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Hocus-pocus.

lostmyway

This may be a bit whimsical, but does anyone think that the classic image of a witch living alone with a "familiar" such as a cat and a special knowledge of potions and natural healing agents might reflect someone who could have been on the autistic spectrum?

Parents

  • The idea of women living on their own would have been a thing of strangeness long ago. Any woman in that situation may have been more likely to be autistic and the role of ‘healer’ may have been the more accessible option for such a woman, given that society didn’t prepare girls for independent life. I think she would have been ostracised for choosing that lifestyle, and religious leaders and the powerful would have decided that she was inherently evil and bedevilled or a witch.

    I’m not so sure about the cat because I think many households, especially in country areas, would have had a cat for rodent control. I wonder how much the art and film industry has contributed to the connection. 

    I would love to go back in time to see how events really happened, but as a woman, I’m glad to have been born in the 1960s.

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  • The idea of women living on their own would have been a thing of strangeness long ago. Any woman in that situation may have been more likely to be autistic and the role of ‘healer’ may have been the more accessible option for such a woman, given that society didn’t prepare girls for independent life. I think she would have been ostracised for choosing that lifestyle, and religious leaders and the powerful would have decided that she was inherently evil and bedevilled or a witch.

    I’m not so sure about the cat because I think many households, especially in country areas, would have had a cat for rodent control. I wonder how much the art and film industry has contributed to the connection. 

    I would love to go back in time to see how events really happened, but as a woman, I’m glad to have been born in the 1960s.

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