Yikes!

So I decided to press the Google home screen Halloween thingy.  It tells me about witches.

A witch is a practitioner of witchcraft, which is the use of magical faculties, most commonly for religious, divinatory or medicinal purposes.

Origin: Early human cultures
Grouping: Homo Sapiens
Sub-grouping: Supernatural human
Food source: Strange Brew, candy
How to avoid: Don't eat red apples from strangers; hide if you see a flock of flying monkeys
How to defeat: Throw a pail of water

 

The definition is decent enough, the origin and grouping somewhat dissonant with the sub-grouping (surely a supernatural human originates Somewhere Else and is more like a super-group than a sub-group).  Still, this is all serious stuff in a way.

 

No, wait.  Someone in the Googleplex thinks , 'It's about the kids really - let's get kid-friendly' and plonks in some comic food sources - especially candy.  After all we don't want anyone - nay, even any animal (vegans can be witches too!) getting eaten.

 

Hey no we don't want our kids to feel that the witches might really be able to GET them.  Let's make witches really easy to avoid.  Strangers and Monkeys take a hit here.

 

And given the limited possibility of having eaten such an apple proffered by the stranger, there is a moderately easy solution via a pail of water (though I imagine if practised in the child's bedroom this endangers the child's life from an irate parent).

 

Well, what fun that was.

 

Not.

 

Because the first parts are true (for supernatural human read in harmony with the divine creative principal which is the Witches' own definition) it would be useful for Google to have stuck to the facts later on.

 

The food source is the same supermarket or farm shop or village market as everyone else. 

 

Avoidance is nigh on impossible - and very discriminatory.  I'm quite surprised that Google have got away with that.  It's not going to play well if they try the same thing about Atheists, Muslims or any other religiously orientated definition of people.

 

How to defeat.  Again Google has gone all discriminatory.  Google wants to defeat a religious expression?  At least on this last point Monotheists and Witches can agree that there is - in the spiritual sense - a conspiracy of victory and defeat which spans the centuries.  Sometimes it's been expressed very unpleasantly one way or another.

 

Let me say this in sympathy of witches:  I really don't think that Google has any right to seek their defeat, or encourage children to do so.  Furthermore the average Pagan Witch would have a great deal more respect and harmony with a pail of water than a global Western-based behemoth corporation or the targeting child.

 

Yet in its simple way Google has stumbled upon spiritual warfare.  Where there is supernatural there is battle and, in the End, defeat or victory leading to harmony.  The Bible describes this as the Lord Jesus eventually putting all his enemies beneath his feet.  The Witch, on the other hand, might describe victory as beliefs in the likes of Jesus or Mohammed being subsumed in the great creative divinity god/goddess/force thingy.

 

If ordinary humans are to be on the winning side spiritually, the Bible explains, they'd be a lot wiser to put down the bucket of water and climb (as it were) the hill with a cross on it where one of them who was also God defeated other spiritual powers by the greatest possible sacrifice.  Blood, not just water.