Costume Finder Fancy Dress Blog

Witches outfits have been the main fallback of Halloween costumes for many years now, but the generic uniform of pointed hat, big nose and warts overrides the actual lore and history of witches. Here are a few well known witches from past times, perhaps you’ll be able to garner some inspiration for your costumes this year, although a giant pestle and mortar might be a little hard to come by!

The Witch of Endor

The Witch of Endor found in the Old Testament of the Christian bible was credited with the raising of the spirit of Samuel at the behest of King Saul of Israel. King Saul consulted with her concerning his fate and future. Some scholars believe that the spirit conjured up by the witch was the Devil but many believe that she was a charlatan. Those that believe it was not the Devil use the argument that the Devil would have been repelled by the word Jehovah.

Mother Shipton

Her real name was Ursula Southeil and she was a 15th Century Yorkshire witch. She was said to have powers of spell-casting and healing, and some of her prophecies about more modern times such as those of airplanes and cars have actually come true, alongside other predictions about wars,  scientific inventions, and new technologies.

Baba Yaga

Baba Yaga was a legendary witch whose legend was used by mothers to frighten their children into good behaviour and was said to have flown around the skies in a mortar and pestle and lived in a house balanced on chicken legs. Legend says she loved to roast children for dinner and serve them to her neighbours, and her shrieks were reputed to have curdled milk.

Morgan Le Fey

She has been painted as evil by nearly all Arthurian scholars. But Morgan was Lady of the Lake, a priestess of the Triple Goddess, and  half-sister to Arthur, she bore his child, Gawain, under the festival of the Horned God. Unfortunately for both Arthur and Morgan, Christianity made inroads into Camelot, and their coupling was seen as diabolical, and so Gawain was seen as a sort of demented imp, rather than just the over-ambitious youth that he became. Morgan kept holy the memory of the Lake though she lived in the country for most of her life. She had the horned moon of the Triple Goddess tattooed between her brows and she was a vegetarian.

Aleister Crowley

Aleister Crowley was the magical name of the man born in 1875 as Edward Alexander Crowley. The son of a rich brewer, he grew up to be a complete non-conformist and something of a profligate rebel as well as one of magic’s most advanced thinking figures. He wrote copious amounts of terrible poetry with little literary success (unsurprisingly!), but his volumes on magic caused a sensation and outraged the genteel English society. He was a writer, master chess player, mountaineer, master magician and, ultimately, a drug addict. Revelling in being notorious, he went as far as to claim that he was the Beast from the bible’s book of Revelations, which again as you can imagine, went down a treat with the society of the day. Insane and egocentric, he was nonetheless indomitable and  must be remembered as the man who restored the Tarot to its rightful place in magic, and who contributed more to the ancient art than any other magician since the middle ages.

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