Why every woman should hex their way to the top! The Serpent Queen  

I have a dirty little secret; I love historical fiction.  I can curl up with historical romance books for days.  There is just something about women overcoming the odds, rising through the ranks to dominant an industry or acquire an entire queendom.  Of course, I am talking about Catherine De Medici. She was a woman ahead of her time, and quite often vilified by her enemies as being a witch. In Starz, The Serpent Queen, she tells her rags to riches story of how she crawled from the pits of poverty and despair to become the reigning queen of France. And she does this of course, using black magic. People hated Catherine because, one she was successful at doing magic. And two, she doesn’t give two f*cks about what others have to say about it. This is why I believed that every woman should take a few lessons from Catherine and start to hex their way to the top.  

For some reason, a great deal of successful women from yesteryear dibbled and dabbled in some form of magic. There was Queen Elizabeth from the White Queen. Cleopatra confided in a priestess of Isis to seduce Ceasar and later Mark Anthony. And Marie Laveau used New Orleans voodoo to keep an entire city in a trance. We can’t forget about the powerful mystical witches on television like the Red Woman on Game of Thrones, and Tia Dalma from the Pirates of the Caribbean. With so many positive representations of witches, you would think that people would think differently about them. Yet, the stigma still remains. Many people truly believed that witchcraft and black magic is bad, simply because spell casting is often used for malevolent purposes. However, what people fail to understand that many women who become witches, are often born into terrible situations. The odds are heavily stacked against, and magic is sadly their only weapon.  

Elizabeth from the White Queen was an aging widow. Cleopatra was desperate to survive after her family was killed. Marei Laveau used New Orleans voodoo to gain some leverage in the Jim Crow South. And Catherine, the Serpent Queen used it to not only save her hide, but also her staff, and even the entire country of Italy. Witches are often underdogs. In most cases, the whole world is against them. So, they even up the odds by casting a few spells here and there. Catherine, a plain-faced girl, was born into a noble family. Yet, when she was just a baby in her crib, both her parents died from the madness that comes from having syphilis. With no next of kin, Catherine is taking in by the nuns, whose child rearing would be considered cruel and unusual by today’s standards. She is rescued by her uncle, who doesn’t give two sh*ts about her. Instead, like most wealthy and/or noble woman born back in the day, he was going to use her as a bargaining tool. In short, he wanted to marry her off to the second Prince of France, in exchange for peace in Italy. They march off and arrive in a gawdy and weirdly ostentatious egg. The French nobles are underwhelmed by Catherine’s beauty. Yet, her wit, and her ability to do whatever it takes to save her people, and her hide becomes most admirable.  

Now, historically speaking Catherine didn’t have the best reputation. She was known as the black witch, and later as the Serpent Queen. She was rumored to have kept her own little harem, a gaggle of harlots who she sent out to seduce wealthy French noblemen. Catherine’s harlots would report back to her all the gossip and dirty little secrets that they picked up during their late-night tryst and pillow talks.  Catherine, being a witch, well, she didn’t hesitate to use this information in court. Catherine was thought to be a lover of nature and infatuated with the occult. She had a particularly special place in her heart for Nostradamus and tended to enjoy tinctures of herbs here and there. Perhaps the biggest sorcery that she performed was being married to Prince Henri for almost ten years, without producing an heir. She probably could have gone to her death bed, without ever having a child. Yet the pressure was brewing, Catherine needed to have an heir, or be sent back to Italy, childless, and divorced. Catherine, seemingly desperate drank animal urine and succeeded in getting pregnant a total of ten times, thus giving Prince Henri two male heirs.  

However, in the series, Catherine consults a magician. He lectures her about the price of magic, and how wishes can only be granted when a sacrifice is given. With magic, there is always a cost. And no one, not even a magician, knows what the cost is. In the series, it is Catherine’s handsome dressmaker who is pulled apart. He serves as the sacrifice needed to give Catherine heirs. Later, it is Catherine’s son and later her husband Henri who both sacrificed themselves in order to give Catherine the freedom she so desired. They gave her power, thus allowing her to be the reigning queen.  Now, if you have never watched the series, you would think that Catherine was a wicked witch. She used her magic to control and gain power for power’s sake. In truth, Catherine was the only one in court who was completely selfless. She loved her children, and even her husband. She realized that if she didn’t take control, the court would devolve into complete chaos. And that’s really what black magic is. Black magic is all about taking power from people who are manipulative, coercive, and egotistical. Once you take this power, you then use it so that your enemy slowly destroys themselves. In short, black magic has been used by the notoriously powerless to gain leverage, or to help them take control of a seemingly negative situation.  

Now, a lot of you are thinking that it’s wrong. It’s just wrong to practice black magic, because someone, somewhere is going to hurt. But guess what Mrs. Self Righteous.  People are being hurt and harmed all over the world. Teenage girls are being sold into prostitution, unharmed men are being bullied and shot, people are working for slave wages and can’t even pay the rent, and thousands of animals are dying due to pollution and contamination. When do we decide to take power from people who abuse it? When do we decide that we are going to take control of a seemingly negative situation? When do we make the decision to hex our way to the top?