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  I have gone out, a possessed witch, haunting the black air, braver at night; dreaming evil, I have done my hitch over the plain houses, light by light: lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind — Anne Sexton     Above all, magic seemed a form of … insubordination, and an instrument of grassroots resistance to power — Silvia Federici     BEGINNING 1 (DISGUST)     This is the tower of the past The battlements are formed of anthills, the anthills the curves of the goddess, the curves snakes agreeing sealing themselves away Lookouts lie face down, mouths open to the earth, swallowing the matter of their warnings — Nisha Ramayya     In the room full of witches, I am meant to be disgusted Disgusted, or scared, or even, perhaps, aroused Each artist in the 2014 British Museum exhibition Witches and Wicked Bodies hoped to elicit these reactions from their images, which took the form of etchings, paintings, sketches; images, without exception, of women Some of the pictures show ‘crones’ or ‘hags’ sketched with crude, banal misogyny: breasts drooping, private parts rubbing against chapped broomsticks Some have the veneer of seduction: tempting sorceresses who hover over gently bubbling cauldrons, long black hair slithering round tight waists, robes billowing in the silver moonlight Each image was designed by rigid Christian imaginations to create fear, to create disapproval, horror or disgust – women copulating mid-air under starlight; women worshipping at strange altars; women tearing off the body parts of men; women carving runic images; women dancing backwards on the Sabbath; women making love with dogs and frogs and toads Yet each one awakens me These women are undoubtedly BAD and EVIL and GROSS and DEGENERATE and UGLY and SEXY and SHALLOW and PAINTED and OLD and YOUNG and HUNGRY and MAD and DANGEROUS and AWFUL Yet I am not disgusted Instead I am deeply happy to be with them I am happy because of their power When I got home, I wrote a poem – it was a spell     BEGINNING 2 (HISTORY)   If you are a woman, writing about your experience of being a woman, you are part of one of the most avant-garde literary movements there has ever been — AK Blakemore   In recent years, in the UK, and