The high priestess types are often squeamish about the body. The Vulgar Witch is not. She knows that menstrual blood is one of the most potent banishing agents on the planet. She knows that sweat carries intention. She knows that sex magic can be messy, clumsy, and hilarious—and still rearrange reality.
To understand this figure, one must first deconstruct the term "vulgar." In contemporary parlance, vulgar implies obscenity or bad taste. Historically, however, it simply meant "common." The Vulgar Witch is the witch of the vulgus —the mob, the peasantry, the dirt-under-the-fingernails reality of survival. She does not float above the earth; she digs into it. This paper posits that the Vulgar Witch is defined by three core tenets: a rejection of polite speech (the usage of curses), a rejection of bodily shame (the grotesque), and a rejection of hierarchical subservience (class warfare). She is the manifestation of everything polite society wishes to repress. The Vulgar Witch