An electric switch is an essential device that is used to control the flow of electricity in a circuit. It is a simple yet effective mechanism that allows users to turn on or off electrical devices by completing or interrupting the electric circuit. The switch consists of a conducting material, usually a metal, which is connected to the circuit. This conducting material is fixed to a handle or lever, which can be moved or toggled by the user. When the lever is in the "on" position, the conducting material completes the circuit, allowing the flow of electricity and enabling the device to work. Conversely, when the lever is switched to the "off" position, the conducting material is disconnected from the circuit, cutting off the flow of electricity and effectively turning off the device.
Within ancient Greek religion Hecate had many different roles, as goddess not just of witchcraft, but also of magic, spells, the night, ghosts, light, necromancy, and even the moon. She was also seen as a goddess of oikos, meaning the household and family, and doorways. Some have even connected her to Artemis, who was portrayed in a similar style, with boots, torches and dogs.
As she sided with the Olympians during the Titanomachy, she was the only member of the old regime who retained her powers following the defeat of the Titans. In antiquity even in Roman Britain , water was often seen as a connection point between the mortal world and the underworld wells, springs, streams, and lakes , and it is therefore not surprising that witches should spring up there.
Conversely, when the lever is switched to the "off" position, the conducting material is disconnected from the circuit, cutting off the flow of electricity and effectively turning off the device. Electric switches are commonly found in homes, offices, and industrial settings. They can be seen on walls as light switches, allowing users to turn lights on or off with a simple flick of a switch.
Greek winged witch
“'Blessings be on this house', Granny said, perfunctorily.
It was always a good opening remark for a witch.
It concentrated people's minds on
what other things might be on this house.”
Terry Pratchett, Witches abroad
With Halloween looming, shops are again full of broomsticks, black pointy hats, and fake warts and crooked noses. Witches’ outfits are among the most popular choices for girls’ dressing up – and yes, I’ve been there, done that. But witches were not always represented as Disney-inspired cackling hags. Let’s explore some of the archetypal witches from the Classical and Celtic traditions, and see how similar – or different – they are.
Ancient Greece
Magic and witchcraft were part and parcel of ancient Greek life: magicians and witches sold spells to cure all ailments, control rivals and lovers, and provide personal access to the divine. Society at large was both terrified of and enchanted by – yet also suspicious of – these powers, and certain types of magic were indeed punishable by law. The doublet of witches represented as the prototypes of other witches – both real and fictitious – were Circe and Medea. They appear in literature as early as the seventh century BC.
Circe
In book 12 of the Odyssey, Odysseus (the heroic protagonist) narrates how he and his men came across the goddess Circe on an island. She lived there alone with female companions, and wild animals (wolves and lions) walked the land as tame pets. When some of Odysseus’ men arrived at her palace, Circe kindly invited them in, but then gave them a brew which turned them into swine (you can say all you want about men being swine – in the Iliad, being compared to a wild boar was a compliment for a hero, as the animal was associated with battle prowess).
Odysseus had to go in search of his men – luckily he came across the god Hermes on his way, who 1) gave him a herb to stop him from transforming into an animal and 2) warned him he should have sex with the goddess (great advice for any hero!). Having withstood Circe’s potion, Odysseus threatened her with his mighty sword. This made her recognize him as the hero she had been waiting for. She transformed his men back into their former selves and Odysseus and his companions took a gap year on Circe’s island. At the end, Circe gave them sound advice about their further journey: don’t fight the monster Scylla, don’t eat the sun god’s cattle… Do you think they took that? In fact, Circe helped Odysseus more than any other being Odysseus met on his journey.
Later (in a poem called the Telegony), Circe’s son, in search of his father, accidentally killed him with a poisonous spear. He took Penelope and Telemachus to Circe’s island. Then (wait for it) Circe’s son married Penelope and Circe married Telemachus, and Circe immortalised them all.
Party at Circe's! All the men in mid-transformation into different kinds of animals. Circe forgot to put her dress on.
In later narratives, though, Circe became associated with sexual licentiousness. Vase paintings depict her naked among horny animals of all sorts, stirring a cup with her wand. And the philosopher Porphyry saw her as the goddess of reincarnation, and her island as the place where departed souls go to decide whether they want to go back to the physical depravity of mortal life.
Medea
Medea’s story is a long and complicated one, so I’ll keep things simple. While she was depicted as a goddess in Hesiod’s Theogony, she later became represented as mortal. The two most famous texts that mention her are Apollonius’ Argonautica (third century BC), which narrates the earlier part of her story, and Euripides’ Medea (431 BC) which tells the later part.
Medea lived in Colchis, a kingdom at the Black Sea. Her story starts with her encounter with the Greek hero Jason, who had come to Colchis to reclaim the Golden Fleece at his usurping uncle’s request. The young girl fell in love with the handsome hero (whether through her own free will or Aphrodite’s doing), and helped him – with her magical skills – to overcome the impossible tasks her father had set him: an invincibility potion and some cunning advice did the trick. Grabbing the Golden Fleece from its guardian dragon, the couple set off to Greece, killing Medea’s brother along the way (chopping up might have occurred).
Medea rejuvenates a ramUpon their arrival, they found Jason’s uncle had grown old, and Medea persuaded his daughters (as you do) to chop him up into pieces so she might rejuvenate him. She tricked them by performing this magic on a ram – but honestly, would you risk it? Being banished for regicide, the duo fled to Corinth where Jason’s attention drifted to a younger model, the king’s daughter. Medea killed her and her father with a magic potion with which she had imbued a crown and cloak – and then proceeded to kill her own children with the sword.
Fleeing to Athens, possibly on a chariot drawn by flying serpents, she then tried to kill (with poison, what else?) Athens’ finest hero Theseus, but was discovered at the last minute. Finally, she returned home to find her uncle had usurped the throne. She naturally killed him and put her father back on the throne. Until she died, when she married Achilles in the Elysian Fields (or at least so say some Archaic sources). #happyeverafter
Welsh witches
The Welsh written tradition is much younger than the ancient Greek tradition. In Medieval and early modern Wales, witches also abounded, however: similarly to ancient Greece, these women offered cures for common ailments (though perhaps of a more rural type than survive from ancient Greece), and curses were also common. In legend, Ceridwen and Morgan le Fay are the prototypal witches.
Ceridwen
Ceridwen first appears in Gerald of Wales’ Topographia Hibernica (Topography of Ireland, 1187). As her son was the ugliest man on earth (Did she just decide this?), Ceridwen decided to create a potion that would grant him wisdom, to make up for his lack of looks. The potion had to boil in a cauldron for a year and a day, and the process was very precise: only the first three drops would convey wisdom; the others were poisonous.
Of course, just as the potion was ready, a boy who had been stirring the cauldron this entire time, called Gwion Bach (‘Little Gwion’), got a drop on his finger which he licked off… Wisdom was transferred to him and the potion rendered poisonous. Ceridwen was not happy. She chased the boy, and as he turned himself into a hare, she became a greyhound. They subsequently transformed into fish and otter, swift and hawk, and corn and hen. That was Gwion’s mistake: he chose an inanimate object instead of an animal. Ceridwen the hen pecked him up and swallowed him! Nine months later, she either gave birth to him or regurgitated him. She couldn’t kill him as he was so beautiful, so she cast him into the sea in a leather bag. He was later found by a prince and became the famous bard Taliesin, whom Geoffrey of Monmouth connected with the Arthurian legend. Ceridwen’s first son never got his wisdom.
Morgan le Fay – or Modron?
Morgan le Fay is best known from her role in Arthurian legend, as king Arthur’s half-sister who brought him to Afalon after he was fatally wounded at the battle of Camlann. In earlier stories, she was merely a helpful fairy (hence Fay). In the later tradition, however, she became a vindictive and sexually aggressive opponent of Merlin, instrumental in Arthur’s death, even if she still bore him to Afalon. Geoffrey of Monmouth made her a shape-shifter in his Vita Merlini, and Chrétien de Troyes, while he noticed her rivalry with Guinevere, focused on her positive function as a healer. Hartmann von Aue’s Erec, however, depicted her as a wielder of dark magic who had the power to raise the dead, turn people into animals, command dragons, and was companion to the devil.
Morgan might have been modelled upon the goddess-witch Modron. She played a role in Welsh Triad (a selection of Medieval manuscripts) 70 in which a ford was avoided by locals because they always heard dogs barking at night and were terrified of an unseen horror. The hero Urien checked it out, and found a woman washing clothes in the ford. He had his wicked way with her (Eh? What was the logic behind that move?) and she blessed him, telling him that she had been cursed to wash by this ford until she would become pregnant by a Christian. She told him to come see her again in a year’s time, when she’ll present him with their child. Happy ending! Exactly how Morgana might have been modelled upon Modrod is unclear, but there are similarities in name and Modrod is also associated with Afalach, which resembles Afalon.
Similarities and differences
I’m not claiming that the Welsh witches were modeled upon their ancient Greek sisters. The Welsh literary tradition has always been ambiguous towards Classics (see Swansea Emeritus Professor of Latin Ceri Davies’ wonderful 1995 monograph on Welsh Literature and the Classical Tradition), and more often than not rejected Classical models for what it considered its native traditions. At other times, however, it did look to the Classical world for inspiration, and so – while it is not necessary that any resemblances are deliberate – it is not impossible either.
Status
The first thing to notice is that all of these women are originally goddesses, and only in later traditions are referred to as mortal women – in fact they always hover quite uneasily between divine and mortal status, as indeed they do with good and evil actions. All can help the hero on his way, but are potentially dangerous and destructive.
[I came across the website ‘godchecker’, which has as its entry for Ceridwen the following:
Location
All of them can be found in a liminal space, far away from the normal world, and often near water. Circe lives on an island in a fairytale world not normally visited by mortals, Medea first lives on the eastern shore of the Black Sea and then travels around most of the Mediterranean and Black Sea area, Ceridwen lives at the shore of lake Bala, a huge lake in the middle of Snowdonia in North Wales, and Modron was a washer woman at a ford. In antiquity (even in Roman Britain), water was often seen as a connection point between the mortal world and the underworld (wells, springs, streams, and lakes), and it is therefore not surprising that witches should spring up there.
Magic
Their magic isn’t generally concerned with curing common ailments or getting a lover (though Circe does use it in the Roman tradition), but aimed at grander schemes of transformation, whether rejuvenation, immortalisation, or physical transformation, either of themselves or others. Hartmann’s Morgan le Fay commands dragons like Medea, and wild animals like Circe. And Ceridwen shares with Circe the ability to transform into animals (though herself rather than others).
Children and men
Their relationship with children is awkward, to say the least. Circe marries the child of her lover, Medea kills her children, Ceridwen failed to make one child wise and then threw another in the sea, and Morgana’s (possible) son Mordred fatally wounded Arthur.
Sexual promiscuity and rapacity are another similarity. Circe doesn’t just sleep with Odysseus: in later stories, she has other lovers (notoriously Picus and Glaucus – have a look at Virgil’s Aeneid 7 and Ovid’s Metamorphoses 13), but never successfully. Medea falls for Jason, and is also known for her affairs with Sisyphus (the one who keeps rolling the rock up the hill in the underworld), Aegeus (king of Athens), and Achilles (in the underworld). In comparison, the Celtic witches are actually quite chaste: while Morgan was, in later traditions at least, represented as desiring Arthur as well as Merlin, Ceridwen was married and no other men are mentioned. Connected with this sexual licentiousness is jealousy: Circe transformed Glaucus’ beloved Scylla into a monster, Medea killed Jason’s new wife, and Morgan – at least in some traditions – was envious of Guinevere.
Connections
Finally, it’s interesting to note that both couplets were only loosely connected in stories. Circe is Medea’s aunt, and yet they only meet once, when Medea and Jason have just killed Medea’s brother and need to be cleansed (that’s book 4 of the Argonautica). Ceridwen and Morgan le Fay are both connected with the Arthurian legend – Ceridwen perhaps most strenuously, through her son Taliesin – though no one ever connected the two figures. It seems that there is only room for one witch in these stories…
When the hurlyburly’s done…
The arch-witches of Greek and Welsh myth had a lot in common: they had an uneasy status and lived in a place removed from normal society, you couldn’t quite trust them to be on your side, they had transformational powers and were generally not very nice to children, and in love they were certainly fervent but never very successful. Some of these powers are still connected with more modern folktale witches: gingerbread houses in deep dark woods, transformational powers, giving apples to innocent children, and brewing love potions. Circe and Ceridwen even had cauldrons! None of our ancient witches, however, wore a pointy hat or used a broomstick. They weren’t ugly either. And warts were completely out of the picture. So why not dress up as a mythological witch for Halloween for a change?
Written by Evelien Bracke
HecateAs an after-thought…
Of course the four figures cannot be equated. Their stories are quite different, even if they share some essential characteristics. In fact, you could trace other figures from Greek mythology in the Welsh stories.
The dogs barking near Modron might remind one of Hecate, the goddess of witches in Greek myth whose tell-tale sign of presence were barking dogs.
Ceridwen’s failed transformation of her son resembles the failed immortalisations by Greek goddesses (Thesis failed to immortalise Achilles, Demeter was stopped from immortalising Demophoon, Eos managed to immortalise her lover Tithonus but he withered away because she had failed to ask for eternal youth – in fact Circe seems to be one of the only ones who did succeed).
Ceridwen’s name might be derived from the Welsh cerdd, ‘skill’, which makes her similar to Medea and Metis, the ‘clever/skilled one’. It might also be derived from cyrrid, ‘crooked’. Does Ceridwen’s action of swallowing and then regurgitating her child remind you of a Greek god with crooked cunning? It’s Cronus, the evil Titan god who swallowed his children and was deposed by Zeus.
I know these are all highly tentative connections (and I have only pointed out the most obvious ones), but it’s interesting seeing similar themes pop up in different contexts.
She held the keys, the annointed one took them. When the great "god" pan died when the earthquake shook the temple. Interesting tho that she was tripartate. Did she perhaps have a piece of technology that allowed her to literally duplicate herself? Or did ahe conglomerate with 2 other godesses ala potara fusion? But werent Prometheus and Epimetheus titans? She couldntve been the only one.. her association with demeter and artemis.. the tripartate nature. I love the greeks version of the 3rd age. Again.. the stories are so similar.. modified for cultural quirks.. yet why is thats so hard to accept as a possibility? Its just a myrh a story .. ignorant mans attempt to explain the way things work thrutheir faith in the created dietys domain. But what if its ignorant mans history. each of these gods and goddesses a slave pawn food source and occasionally a sex toy.. if you accept bible as history.. everything else notwithstanding (certainly enough archeological evidence to convince me) then there is no reason these myths might also hold kernels of truth, and self understanding.. if we were ,all races, created as a relatively idiotic 2nd draft. Why should we hate each olher and fear each other? Each of the 7 fallen(elohim) had their own empires and implanted the genetic memory to hate what isnt similar? Y gold lust unless imprinted again within the chimaeric dna experiment so as to mine tiamats veins for them? Y even the need for a higher power unless the god expiernce portion of the brain that certain hallucinations and project bluebeam stimulates was again placed there so this homo sapiens wouldnt rebel and destroy the moon domes of igigi like krishna and the other atlanteans(1st man, cromagnon) but this is all just useless speculation.. unless their brown dwarf planet indeed does return in the next few deaces to a century.. if chernobyl wasnt also the 4th trumpet. P.s. i dont think my theiry is too far fetched after the artefact rape of the middle east by the us 3 letter agencies.. or after reading clintons email about gilgameshs immortality machine.. or how the treads connect.. but ahain.. ive yet to see any proof that im wrong.. n lots that i might be close to truth. Tangental exposition finis
They are also used in appliances such as refrigerators, air conditioners, and televisions, giving users control over when these devices are powered on or off. In addition to their basic function of controlling electrical circuits, switches can also have advanced features. For example, some switches may have multiple positions or levels that allow users to adjust the output or intensity of electrical devices. Switches can also be equipped with timers or sensors, enabling them to automatically turn devices on or off based on predetermined schedules or environmental factors. Overall, electric switches are fundamental components of electrical systems, providing users with a convenient and safe way to control the flow of electricity in their surroundings..
Reviews for "Can Anyone Become an Electric Witch? Breaking the Myths"
1. Sarah - 1/5 stars - I really didn't enjoy "What is an Electric Witch." The plot was confusing and didn't make much sense to me. The characters were poorly developed and lacked depth. I found myself struggling to connect with any of them. Additionally, the writing style was choppy and inconsistent. Overall, I was very disappointed with this book and would not recommend it.
2. John - 2/5 stars - I had high hopes for "What is an Electric Witch" based on the intriguing title and cover art, but unfortunately, it fell short for me. The story started off promising, but quickly became convoluted and hard to follow. The pacing was off, with slow and uninteresting sections dragging on and important events feeling rushed. The dialogue felt forced and unnatural, making it difficult to engage with the characters. Overall, I felt let down by this book and it didn't meet my expectations.
3. Emily - 2/5 stars - "What is an Electric Witch" had an interesting concept, but it failed to deliver for me. The writing was overly descriptive and lacked clarity. I found myself confused and having to reread passages multiple times to understand what was happening. The characters were shallow and lacked depth, making it hard to care about their fates. The plot had potential, but it was executed poorly. Overall, I was disappointed with this book and wouldn't recommend it to others.
4. Michael - 1/5 stars - I really struggled to get through "What is an Electric Witch." The writing style was pretentious and full of unnecessary metaphors that didn't add anything to the story. The plot was convoluted and didn't make much sense. The characters were unlikable and lacked any redeeming qualities. I found the whole reading experience to be a chore and couldn't wait for it to be over. I would not recommend this book to anyone.