Witch

Witches have been reframed negatively by Christians. This is a Christian word. But this is not a Christian character. The real character has deep historical roots, and have other more accurate and more virtuous names.

Actual Names

Witch: drug sorceress, pharmakea, healer, root cutter, doctor, founder of medicine, midwife, Sybil, priestess, Medea, Circe, Hecate, christē (χριστή), Κόρη (Kore), drakaina, drakon, ophis, echidna, viper, pythia, oracle

History

Witches have got a bad rap. And sometimes deserved and largely undeserved. Rather than framing them negatively, let's look at what they were historically

Pre Christian era

Before paganism was made illegal 391CE, the Hellenic world revered their Echidnaic or Oracular priesthoods, those Parthenos who defined justice, and those priestesses going by various names: Kore, Parthenos, Echidna, Sybil.

Women defined justice. Women ran the rites. Women gathered and prepared the pharmakon.
There were colleges for young women, who's parents would enroll her to start a career as a temple priestess.

Long tradition descended from Medea, 13-12BCE bronze age...

Since definition covers any knowledgeable woman steeped in pharmakon based crafts for medicine, poisoning and mental change, and since Christians framed Women from many traditions. We can also include other traditions like the Celtic (Druidic), Egyptian (Isis, Innana), that would have been targets of the Christian Erasure in 391CE, and ongoing into modern times.

Medieval or DarkAges era

Community healers, or those who continued their traditions from pre-christian practice.
Persecuted and genocided by Christians, famously during Inquisition and Salem.

Many killed were simply Women (not practicing), in order to take their land or wealth.

Many killed to put a final end to erasing them, eliminating the ideological opposition to Church dogma. The problem? Ideas are not genetic. You can't kill ideas by killing people.

Modern Witches or Wicca

Most people today think about Medieval witches. How most people know them is from MacBeth, the witches around the cauldron. Or from the Malleus Malificarum, the "Witches Hammer", an expose to justify mass murder. Some of the practice comes from the grimoire tradition.

Some contemporary stuff is derived from Leland's Gospel of Witches. Not a terrible source, but definitely not ancient.

Or Salem, where paranoid fanatics self righteously killed without reason.

The feminine form of χριστός

If christos (χριστός) was a man who was christed, or does christings... and we know there were pharmakea (drug sorceresses) who by definition were being christed and christing others with their salves/ointments with their pharmakon magia, then what would a woman be called?

χριστή (christē)

This is the feminine nominative singular form of the adjective or participle, used to describe a woman who has been anointed—perhaps ritually, symbolically, or pharmaceutically. She might be:

An initiate in the Eleusinian or Dionysian rites,
A priestess prepared with oil or fragrant ointments,
Or even an embodiment of a sacred principle, prepared for divine union or ecstatic experience.

ἡ χριστή easily denotes a female initiate or hierophant who has undergone christing (χριω) as part of a sacred rite. You might even imagine her as a counterpart to a male χριστός, in terms of application of the visionary pharmakon in her rites, running ritual, facilitating transformation, and certainly in status and role to her initiates. For example, every oracular priestess who applied the burning purple in rites, was by definition a christē (χριστή)