Kate Benson
Mr. Dean Hardy
Apologetics
October 8, 2014
As Halloween approaches, stores begin to stock their shelves with orange and black clichés. Jack o’ lanterns, black cats, candy corn, and spiders. Webs, skeletons, ghosts, and vampires. But taking center stage at this spooky time of year is, without a doubt, the witch. An ugly hag, clothed in tattered black robes and a pointed hat, flying on her broomstick, she steals small children and spreads mischief. Magical and evil, the witch is a spotlight character during Halloween. On a seemingly different note, Miriam Simos was born in St. Paul, Minnesota to Jack Simos and Bertha Claire Goldfarb on June 17th, 1951. The connection lies in the fact that, by 1974, Miriam had changed her name to Starhawk, moved to San Francisco, founded a coven of witches, and was teaching her own classes on the Craft (Knowles, “Starhawk”). This transformation no doubt raises questions: How did this change occur? What do those words mean? Does she have magic? Can she fly!? Are witches real!? Hold onto your broomsticks, because this paper answers these questions and more.
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Her father was a social worker and her mother was a professor of social work at UCLA. Sadly, when she was only five years old, Jack Simos passed away (Knowles, “Starhawk”). Having a full time job, Bertha Claire was unable to take care of her daughter as she would have wanted. Therefore, Miriam spent much of her childhood and adolescence raised by her Russian immigrant, Orthodox Jewish grandparents. They brought her up in the same religion, and sadly, drove her away. She became more and more aware of the sexism shown towards women in many of the dominant/common religions, fell away from Judaism, and adopted the spirituality of the Goddess, witchcraft, and paganism (Knowles,