Bewitched

What are witches especially good at, since the beginning of time, and with men?
In seduction.

Bewitched.

But we don’t seduce in the “normal way,” there are always spells, potions, and… magic involved.

And it’s very much present even today.

Just think about it—you’ve heard it more than once: “He didn’t cheat on her because he’s unfaithful, but because another woman bewitched him.”

A good friend is telling me a story about a mutual acquaintance who apparently “messed up.” In the story, he’s the victim because “his wife wasn’t paying enough attention to him, so this other woman bewitched him, and poor guy, what could he do… Poor thing, such a fine, honest, respectable, family man—he would never have done it, but a witch got him.”

As it often happens in fairy tales, and in life, we all encounter a witch at some point. Or maybe we are the “wicked one” in someone else’s story.

Even in this modern fairy tale that I’m living myself, our story clearly looks different to people who watch us from the outside.

“She was lucky to meet an angel,” my story begins, “she bewitched him because how else could someone as wonderful as him be with someone like her?” they wondered, concerned.

Obviously, some magic was involved.

There’s a magical method in our culture that we all hear about during our teenage years. Even I, as a teenager, was desperate for the attention of the opposite sex.

“If you put a drop of menstrual blood in his coffee, he’ll fall in love with you.”

We won’t even discuss how unhygienic this method is, but where did this idea come from? It’s a good question, but probably pointless to try to find an answer.

What’s interesting, and the subject of my analysis, is how perfectly it fits the concept of the seductive witch.

What do we women have that men don’t, something that remains a mystery to them? Menstruation, of course.

For most men, this completely natural process that every woman experiences in her life—not by choice!—is a total mystery.

And that’s why there are various ways to demonize it. For example, a woman who is menstruating “must not” enter a church because she is impure, she must not take communion, be baptized, marry, or hold someone else’s child… The list goes on.

A natural physiological process has been so mystified that even we are ashamed to say the word “menstruation,” so we’ve come up with a million euphemisms, “more suitable” terms like “my aunt from the red river is visiting,” or “I got it…”

When society has long demonized something exclusively female, it makes sense why a “drop of menstruation” serves as the perfect tool for bewitching that weak and innocent male world.

Because it makes much more sense for a woman to resort to such a method than for a man to take an interest in her on his own, right?

We aren’t the only ones who believe in “spells” and “love potions,” literature is full of them.

Take Ursula, for example, the witch from Andersen’s tale. She used her magical powers to get a man. She took the voice of the mermaid, who had bewitched the poor prince with that very voice and then used it herself to win over the prince. And that poor, innocent fool, hearing the voice, fell in love (because he was, of course, bewitched), and nothing but that voice could satisfy his love longing.

No free will, nothing shallow about men, no. Witches are to blame.

There are countless examples in literature. Let’s remember Frollo and Esmeralda from Hugo’s “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.”

There, we actually have three witches. The first is the mother trying to save her child—Quasimodo’s mother. Then there’s Esmeralda’s mother, and of course, the biggest witch of all—Esmeralda, who dared to say “no” to such a wonderful man like Frollo.

What’s the consequence? She must burn, of course.

First, she bewitched him, obviously, because he wouldn’t have even noticed her if she hadn’t used her “magical charms,” and then she rejected him.

And we’re back to where we started—any woman who is disobedient or unsuitable, independent and capable of saying no, who doesn’t care what the world thinks and lives her own life, who can’t be controlled by society or the church because she doesn’t care about those authorities, can only be one thing—a witch.

Witches who bewitch men don’t just appear in books and movies. We’re here in real life too, everywhere you look.

Let me tell you a story…

Once upon a time, there was a wonderful young man, a theologian, modest and devout, dedicated to church life and its rules to the point where he dreamed of becoming a priest one day. As is often the case in the Orthodox world, to become a priest, you must be married, so he dreamed of one day finding the right woman, a future priest’s wife, who would stand by him and help him fulfill his dream and higher purpose—to serve the holy church and God together.

So, for years, he searched for the right one, but none seemed to be… He even decided to travel the world to find her.

One day, in a far-off foreign land, he saw a tall girl with long blonde hair, in a long skirt, modest, beautiful, and devout.

“Hmm… maybe she’s the one I’ve been looking for,” the young man thought.

But it turned out the girl wasn’t available because she had already promised someone else.

This broke our hero’s heart, and like any hero, he decided to give up.

However, the girl wasn’t just an innocent maiden. Even though she was promised, she noticed the young theologian’s affection and decided to have some fun with him.

“Why can’t we be friends,” she asked him, “since we get along so well and understand each other, it would be a shame not to have each other in our lives.”

The young theologian, suspecting nothing, agreed, thinking, “If she can’t be mine, I can at least have her as a friend by my side.”

And so, they decided to be friends.

However, she saw a good opportunity in him and decided to take matters into her own hands.

So one afternoon, while they were about to have their usual coffee together, she came up with a wicked plan. Usually, he was the one who made the coffee, but not that day.

“I’ll make the coffee today, you enjoy the book in this lovely July sunshine,” the girl said. Suspecting nothing, the young man continued reading his book. She got up, went to the kitchen, and while the water was boiling, she ran to the bathroom to get a drop of her menstrual blood and put it in the young theologian’s coffee.

“Now you’ll be mine forever,” she murmured with a smile, stirring the mixture so that the extra ingredient wouldn’t be noticed.

Suspecting nothing, the young man drank the coffee, and that was the end of him. He became so obsessed with her that he did everything in his power to win her over, even wanting to marry her immediately, even though she wasn’t free.

It was all part of her plan to appear as the victim, even though she had orchestrated everything herself.

After a fight with the other poor soul, who was probably also blinded by her magic, our theologian won and got the girl.

“I’ll marry her and make her my priest’s wife because she is the one I’ve been searching for so long,” the young man declared victoriously.

His friends’ warnings fell on deaf ears:
“Don’t marry her; she’s calculating. She came here and targeted you as the best victim. Don’t fall for it.”
“If I were in your shoes, I wouldn’t get married at all.”
“She’s dangerous; better let her go,” his concerned friends insisted, but to no avail.

The young theologian was blind and deaf to the well-meaning warnings.

It didn’t take long before he married her.

As time passed, the young theologian became more and more distant from the church, his calling, and even God Himself.

“You don’t need to be a priest; you’re too smart for that. You should get a Ph.D. It would be a waste to squander your potential on the church.”

Bit by bit, using her power over him, which she had gained through magic, the girl led him away from the true path he had dreamed of for so long.

She even gave him a daughter to keep him by her side, in case the magic stopped working.

Only when she was sure he was far enough from his original calling did she reveal the truth: she wasn’t an ordinary devout girl but an extraordinary witch. But by then, it was too late for the young man—so late that he accepted her true nature as something good, as part of who she was, and he loved her as she was.

Or at least he thought he loved her, unaware that he was, in fact, bewitched.

And so, my dear children, witches turn honest theologians into godless men.

The end of the story.

“So, what do you think? Does that look like the version of us that others see?” I ask Marko as we drink coffee and celebrate our 11th wedding anniversary.
“I’m sure their version is even harsher, but I think you hit the mark—’ the theologian and the witch,‘ that’s us,” he says.

“All in all, I love you, my witch.”

Warm regards,
S-Mama