?Double, double, toil and trouble?? McBeth, Shakespeare's tale of murder and mayhem, is about a battle, with lots of murder and mayhem. Shakespeare adds witches to raise the fight to a supernatural level. Witches in Shakespeare's day were a frightening symbol of evil, flying with demons in front of the moon.

During the Salem Witch Trials. when America was new, the witches were considered very evil. Now, looking back, we think of the "witches" as victims and the Judges and Ministers as the evil villains! What a change in the world! Once, the world was looked at as a combat between supernatural evil and good.

But the world became secularized. Religious people, who wanted to hang on to their own view of the world, needed to prove the existence of supernatural evil?and by personifying evil (witches and demons), they proved that the supernatural God exists. The world was in a massive identity crisis.

Now we live in a more scientific and secular world. What do we do with the old symbols--witches and demons? Witches aren't evil, they are fun! Even our modern-day wickens?who call themselves witches?declare that they are not evil. Their religion has nothing to do with good and evil; they are pagans, who recognize neither God nor the devil.

Dressing up and playing Halloween, we harken back, in a playful way, to the time of the medieval witch, with broomstick and black cape. Did they ever ride broomsticks? Apparently the broomstick wasn't their mode of transportation. Apparently they sat on broomsticks while demons dragged them off to secret meetings in the dark night. Their dark cloak was a traveling cape. They traveled at night when everything was black, so of course their clothes are black, also.

This symbol of evil has lost its sting! Witches have come to mean fun and good spirits. We have glitter witches, sexy witches, even good witches! Our treat-or-treat candy fills plastic witches? cauldrons, Glinda the good witch easily overcomes the evil witch of the West, and Halloween shows us again and again that we don't have to worry anymore about the witch's evil power.