Witches Were Never Villains: What History's Most Feared Women Teach Us About Raising LGBTQ Kids Today

Witches were never just villains. They were women with power in a world that feared it. Welcome to More Human, More Kind, the podcast helping parents of LGBTQ+ kids move from fear to fierce allyship and feel less alone and more informed so you can protect what matters, raise brave kids, and spark collective change. I'm Heather Hester. Let's get started. What if the witch you feared growing up wasn't evil at all, but a mirror for what society most fears: women, queerness, and rebellion? What if she was never a monster, though, but a woman who refused to bow? A healer who refused to stop healing. A truth-teller who refused to stay quiet. In today's episode, you'll learn why witches have long symbolized outsiders and rule breakers. You'll discover how queer communities embrace witch imagery as empowerment, and you'll find ways to connect this symbolism to your own parenting and allyship. And stick around for today's unlearn, where I will dismantle the myth that witches are villains rather than visionaries. Welcome back to More Human, More Kind. I'm Heather Hester, and today we are exploring witch hunts, the historical ones that targeted women and healers, and the modern ones that target queer people, marginalized groups, and anyone who dares to live outside the norm. I am really, really excited to share this very timely topic with you today. It was super fun to research and to learn so much more about the history of witches and to really be able to connect the dots to what's going on today. The fact that you are here shows that you care about truth and justice and protecting your kids from the kind of fear that divides and destroys. But we also know how hard that is because fear spreads fast. Misinformation distorts reality, and sometimes it can feel easier to stay quiet than to speak up. In this episode, we'll uncover how witch hunts have always been about control, about silencing difference and consolidating power, and how we can break that cycle in our families and our culture. Join me as we travel back to the roots of one of the most powerful myths in human history: the witch. She's haunted our fairy tales and Halloween costumes, but the real story is older, darker, and far more revealing about who we fear and why. When we understand history, we can see the patterns, and when we can name the patterns, we can stop them. Between the 1300s and the 1600s, Europe was in absolute chaos. There were plagues, famine, religious wars, entire economies absolutely collapsing. People were desperate for explanations. And the church offered one: evil walks among us. Enter the witch. The Catholic Church, later joined by Protestant reformers, needed to reestablish authority. For centuries, community healers, mostly women, held local power through herbal knowledge, being midwives, and having spiritual practices rooted in older earth-based faiths. They were loved by their neighbors and didn't answer to priests or kings. So to centralize power, those women had to be rebranded, not as healers, but as threats. The first major witch-hunting manual, The Malleus Maleficarum, written in 1486 by Dominican inquisitors Heinrich Kramer and Jakob Sprenger, called women, quote, weaker in faith and, quote, more carnal, declaring that female sexuality made them susceptible to the devil. It sold more copies than any book except the Bible for two centuries. That's how deeply the fear took hold. This wasn't random hysteria. It was institutionalized misogyny serving a purpose: to make people obedient through fear and to eliminate competing sources of wisdom. Religious and political leaders discovered that witch trials did more than punish dissent. They created unity through terror. Public executions were theater. Crowds gathered, sermons thundered, and rulers appeared righteous. Every hanging and burning whispered the same lesson: Obey. Conform. Stay small. Does this sound familiar? At the same time, early medical guilds were forming. Male physicians, backed by universities and the church, wanted to professionalize healing. Midwives and herbalists, women without degrees, were branded as dangerous meddlers. Accusing them of witchcraft conveniently erased centuries of female medical knowledge and handed control of birth, fertility, and the body to men. Political philosopher Silvia Federici in Caliban and the Witch, written in 2004, argues that witch hunts were the social violence required to transition Europe from feudalism to capitalism. When the new economy demanded disciplined workers and patriarchal family structures, independent women, the widows, the spinsters, the healers, were labeled subversive. The witch became the cautionary tale that taught women to stay dependent, chaste, and obedient. Federici writes, "The witch was the symbol of the world turned upside down, of female insubordination and the refusal of work. Destroying her was how the new world order enforced unpaid domestic labor, sexual control, and silence. Witches embodied every form of female autonomy the patriarchy feared: the midwife who understood and can control, or at least affect, birth and miscarriage; the healer who knew plants that soothed pain without the church's permission; The widow who lived without a husband's rule. By painting these women as servants of Satan, male institutions could claim moral and physical dominion over women's bodies. The witch became the shadow cast by every woman who dared to know too much or desire too freely. Whenever disease struck or crops failed, someone had to take the blame. That someone was rarely the priest or the nobleman. It was typically, though, the poor woman living alone at the edge of town. Across Europe, over 100,000 people were tried for witchcraft. And historians estimate between 40,000 and 60,000 were executed. The majority were women over 40. And the message was unmistakable. Aging, independence, and knowledge were dangerous. And every time society faces upheaval, economic crashes, Pandemics, social change, the same reflex reappears. We look for someone to burn. By the 1700s, the Enlightenment mocked belief in witches, yet the archetype endured. She lingered in fairy tales as the jealous crone and Halloween decor as the hag with a hooked nose. Her image carried a warning: don't be too loud, too curious, or too powerful. That message still echoes whenever women are called hysterical, queer people called unnatural, or activists called radical. The witch never died. She just changed names. Beginning in the 20th century, feminists and queer thinkers began to reclaim her. In the 1960s, protesters at women's rights marches carried signs reading, "We are the daughters of the witches you couldn't burn." Modern witchcraft, Wicca, Paganism and magical activism became languages of empowerment. Writers like Pam Grossman, Kristin Soleil, and Sarah Lyons reframed witchcraft as a practice of self-trust, intuition, and resistance. Queer communities in particular connected deeply with witch imagery because it mirrors their own histories of scapegoating, persecution, and eventual reclamation. As writer Kristin Soleil says in Witches, Sluts, and Feminists, to call oneself a witch today is to acknowledge the power once feared and punished. To say, "I am not afraid of my own magic." Fast forward to today, and we see echoes of these witch hunts in new forms: book bans targeting queer authors and queer topics, moral panics around drag shows, sex education, or trans healthcare. The idea that inclusion itself is a threat. If witches once symbolized what society feared most—female power, sexual freedom, queerness, and autonomy—then reclaiming the witch becomes a radical act of healing. Modern witchcraft has become a movement of empowerment. Especially within queer and feminist communities. The witch stands for agency, creating change without permission. The witch values intuition, community, ritual, and connection with nature, things that the patriarchy and capitalism dismiss as weakness. Queer people have reclaimed this imagery as a metaphor for living authentically in a world that still punishes difference. Writer and witch Pam Grossman, in her book Waking the Witch, describes witches as people who choose themselves, those who don't wait for permission to be whole. When queer youth say they love witch aesthetics or magic, It's rarely about spells. It's about self-determination. They see in witches the courage to live truthfully, to turn pain into power, to find community among the misunderstood. So for parents, when your child is drawn to witches, magic, or fantasy, it's not rebellion. It's curiosity about power, agency, and most of all, belonging. So, you may be thinking, this was a super empowering history lesson, but what am I supposed to do with it? Well, first of all, share it far and wide. And second, use this information to connect with your kids. They'll likely think it is super cool, and you may just learn a thing or two about them along the way. First, reframe the story. Tell your kids, witches weren't evil. They were healers, rebels, survivors. Help them see how society's villains are often its truth tellers. Encourage exploration. Ask your child, what do you love about witches or magic? You'll often hear words like freedom, creativity, mystery. Understand and validate that these are healthy forms of self-expression and imagination. Draw parallels to modern witch hunts. Help your family recognize how fear of difference repeats, whether it's against queer people, immigrants, or anyone who challenges the norms. Ask them, who do you see as being labeled dangerous today? And why do you think that's happening? And then model curiosity. Not control. If witchcraft, fantasy, or queerness feels unfamiliar, read about it together. Try Waking the Witch or Revolutionary Witchcraft. I will have all of these linked in the show notes for you so you can go right there and click through them. The goal isn't agreement, it's understanding. When I began to deconstruct my own ideas about witches, I felt something loosen in me. I felt a freedom and like this opening of my soul. All of my life, I had been taught to fear witches, to see them as evil, dangerous, even demonic. But when I started learning the real history about healers, the midwives, the women who lived close to the earth, it felt like remembering something I'd been told to forget. And then I watched my kids approach stories about witches and magic and earth based rituals with this pure curiosity, completely unburdened by fear. They weren't scared, they were fascinated. And their openness invited me to wonder again, to see the beauty where I was once told to see danger. Witches remind me that what society fears It tries to burn, but what it burns, it doesn't always destroy. And that resilience lives in us. And maybe that's why I also find the witch so beautiful now. She's the embodiment of what it means to rise from the ashes over and over again. Kindness here is permission, that permission to let your child's fascination with witches, monsters, or magic be more than fantasy. It's the courage to say, "I see your power. I see your curiosity, and I'm not afraid of it." Today's entire episode has been one giant unlearn, but Because repetition always helps us remember, here is the summary version. Today's Unlearn is about one of the oldest myths we've inherited, and that is that witches are evil. For centuries, we were told that witches were a danger to society, corruptors of morals, enemies of God. But that myth wasn't about truth. It was about control. It taught us to distrust power that didn't look like authority. So what if the witch was never evil? What if she was just free? The witch stands for resistance, community, survival, the courage to exist without permission. When we reclaim her, we reclaim our right to belong to ourselves. This week, share a witch story, whether it's fictional, historical, or something that you feel is very real in your life. Share that with your child or a close friend and ask, what makes this character powerful? Let that question open a doorway to conversations about bravery, authenticity, and being misunderstood. When we unlearn fear of rebellion, we reimagine difference as magic. Today we uncovered the true history of the witch and how witch hunts, both past and present, Reveal what society fears most: difference, power, and truth. You learned that witches were never villains. They were healers, rebels, survivors. Reclaiming their story helps us teach our kids courage and compassion in a world that still punishes what it doesn't understand. When your child is drawn to witches, monsters, or magic. It's not darkness calling, it's curiosity. It's their imagination. And it's the memory of power that was never truly lost. Thank you so much for being part of this brave, thoughtful community. Remember that new episodes drop every Tuesday and Friday, so make sure you follow and subscribe. And if you want to keep exploring what it means to raise brave, kind kids and to unlearn fear along the way, visit morehumanmorekind.com. Until next time, stay curious, stay kind, and remember what society tries to burn, it can never truly destroy.