Witch?
It's a tribal name—theedish, we would say. (In Witch, a thede is a tribe.)
Some 50 generations gone, a people called the Hwicce lived along the River Severn in what is now south-west England. (1400 years later, we still name our daughters Sabrina in Her honor.)
The Hwicce of then, you see, are the Witches of now.
It's not all lineal descent, of course. There are ways and ways of belonging, and bloodlines only one.
(You can adopt in, you can marry in. You can initiate in, acculturate in. Peoples have always been porous around the edges.)
We have our own tribal religion, though it's not witchcraft per se. (Witchcraft is our magic.) Not all Witches practice, of course, but if you're a Witch, it's your religion (and your magic), to hold to or not, as you yourself see fit.
Is it historical, you ask: Old Hwicce to New Witch?
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Is it historical, you ask: Old Hwicce to New Witch? Sorry to be blunt but no it isn't; not historically nor from an etymological
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Check out maverick archaeologist Stephen J. Yeates' The Tribe of Witches: The Religion of the Dobunni and the Hwicce (2008) and A
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Steven, this is some fascinating information about Hwicce. Would you share sources, please? Many thanks, Julie
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Yeates, of course, is writing from an outsider's perspective. For more from the Inside, web-search my name, "Paganistan," and "Hwi