I don't particularly care of Rev. James Agee's oratorical style, but I went to church on television with him one time and heard an interesting sermon on witchcraft.
My initial, knee-jerk reaction to his discourse style was that he's into bashing women, since the sin he was exposing is one that Christians of a certain ilk have long used as an excuse to burn powerful women at the stake.
But as he got into descriptions and examples of what he meant by "witchcraft," I began to realize that what he was talking about is the different forms of psychological manipulation that people in "one down" positions will use to control those around them. People who are right-sized with God don't need to manipulate: they can speak directly about what it is they want or need from others.
Since women are largely in a "one down" position in the social structure--particularly in Christian churches like Mr. Agee's where patriarchal traditions are strongly emphasized--I saw that it wasn't woman-bashing per se that had Rev. Agee so upset. He was trying to expose the ways that little people get inside our heads and manipulate our feelings, attitudes, memories, and perceptions.
According to Agee, a witch is someone who can raise the ghost of our ancestors. She can speak with the voices most deeply embedded in our psyches: Mom or Dad or...King Saul, David's foster father and mentor.
By speaking with that ghostly voice, the witch can marshall the power of long-forgotten wounds and fear-embedded memories. But she does this covertly: there is rarely, if ever, open dialog with the ghost about the actual wounds and memories themselves. Agee's witch is more interested in enchantment, which is to slyly manipulate to her own purposes those attitudes and beliefs and defenses that have grown over our sensitive wounds and fear-embedded memories. Her preference is to keep the true source of her power hidden from the sight. The more we are ashamed to acknowledge our wounds and the embedded fears passed on from our ancestors, the greater her power.
Does anyone have that Mo Letter citation where he refers to Maria as a witch?