We all have lurking fears. Guilt over past mistakes, shame over hidden desires, rage we harbor but dare not express, and nagging complexes whispering we’re not enough. We can shun them, ignore them, bury them deep. But they don’t just disappear. Left unchecked, they twist and grow like vines until they become something we’re all too quick to label “bad” or “evil.”

But our darkness is not inherently wicked. It’s just a part of us, cackling in the shadows, waiting to see what we’ll do with it.

Humanity’s “shadow” has long been projected outward – cast onto the feminine, and twisted into a figure of the witch. The witch has come to embody all that is feared, misunderstood, and exiled. Historically, she’s been exploited and violently misused. The witch trials of early modern Europe were far more than a grim chapter in history. They were mass hysteria dressed up as moral righteousness. During the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, thousands of women were executed for alleged witchcraft, made scapegoats for a society haunted by its own shadows.

The women burned. But the witch lived on. 

Her image was recast into an amalgam of fear, power, and redemption. From fairy tales to Disney classics, she’s been cast as the ultimate villain, embodying everything society fears in the feminine: bitterness, jealousy, vengeance, grief, wrath, and unrelenting passion. Basically, all the raw, messy, terribly emotional things society files under the “ugly” side of femininity. But films like Wicked and Maleficent have turned this narrative on its head, showing us that the so-called “wicked witch” isn’t born evil but made so by betrayal and rejection. And that the dark, misunderstood parts of ourselves, once acknowledged, can become something powerful, even loving. 

So who -or more precisely, what – are we so afraid of? The witch herself, or the mystery, independence, and stubborn refusal to conform that she represents?

Women possess a femininity rich in nuance. One that can soothe like a potion or strike with a spell. This wicked brilliance knows when to nurture like the fairest fairy godmother and when to bare its teeth like the wickedest witch of them all.

And men? Surely they have some witch in them too. A capacity for crafty wicked wiles, beguiling unpredictability, and the occasional wretched mood. The trouble starts when she’s kept locked in the broom closet.

And just what might we become if we finally let her out?