My friend Ninnian said “Old women are invisible, but it allows them to accomplish much because no one is watching them.”

That’s a very empowering statement, but it goes both ways. I remember I story I heard in college in the 70s. Two girls had been put together in the dorms, one from Texas, and one from NY City. The first Friday they shared a room, the New Yorker, a Jewish girl, started to light the Shabbat candles, and her roommate just about freaked out. “You can’t do that! Someone might see!”
It turned out that the Texan girl’s mother had taught her the same ceremony, but it had do be done in the cellar, in secret. This had been passed down from mother to daughter for generations. The Texican girl firmly denied that it had anything to do with Judaism, her family were Christians. They just had this secret thing the women in their family did. Apparently her family were some sort of Marrano Jews, who generations before had tried to preserve their faith, while staying safely Christian in the eyes of their neighbors, and anyone who’d hold it against them. Sadly, the meaning behind the secret practices had been lost although the rites remained. The Christian girl firmly refused to believe that her family’s special secret had anything to do with Judaism, even when presented with seeing it done by her roommate.

That story reminds me of the episode Omega Glory from the Star Trek of my childhood, where the Yangs clung to the sacred words of the documents from centuries before, unaware of the meaning of the words. (See what happens when you stop teaching kids how to read cursive?) Kirk must “translate” the Eed plebnista, to the Preamble to the Constitution of the USA, to restore the meaning that they had forgotten, despite their efforts to preserve its importance, defending his violation of the Prime Directive of non-interference, as simply nudging the culture back in the direction it was meant to go (certainly in the minds of the American viewers). There are many logic flaws in those early Star Trek scripts, but the problem of clinging to interpretations of the past that are incorrect, and no longer serve the purpose intended is pretty universal. Change is hard, and especially so when what we are trying to preserve is also considered to secret and sacred to be examined, studied and possibly adapted to circumstances.

While it is true that those who are not seen can accomplish much without being noticed, it is also true that there is much they cannot accomplish as easily. I love the ectopian pagan culture in Starhawk’s Fifth Sacred Thing, and the idea that it was initiated by old women with nothing to lose digging up the streets and planting gardens, but I find it hard to believe that those same women on planning committees might not have accomplished more and faster than they did with pickaxes and seeds. I observe that it is much harder to replant minds with lack of bigotry than to replace asphalt with soil.
I’ve often had problems understanding the last corner of The Witch’s Pyramid: To Keep Silent. I can well imagine that it was critical in the European Reformation when the restructuring of thought about world geography, religion, science, government and more led to vicious attacks on just about every aspect of life. The accusation of witchcraft could be deadly, and while many communities expressed contrition and confusion as to how it had happened even a few years after a witch craze, people were left in a world where they were no longer sure of what could be trusted. To Keep Silent these days is often suggested to be a way of consolidating your energy within, but if the idea does go back to that period, it may simply have been necessary to survive.

If you are already invisible, by all means seize and use any advantage that may give you. But do not deny the disadvantages. As we age, physical disabilities may teach us how to utilize our resources better, but we are still not as strong and swift as we were. Women may have developed many techniques for coping with the lack of power that has been denied them by the Patriarchal cultures than still dominate. We should all work together to create a more equal culture without advantages being given on the basis of gender, age, race, religion or any of the myriad justifications we come up with to create “us-them” scenarios. There is no benefit to supporting a biased system. As Martin Niemöller pointed out, when we allow others to be abused, we do not protect ourselves by letting them be attacked first, we weaken our own defenses. In our current culture “foreigners”, LGBT, people of color, women, are all under attack by the Christian Right, but can we doubt that as soon as they have consolidated their power, that they will not ‘suddenly’ remember how dangerous Witches are?
Let us take advantage of our temporary invisibility to harness what we know and dare and will, and help protect the others being attacked with our magick. We can use our skills to heal our communities, to divine the best ways forward, to redirect the changes around us to more positive, balanced ways. Let us never stop looking for the sources of our knowledge, and be willing to learn new ways of understanding what has been passed down to us from our ancestors, and adapt it to create a better world for those who come after us.