Human Behavior

In terms of symbolism and in the history of how witches were depicted, it is easy to understand why witches and witch images were portrayed as "ugly". Consider first how you would respond to seeing (a) an old type house with peeling paint, broken windows, dark and empty, set back in the woods with no one around for miles ... versus ... (b) a beautifully tended house, all lit up, set on 50 acres of an estate with a pool in the back and a tennis court... where would you want to live? Obviously, we pick things that appeal to us, and reject things that look ugly or scary. The same applies to people. For example, the news has carried stories about how a homeless man or woman, consistently looked down upon by society because the person was dirty and slept on the street... but after death, we learned the person was the son or daughter of a rich ancestor and left a million dollars to some charity. Our views of people change as we know more about a person. Information makes people seem less scary.

The original images of witches came from fairy tales and from a history in society where Church condemned women who seemed odd or different. Many women burned at the stake as witches were actually quite beautiful. But society and religious persons, back before 1700-1800s needed to portray the women as "evil"-- evil is always presented as the most ugly, with warts and physical deformities such as long, crooked noses, dark and foreboding eyes, and grotesque features. At Halloween, children have seen over the decades the witch dressed in BLACK with a BLACK pointy hat and BLACK cat, because the symbolism of black has always been used to depict evil, what we fear, and what we should supposedly run away from. Also symbolism about women, in general, either showed fragile and delicate "good, upstanding women", or fat, grotesque, and ugly as "bad" or evil.

Changes in Society, Church, and Information

Today, we still generally use the witch image as bad. But many people practice witchcraft and are neither ugly or evil -- unless they intend to do harm, they are just ordinary people. With information, we can teach our children the symbolism in the images they see and stories they read. We can dispel the stereotypes our society created centuries ago and teach a more accepting view of people. Symbolism will always be used, but symbols always change as society changes.