what is a witch today?

The witch of today is a free and untamable woman, connected to nature, possessing knowledge and a particular intuition. She carries within her the rituals, spirituality and history of her people. A witch has no fixed definition, as she represents different women with varied roles and beliefs, from diverse cultures. One witch may follow Wicca, practice magic and use runes, while another may be atheist and believe in science, or stand somewhere in between. A witch is a free and bold soul.

My grandmother was an herbalist in a small village in Abitibi, and her mother before her was a midwife. My grandmother, who was very present in my life, took me from a young age to gather herbs and prepare remedies. She cared for both people and animals with plants, read cards and tea leaves. She was a woman who had the courage to divorce a violent man at a time when it was not permitted, a woman who fought for custody of her children and lived alone on her farm. People sought her advice and respectfully nicknamed her the village witch. After her passing, I passed this knowledge on to my own children, adding my own experiences and the wisdom gained through other paths.

When we chose the name of our company, we decided, despite the controversy surrounding the word “witch,” to include it in our name. We were told it was a poor choice, that a company called “Les Fées Sorcières” would not be taken seriously. But for us, honoring my grandmother and reclaiming this powerful word, which above all describes a free woman with knowledge of plants, was essential. For us, this name is a strength, not a weakness.