Bewitched

An excerpt from The Good Wiccan Guide – Part One: Introduction and Popular Mythology.

Bewitched (1964-1972 and 2005 movie)

I bless the day that William Asher, Elizabeth Montgomery, and Executive Producer Harry Ackerman came up with the idea to do a show about a good suburban housewife witch. The show made folks love witches and witchcraft. It spawned a whole bunch of licensed products and copy-cat products to keep the ‘Good Witch’ genre alive in peoples’ hearts.

The overtones of the show were popular with, and gave strength to, the gay crowd in a time before ‘coming out’ was accepted. Samantha Stephens is a good woman who has a deep dark secret that she cannot tell anyone else. Since the dawn of Bewitched, witches, both good and bad, have become popular subjects in television. It is the Gold Standard to which all other TV shows are measured. Ever since that series, the door to Good Witchery has been left wide open… especially after Darrin Stephens had to design up an ad campaign with a pretty young witch to sell products for Mr. Brinkman’s Halloween candy. A spin-off movie was made in 2005 which was very likable.

I would bet that there is a not a soul alive who has not wished for Samantha’s powers. But if you did have them, how would your life change? What would you do if you could just wiggle your nose and have whatever you desired in a heartbeat? Is instant gratification really the highest and best answer? Or is conceiving of something, acting upon it, and realizing success or invaluable lessons a higher calling. Do you see why the Good Wiccan Samantha consciously chose the life of a mortal. Like Samantha, I believe that it is the calling of the Good Wiccan to imagine what can happen, call it into being through natural evolutionary forces and fuel it by the highest magic of all, love.

~anand sahaja