Maybe five years ago, I got essentially run out of a Facebook group for queer male Witches. Somebody had asked if it was appropriate to call themselves the label "Warlock" if it resonated with them. I told them that the modern Witchcraft community tends not to like using that word because of inaccurate assumptions about where it comes from, so while there is nothing wrong with calling yourself a Warlock, you are likely to find yourself in situations where other Witches will be mad at you for using it, and you will need to explain yourself. I explained that, while the etymology of "warlock" is pretty negative, the history of the word "witch" is similarly negative, and there is no reason to think "Witch" is an empowering term but that "Warlock" can't be.
This was all based on my own experiences, as somebody who does identify with the word "Warlock" but who doesn't call himself that very frequently in public Pagan spaces because explaining myself gets really annoying after a while. The owner of the group absolutely flipped his shit on me, because he had been trying (albeit mostly failing) to "bring back" the usage of warlock as an in-community term used to isolate members of the Witch community who do bad things. If a Witch were in the news for doing some sort of crime, he would parade their name around in the group, encouraging everybody to call them a "warlock" to shame them.
He was extremely annoying. If he ever reads this, I hope he knows I'm talking about him.
But personal identities and annoyance over one guy aside, I think it's important to establish first of all why this whole idea is ridiculous. See, a (thankfully decreasing) number of Witches believe that the word "warlock" was used by covens during the Burning Times to label Witches who did things like betray the coven to Christian authorities, so they like calling it a "slur" and complaining about anybody who uses it. And, well... this is fucking stupid.
First of all, "The Burning Times" itself is a myth. The people who were tried and executed for Witchcraft were not really Witches, the covens didn't really exist, the "traditions" we associate with covens at this time were mostly made up from a laundry list of the fears and fantasies of Christians. Yes, there was some tie-in to folk magic and pre-Christian beliefs, but the whole idea that our religion exists as an unbroken line to some ancient network of Witch covens that were persecuted during the Witch Trials is at best a mythology, not a historical fact. Because of this, any tradition or terminology purported to have been developed because of "The Burning Times" should be regarded as non-historical.
Furthermore, the people documenting the Witch Trials wrote down everything, but there are no contemporary records that use the word "warlock" this way. They just use it to mean "male witch." So even if you are trying to be as traditional as possible and use primary sources, this is simply not a thing. Also, we know that plenty of women accused of Witchcraft used the opportunity to accuse other people and tell wild stories about their covens, so it makes no sense that contemporary witch hunters would have become so confused that they would only use it for male Witches.
If the word "warlock" ever really meant somebody who cooperated with Christian authorities to help exterminate a coven of Witches, it likely would have been used as a positive term by Christians, in at least some circumstances, yet that never happened.
Finally, the earliest known modern covens of Witches did not use "warlock" this way. While early covens typically used "Witch" for men and women, they generally just didn't use "warlock" to refer to people at all, and there were exceptions in which people did call themselves "Warlocks," because newsflash: Not all 20th-century covens practiced the same traditions. The whole idea that term was off-limits to Witches didn't come until very recently, and has no real basis in Witchcraft lore, it's something that was added later for no good reason.
Most Witches today understand that the Burning Times didn't have anything to do with us, but a number of us still hold tightly to the idea that "Warlock" is an insulting term that nobody should ever use. To be clear, I do not think anybody is obligated to call themselves a Warlock. "I don't like to be called that term and prefer to be called a Witch" is the only reason you need to personally reject it! The only problem here is that too many Witches still think it's appropriate to treat "Warlock" like a uniquely bad slur, or imply that people who call ourselves "Warlocks" are by nature either inexperienced or evil, which simply isn't the case at all. Most people who use Warlock for extended periods of time have well-thought-out reasons for doing it.
With all that said, I wanted to talk about some of my personal reasons for identifying as a "Warlock." Again, you are not obligated to use the term yourself, even if you have things in common with me, it is all a matter of personal preference:
Listen: I'm not arguing that calling me a "Witch" is misgendering or anything like that. I call myself a "Witch," I don't mind you calling me a "Witch," I call myself a "Witch" a bunch of times in this essay alone. But the word "Witch" is one of those words that is gender neutral... until it isn't. Yes, during the Witch Trials they used the word "Witch" regardless of gender, but it's decidedly a very feminine-coded word, especially once you venture outside the Pagan and Witch community, where identifying as a "Witch" or adopting a Witchy aesthetic has been used a lot as a feminist power statement ("grandaughters of the witches you couldn't burn" type stuff). While none of this makes the word "Witch" gender exclusive, it made it a lot harder to use back before I was able to medically transition, because it still implies femininity. While I don't really need to worry about that anymore as a medically-transitioned, mustachio'd trans man, the word "Warlock" still gives me a lot of gender euphoria as a distinctly masculine label.
This also tracks a lot with my practice. Although right now I mostly do practical magic for material needs alongside Devotional Polytheistic worship, I do have a strong affinity for masculine mysteries, and like incorporating more heavily masculine symbolism into my practice and identity. Adopting the word "Warlock" is a big part of that.
The main reason people give for avoiding the word "Warlock" is that it means "oathbreaker." Yes, some people have tried to claim it comes from the word "varðlokkur," which would tie it to an ancient Norse tradition of singing sacred songs, but I have found no good reason to suspect that etymology is accurate. As far as I am concerned, it does mean "oathbreaker."
What I think people need to understand, though, is that breaking oaths is not inherently bad. Yes, you should avoid making oaths you can't keep, but the reality is that many of us have sworn oaths without knowing all the information we would have needed to make a sound decision, or in the case of us ex-Christians, we may have sworn oaths as children, or even had oaths sworn on our behalf without our consent if we were subjected to infant baptism. In fact, the reason the word "Warlock" was only used for men may have been that men were the ones being held accountable for breaking Christian oaths.
Although I was already using the term "Warlock" at the time, one of the things that stuck with me was reading the book "The Twelve Wild Swans" by Starhawk. This follows a variation of a folktale featuring twelve brothers who are turned into swans. They make an oath that, when they are turned back into men, they will kill the first girl they see. They find that the first girl they see is their sister, who had saved them. She encourages them to break the wicked oath they had made. For me, this presents an important lesson: Following through with a shitty oath is not good just because it was an oath. You are morally obligated to break wicked oaths.
I have reclaimed a lot of terminology. In addition to the slurs we consider "normal" in the Pagan community (Pagan, Witch, Heathen, etc.), I am also queer, I will gladly belt out the song "Faggot," and I used the word "tranny" a lot back when that was still a common word for a trans person to use. While I will gladly advocate for people's right not to be called slurs like this, for my own sake, I like the process of taking a word people threw at me on the playground when I was a kid and saying, "Yeah, I am. So?"
Nobody really throws the word "warlock" around like it's an actual slur except that one guy I talked about at the beginning of this essay (that's part of why people's aversion to it is so baffling) but it still fits into that process of taking a word describing something people think is "bad" and turning it into a word of power and pride.
A big part of why so many people don't like the term "Warlock" is because, simply put, it sounds like it describes somebody who would cast a curse on you.
And you know what? I might. OK, probably not on you, I don't even know who you are, and if you made it this far I assume you are interested in being educated about different ways people relate to Witchcraft, which makes you A-OK in my book until proven otherwise.
But, simply-put, I am not a love-and-light kind of Witch. I am the kind of Witch who will gladly use baneful magic against my oppressors. There was a time, not too very long ago, when the word "Witch" was widely understood to mean that, and the feminist power type Witches I talked about earlier are doing a decent job bringing that back, but for now the word "Witch" is still suffering from the effects of years of sanitization by people who claim we all follow some "Harm None" rule and are afraid we will suffer three times the retribution of anything we do (we won't, because the Threefold Law does not exist).
The word "Warlock" has not been sanitized in the same way. It's been predominantly used by people who, while they tend to have decent ethics, are not afraid of defending themselves (such as Satanists, who do call themselves Warlocks).
Anyway, now that I've talked a bit about my own personal reasons, a couple more things to say about this subject:
This segment, to be completely honest, is speculation. The thing is, while most Pagans and Witches today are perfectly open to understanding that their preconceived notions about this term are incorrect, there are some who, no matter what you say, will claim that this word is a "slur" that nobody can ever use in a positive way.
The question is... why? Personally, I feel that a lot of this has to do with the psychology of wanting to have something we can be righteously angry about. We are a tiny religious minority, and as a tiny religious minority we experience religious oppression, but at the same time, we have already reclaimed virtually all of the negative terminology Christians have on hand to insult us.
Pagan? That's literally a slur.
Witch? That was bad! They were using that to indicate people were bad!
Heathen? Also a slur.
And yet we use these terms and identify with them so thoroughly that a lot of Pagans and Witches don't even understand them as slurs. They've never been weaponized against us in the same way they were weaponized against Indigenous people, or Jewish people (a lot of Witch stereotypes are anti-Semitic tropes), or heretics (like the Waldensians, a Christian sect that was so associated with Witchcraft--wrongly--that the word "Waldensian" is interchangeable with "Witch" in some languages) or other religious minorities, because we took them for ourselves so long ago it doesn't even occur to us that they were ever bad things to be called.
In fact, when I was conversing with that group mod I started this essay talking about? He insisted that there has never been a point in history in which "Witch" was considered a bad thing... something so obviously incorrect that it baffles me to this day he ever said it.
So I have a feeling that a lot of people simply like having this one word they can claim is a terrible slur that nobody is allowed to use.
But finally, I wanted to make it clear:
Warning that this section has some content frankly talking about sexual abuse.
A while ago, there was a sexual predator who lured some children to him by claiming to be a "magical warlock" who could cure their mother's illness. This guy could have used any terminology he wanted in this endeavor. He could have called himself a wizard, or a sorcerer, or whatever else, he just happened to pick the word "warlock," because it is well-known to mean "male witch." Rather than talk about the actual issue here--that somebody was using the promise of magical talents to lure children into his grasp--way too many people were stuck on the fact that he called himself a warlock. There were people who had the absolute fucking gall to say that these children should have known better because he called himself that. This was victim blaming at its most extreme, and regardless of my own feelings about the label "Warlock," I did not appreciate it.
So suggesting that using the word "warlock" should have been a red flag here does a couple of things. First, it suggests that there is some simple, handy way to tell if a Pagan or magic user is a bad person, and that in doing so they will be immediately discovered and ousted from the community.
Here's the deal: The Pagan and Witch community has had plenty of sexual predators who did not call themselves warlocks. Every religious community of significant size has predators. A lot of them will give you no obvious indication at all that they are bad people. Frankly, there are even people who do pretty much identify themselves directly as unsafe, horrible people who are still embraced by significant numbers of the community regardless. I remember when both the Frosts were still alive they continued to get invited to speak at Pagan events and had some really high-profile supporters, even though they had a chapter in their book "The Witch's Bible" that gave literal instructions on how to molest a minor child to "initiate" them into a coven (you can read about this here, but be aware it's really descriptive). Ironically, one of the people who blew a lot of whistles about the Frosts ran a store called "The Warlock Shop." You can find a lot of writings by the Frosts flipping their shit about this guy, because they were really unhappy about people criticizing their work. I'm not here to elevate him as a person either (most historical Witchcraft practitioners have skeletons in their closets), but it's worth mentioning that of the two sides of that feud, the ones publishing step by step guides to molestation were not the ones using the word "Warlock."
It's also worth mentioning that the owner of The Warlock Shop was gay, and the Frosts were (for a long time, anyway) well known to be homophobic. I only mention this to segue into the point that, today, most people publicly identifying as Warlocks are queer. I'm not saying that there aren't exceptions, I'm sure there are people reclaiming that word who are pieces of shit just as there are pieces of shit calling themselves Witches, Pagans, and everything else, but when you broadly try to claim that people who call ourselves "Warlocks" are inherently bad people and especially sexual predators, you are making a false connection between queer people and sexual predators, whether you intended to or not.
References to sexual abuse end here.
Again, I'm not here to try getting you to use the word "Warlock" if you don't want to. This is all a matter of personal preference. But it is really important to avoid making blanket statements about whether or not people are allowed to use a term to describe ourselves, based on historical lore that never really happened, and it's worth understanding why an increasing number of men who practice Witchcraft would choose this terminology to describe ourselves.
Happy Trails,
Wolfpeach