Through the Gilded Eye - Witches, Goddesses & the Power of the Gaze

How has art shaped the way we see witches and powerful women?

In this episode of Hex & Muse, we step into the painted worlds of Circe, Lilith, and the witch archetype to explore how female power has been framed across centuries of art history.

From the spellbinding tension of John William Waterhouse’s Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses to the introspective sorcery of Alice Pike Barney’s Circe, the gaze surrounding these figures begins to shift. Through John Collier’s Lilith and Kiki Smith’s haunting sculptural reimagining, we encounter a mythic woman whose body has carried centuries of symbolism - temptation, autonomy, rebellion.

But when witches enter the frame, the atmosphere changes entirely.

In Francisco Goya’s Witches’ Sabbath (El Aquelarre), the witch becomes a spectacle of fear - a gathering framed through suspicion, darkness, and cultural anxiety. Yet in Leonora Carrington’s The Giantess (The Guardian of the Egg), female power appears differently: expansive, cosmic, and deeply integrated with the rhythms of the world.

Together these works reveal something subtle but powerful.

Sometimes the image invites us to witness a moment of spectacle.

Other times, the figure exists within her own world - sovereign, self-possessed, and unmoved by the gaze that watches her.

Because the most revealing question in front of a painting may not be what we see.

But where the image has placed us.

• John William Waterhouse — Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses
• Alice Pike Barney — Circe
• John Collier — Lilith
• Kiki Smith — Lilith (1994)
• Francisco Goya — Witches’ Sabbath (El Aquelarre)
• Leonora Carrington — The Giantess (The Guardian of the Egg)

• Art Renewal Center — Waterhouse, Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses https://www.artrenewal.org
• Smithsonian American Art Museum - Alice Pike Barney, Circe https://americanart.si.edu
• Art UK -John Collier, Lilith https://artuk.org
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art - Kiki Smith, Lilith https://www.metmuseum.org
• Museo del Prado - Francisco Goya, El Aquelarre (Witches’ Sabbath) https://www.museodelprado.es
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art - Leonora Carrington, The Giantess (The Guardian of the Egg) https://www.metmuseum.org

Hex & Muse is recorded on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. I pay my deepest respects to their Elders past and present - and to all First Nations people, whose stories and spirits continue to shape this land.

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Hex & Muse is a spellbound journal of folklore, magic, art, and the sacred feminine - told through cinematic storytelling and whispered histories.
From my altar to yours… thank you for listening.