Defending the Dark Arts: The Construction of the Witch figure in Greek and Japanese Mythologies through Circe in "The Odyssey" and Yubaba in Spirited Away

Witches have been claimed to have existed since the very dawn of humankind. One of their earliest appearances in written records was in the Bible, Book I of Samuel, where King Saul sought her out to summon Samuel’s spirit in order to help him defeat the Philistine army. The witch had complied, yet the Old Testament goes on to condemn witches. Many women persecuted during the almost three centuries of illogical witch hunting were simply women living alone or were the wise women of their villages. This leads to the inevitable topic of discussion – the figure of an independent woman in a patriarchal world. As Laura Mulvey states, the idea of a woman is central to the patriarchal system. It is her lack that produces the phallus as a symbolic presence, it is her desire to make good the lack that the phallus signifies. A single woman without that desire would seem to appear as a threat. Thus, this paper aims to analyze the portrayal of witches through that of Circe – owing a lot of her popularity to the tenth book of “The Odyssey”, a lone woman on an isolated island; and Yubaba, Circe’s Studio Ghibli representation, as instances of stereotypical witches and the feminist implications of the same. While Japanese mythology has many spirits that correspond to Yubaba, the very obvious reference to Circe turning unwanted people invading her territory into pigs cannot be overlooked. Depictions of witches in contemporary times continue to show them as the wicked old ladies – with no regard to their background, the events that brought them to such a pass. Historical and mythological analyses and an in-depth study of women through the ages, witches, and the focused characters will be undertaken in this paper to reveal that the actions of these women were only ever seen superficially – leading to them being wrongly villainized.