By this Hat shall you know Them: When they want to computer-animate a small army of comic sidekick Witches in Shrek 3, how do you know that they are Witches? Because they all have pointed hats on top of their heads.
When they want to remind you on Bewitched- week after week- that Samantha is a Witch, how do they do it? By showing a cartoon of her flying through the night on her broom- with a pointed hat on her head. What is the pivotal moment in Wicked when Elphaba stops being a green-skinned outcast-girl and becomes a Witch? When she puts a pointed hat on her head.
How do they indicate the Witches in The Wizard of Oz and HR Pufnstuf, to say nothing of cartoons and comic-books innumerable? They put pointed hats on their heads. What do (to judge) thousands of women get a kick out of doing each year in the West Village (NYC) Halloween Parade? Being Witches- which means apparently, spending a night running around with a pointed hat on their heads.
To put on the Hat is to become a Witch; to take it off is to return to being Just a Person again.
It is not clear how the Hat- the sharpest social signal of Witchcraft- came to be associated with Witches. In The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, Katherine Howe notes that hat styles of the early 17th century resemble Witches’ hats, and believes them to be derived from the hennin- the tall, cone-like hats popular in the early medieval period. It is true that 17th century hats can suggest Witches’ hats (generally with a blunter top, or with the point sliced off, to create a flat top); it is reasonable to suppose that they derive from the hennin.
Of course, that does not explain how the 14th and 15th centuries developed the idea of the hennin, or of making a hat by (essentially) wearing a long, pointed cone on top of your head.
To seemingly slip to another topic: a few weeks ago, Tim posted Silken Crossroads here on The Juggler, about the Mummies of the Xinjiang Desert of China (also Xiangjiang), an arid, barren region that lies between Tibet and Mongolia- the site of a remarkable historical mystery.
Here are unearthed the (basically) freeze-dried burials of a small community of people- but not an Asian people. They appear to be European and artifacts about them indicate that they are Celtic Europeans- who buried one another in China some 4000 years ago.
The Celts are known as great travelers, apparently wandering the earth with zeal. The idea that some of them may have made their way into China 40 centuries ago is very incredible- yet here are these graves.
The most remarkable of all is the one who might be called “the Witch-Mummy”- because of what she wears on her head.
My friend (and Juggler reader) Old Gray Mouse, who has studied upon the Xinjiang Mummies for some years now, collected the following picture some time ago (I will leave it to him to explain its provenance and to add his thoughts as to the Mummies’ significance); thanks to Jason, the picture is now safely stored in The Juggler Media Archives as well.
Tim quite rightly cautions in his original piece against determining that this eccentric (and really old) hat is somehow “proof” that the Celts had Shamanic-Priestess-Witches in their communities.
All the same- here is the mummy of a woman laid to her rest, presumably by her Celtic kins-people, 4000 years ago in the Chinese desert- with what looks to our Western-Culture-trained eyes like nothing so much as a Witch’s hat on her head.
Imagine that you are an archaeologist, participating in the excavation of a Celtic burial site, preserved in a dry, barren region of China. As you carefully unearth a grave- this is what you find.
Who was this woman- buried with this hat carefully arranged atop her head?
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