The body of the witch is a social battleground. It is the site of the unholy, the repressed, the scapegoated body of those deemed less worthy, less valuable, less loveable, and less important in The Marketplace. One must take a moment to consider the place where this devaluing occurs, because it happens in the same place where kings randomly condemn servants to death, or peasant girls to marry a killer lindworm.
Let’s take a moment in The Marketplace to consider what is said of the body of the witch. Their body is ancient, or even corpse-like, misshapen, deformed, perversely sexual, perversely physically powerful at the same time, cannibalistic, gender-non-conforming, sodomy-committing, low-browed, animal-natured, bestial, corpse-loving, baby-hating, with a pronounced overbite, a weak chin and a very great love for tonguing the anus of the devil, to name some of the more famous attributes. This is to say that the witch’s body is everything that was forbidden or looked down upon by The Marketplace. On top of all of this their body is also uncanny in other ways, sneaky and leaky ways, ways that allow them to cause harm to the value system inside the all important Marketplace, to turn events in their favour or to knock down the powerful man, or his children, whilst being nothing but a shadow that creeps down the chimney, under the door, or through a window at night.
