12
" The Emerald City, the Yellow Brick Road, magical slippers, a brave farm-girl protagonist, and, of course, the good and bad witches are all now seemingly timeless icons from what some have called “the first American fairy tale.” But several of these ideas were not invented by Baum out of whole cloth. In fact, a great many of them can be traced to the influence of his mother-in-law, the suffragist and equal rights pioneer Matilda Joslyn Gage. "
― Pam Grossman , Waking the Witch: Reflections on Women, Magic, and Power
13
" In a letter she wrote to Alfred Stieglitz in November of 1909, she says, “I’ve just finished a big job for very little cash! A set of designs for a pack of Tarot cards 80 designs. I shall send some over—of the original drawings—as some people may like them!” Today this note strikes a chord that’s both sweet and sour. The thirty-one-year-old writing it had no inkling how renowned her images would become after they were published in 1910. The Rider-Waite tarot deck, as it came to be called (after Waite and the publisher, William Rider & Son), is now arguably the most successful and recognizable deck ever made, and it is the number-one-selling deck in America and England. Her complex, symbolic artwork has been a source of inspiration and deep meaning to card readers for more than a hundred years, not to mention its numberless appearances on everything from T-shirts to coffee mugs to haute couture dresses by Dior and Alexander McQueen. "
― Pam Grossman , Waking the Witch: Reflections on Women, Magic, and Power
14
" The witch has a green face and a fleet of flying monkeys. She wears scarves and leather and lace. She lives in Africa; on the island of Aeaea; in a tower; in a chicken-leg hut; in Peoria, Illinois. She lurks in the forests of fairy tales, in the gilded frames of paintings, in the plotlines of sitcoms and YA novels, and between the bars of ghostly blues songs. She is solitary. She comes in threes. She’s a member of a coven. Sometimes she’s a he. She is stunning, she is hideous, she is insidious, she is ubiquitous. She is our downfall. She is our deliverance. "
― Pam Grossman , Waking the Witch: Reflections on Women, Magic, and Power
15
" While a witchy wardrobe can certainly be sexy at times, it doesn’t tend to prioritize body consciousness. More often than not, witch fashion is about loose layers that veil the form or fabrics that cloak and cover. It conceals more than it reveals. It creates a shroud, albeit one emblazoned with spangles and talismanic symbols. And so the wearer is self-modulating and self-protected, a walking woven spell. If she’s shocking, it’s because she wants to be. This witch is a voluntary disturbance. Women have been told over many lifetimes that their bodies are wrong and unbecoming - that they belong to other people. The fashion witch is self-possessed, first and foremost. She controls how much of herself she shares. Whether others consider her anatomy a monstrosity, or a thing of majesty, is of little concern. She knows her body is her own. And that is true power. "
― Pam Grossman , Waking the Witch: Reflections on Women, Magic, and Power
16
" And so, with their first public action on Halloween of 1968, the feminist activist group called W.I.T.C.H. was born. Its members donned witch costumes, replete with brooms and pointy black hats, and did a public ritual performance of hexing the New York Stock Exchange. Did it work? Well, as Gloria Steinem wrote about the incident in New York magazine, “A coven of 13 members of W.I.T.C.H. demonstrates against that bastion of white supremacy: Wall Street. The next day, the market falls five points.” (The glue that the witches added to the locks of the NYSE doors also added a bit of whammy, no doubt.) "
― Pam Grossman , Waking the Witch: Reflections on Women, Magic, and Power
