The Witch to Hag Pipeline
Why getting older feels so spooky
Hag-ily ever after
It’s October and I’m one year older. My birthday month (yes, I said month), is in my opinion the most magnificently witchy one of the year.
Birthdays can be complicated things. They’re a reminder of who is around to celebrate with us and who isn't. They remind us of our mortality (yikes), the ways we’ve changed over the last 365 days, and all the ways we haven’t.
Birthdays also mark an extremely personal and completely universal form of change: aging.
As physical signs of this transformation become evermore present—lines laced between brows, dark hair turned silver, sun marking its permanent home on skin—I’ve grappled with a feeling I’m embarrassed to admit: fear.
Outside the deeply human, borderline mundane fear of death, lies a whispering anxiety that sits low, like a sea line mist, nipping at my ankles as I walk along the passage of time. This fear is invisible yet omnipresent. It is the fear that in losing my youth I'll be deemed irrelevant, discarded, and become like the fear itself—invisible.
The Invisible Woman
The experience of social invisibility can touch anyone at any phase of their life, but identity politics intensify the division between the seen and unseen—around the boardroom table, in the doctor’s office, on the street late at night, within media coverage, on dating apps. Among women, the unease is bound up in aging and is so widespread that there is a name for it: Invisible Woman Syndrome.
In the western world where youth equals desirability and desirability begets social capital, the obsession with erasing signs of aging feels like it’s at an all time high. Botox and plastic surgery are on the rise, with the number of total botox injections increasing 459% since 2000. Even for people who are objectively young, trends like the morning shed and Gen Alpha’s obsession with skincare are leading to “dermorexia.”
I’ve been in search of a different cultural cauldron to soak in. One where gray hairs roam free, smile lines signal happiness, and the sloughing off of my younger years means stepping back from society’s mirror and spending more time doing, quite literally, anything else.
In trying to understand the why behind this invisibility phenomenon, I’ve uncovered a tightly woven history of witches, ageism, and death. At the center of this story sits one archetypal woman, the hag.
Down with Hot Girl Summer. Up with Hot Hag Fall.
Who is a hag and what does she have to do with the fear of aging?
A hag is a witch, one that is old and considered ugly and dangerous because of it.
BBC podcast episode “Hag,” explores how the European witch hunts have shaped the lives and our view of older women today. It is well documented that during the European witch trails, 64% of women who were accused of being witches were over the age of 40 (read: teetering on the edge of their barren womb era). Many of these women were likely considered hags.
In her essay “Witches,” part five of a series called, “A bloody history of menopause,” Helen Foster further unpacks the link between the aging female body and the punishment that comes with it.
“During the witch trials in 16th-century England, descriptions of the accused recorded features such as fragile bones, wrinkled skin, and thinning hair, all physical changes that can be attributed to menopause. In ‘The Discoverie of Witchcraft’ (1584) Reginald Scot, witness to one trial, gives an account of the accused women as ‘commonly old, lame, bleare-eyed, pale, fowle and full of wrinkles.’”
Surely getting old couldn’t have been a crime, so how did the witch hunts turn our sweet grannies into spell book toting menaces to society?
BBC’s “Hag” explores this question.
“The old woman is no longer ‘useful,’ she is no longer child barring and she no longer has the strength to work. There was a much greater chance that she could become insolent and more uninhibited than younger women.”
In a time when women were expected to be docile and, or shall I say, demure, this free-speaking “insolence” was a very real threat to the powers that be. As time went on, “hag” expanded from a derogatory, anglo-saxon term for older “witches” to the name for women who were not defined by anyone or anything else. They held no titles. Not grandmother. Not mother. Not wife.
In addition to older women, there was an overrepresentation of singles, widows, and the childless in the ranks of the accused. They were perceived as dangerous because they weren’t under the control of a man. Substitute “man” for beauty culture, patriarchy, or heteronormativity and you’ve got your next reality T.V. show—Witch Hunt: Season 2024.
These women stood outside the dominant culture, and that distance gave them the power of sight. With sight came the voice to criticize systems and practices that treated women unfairly.
Who are hags but older women in their power? Free from the cage-like gaze of [insert oppressive system here].
This #HotHagFall I’ll be conjuring hotness in the form of hot takes, hot tea, hot baths, and hot hopes for my wild and magically invisible future.
Cuz I just wanna do witch shit with my friends.
I see it in the cards, you will age
In moments of transition (like birthdays, societally disapproved periods of aging, being accused of witchcraft, etc.) it’s nice to turn to the tarot. The card’s infinite combinations show us we can transform while keeping the core of who we are (not how we look) swaddled and in tact.
Amid the myriad 78 are cards that sit at our molten center, ones that ground and connect us to our truest selves and the challenges we will continue overcome during our lifetime. There is your life card (more on that in a future newsletter), the card associated with your astrological sign, and your card of the year, but today we’ll be talking about a little thing called a tarot birthday correspondence, a birthday card with a capital C.
Tarot card correspondences
For a beautifully thorough explanation of tarot birthday correspondences, how they’re calculated, their connection to astrology, and why the Aces and Pages aren’t included, head here.
For those known to yell, “Now read MY horoscope!” I’ll get right to it.
Look at the list below and find the date range that contains the day of your birthday. Mine would be October 3 to October 12.
Find the court card and number card associated with your birthday.
Pull the cards from your deck. Make note of the suit, the number, the colors.
Journal about one (or all) of the following questions.
What associations do you have with these cards?
When and where have they shown up in readings?
What can they tell you about the challenges you’ve overcome?
Wands
2 of Wands – 1° to 10° Aries – March 21 to March 30
3 of Wands – 11° to 20° Aries – March 31 to April 10
4 of Wands – 21° to 30° Aries – April 11 to April 20
5 of Wands – 1° to 10° Leo – July 22 to August 1
6 of Wands – 11° to 20° Leo – August 2 to August 11
7 of Wands – 21° to 30° Leo – August 12 to August 22
8 of Wands – 1° to 10° Sagittarius – November 23 to December 2
9 of Wands – 11° to 20° Sagittarius – December 3 to December 12
10 of Wands – 21° to 30° Sagittarius – December 13 to December 21
Knight of Wands – 20° Cancer to 20° Leo – July 12 to August 11
Queen of Wands – 20° Pisces to 20° Aries – March 11 to April 10
King of Wands – 20° Scorpio to 20° Sagittarius – November 13 to December 12
Cups
2 of Cups – 1° to 10° Cancer – June 21 to July 1
3 of Cups – 11° to 20° Cancer – July 2 to July 11
4 of Cups – 21° to 30° Cancer – July 12 to July 21
5 of Cups – 1° to 10° Scorpio – October 23 to November 1
6 of Cups – 11° to 20° Scorpio – November 2 to November 12
7 of Cups – 21° to 30° Scorpio – November 13 to November 22
8 of Cups – 1° to 10° Pisces – February 19 to February 28
9 of Cups – 11° to 20° Pisces – March 1 to March 10
10 of Cups – 21° to 30° Pisces – March 11 to March 20
Knight of Cups – 20° Libra to 20° Scorpio – October 13 to November 12
Queen of Cups – 20° Gemini to 20° Cancer – June 11 to July 11
King of Cups – 20° Aquarius to 20° Pisces – February 9 to March 10
Swords
2 of Swords – 1° to 10° Libra – September 23 to October 2
3 of Swords – 11° to 20° Libra – October 3 to October 12
4 of Swords – 21° to 30° Libra – October 13 to October 22
5 of Swords – 1° to 10° Aquarius – January 20 to January 29
6 of Swords – 11° to 20° Aquarius – January 30 to February 8
7 of Swords – 21° to 30° Aquarius – February 9 to February 18
8 of Swords – 1° to 10° Gemini – May 21 to May 31
9 of Swords – 11° to 20° Gemini – June 1 to June 10
10 of Swords – 21° to 30° Gemini – June 11 to June 20
Knight of Swords – 20° Capricorn to 20° Aquarius – January 10 to February 8
Queen of Swords – 20° Virgo to 20° Libra – September 12 to October 12
King of Swords – 20° Taurus to 20° Gemini – May 11 to June 10
Pentacles
2 of Pentacles – 1° to 10° Capricorn – December 22 to December 30
3 of Pentacles – 11° to 20° Capricorn – December 31 to January 9
4 of Pentacles – 21° to 30° Capricorn – January 10 to January 19
5 of Pentacles – 1° to 10° Taurus – April 21 to April 30
6 of Pentacles – 11° to 20° Taurus – May 1 to May 10
7 of Pentacles – 21° to 30° Taurus – May 11 to May 20
8 of Pentacles – 1° to 10° Virgo – August 23 to September 1
9 of Pentacles – 11° to 20° Virgo – September 2 to September 11
10 of Pentacles – 21° to 30° Virgo – September 12 to September 22
Knight of Pentacles – 20° Aries to 20° Taurus – April 11 to May 10
Queen of Pentacles – 20° Sagittarius to 20° Capricorn – December 13 to January 9
King of Pentacles – 20° Leo to 20° Virgo – August 12 to September 11
When I learned my cards were Three of Swords and Queen of Swords, I felt an immediate resonance.
So much of my creative life has been marred and remade in the open wound that is the Three of Swords. Each time heartbreak strikes, the Queen of Swords reminds me that the pen is a sword, one that can be used to write new and visionary futures.
What are your cards? How have they shaped you?
More ingredients for the cauldron
Witch - Listen to the rest of this BBC Radio 4 podcast presented by India Rakusen. It aims to answer the question, “What does it mean to be a witch today?”
A Discovery of Witches - Based on the All Souls Trilogy by Deborah Harkness the show is set in England in a world where demons, vampires, and witches live among humans and have to understand why their species are in decline. Cheesy, pan-European, and wonderfully witchy, the show echos across our own very human struggles with separatism and xenophobia. Watch the trailer.
The Review of Beauty - For years Jessica DeFino’s writing has been my North Star, helping me unpack the problematic roots of beauty culture. Her piece on Botox is *chef’s kiss* .
This Reddit thread about the Invisible Woman.
XO
ALTARU TAROT
Hot Hag Fall!
This has been so on the mark, but I have three number cards and two court cards that fall under Leo. Which ones apply? The first of each or all of them?