Maybe this story could take place in Japan, Norway or Iceland? Not than anyone cares really cos they don't speak English there. If your given society perceives tobacco as evil, maybe it'd be the witches who practice black magic who'd be more likely to smoke. That is, if you went for the white/black magic system.
Witches don't exist. Therefore you have free reign over what they do and don't do in your novel. If you think they should eat frogs' eyes, that's fine. If you think they should smoke, that's fine. If you think they should drive around in cars with racing stripes and amplified exhausts listening to Jay-Z at full volume with the windows down, that's fine.
They call themselves witches, but they could call themselves dragons and it would be just as true. My witch (Nora) has nothing but contempt for wiccans. From the novel: Nora gave a sigh of disgust and sat back on the marigold carpeting of the forest. “Wiccans are idiots.” This sounded like a long suffered distinction, “They're just regular people who think they can do magic. Which they spell with a k. Because they're idiots. All Wicca is, the sum totality, is aura manipulation. They change their aura's to make people like them, or fear them, or fuck them.” “But...” I put it together, “There's a very good reason your aura is shaped the way it is. A body generates to aura in the way it feels most comfortable.” Nora snorted, “Most wiccans are deeply dissatisfied, and have no idea why.” “That would be,” I searched for an analogy, “like tearing down your house to build a crane with the pieces, then complaining that it isn't comfortable to sleep in your crane.” Nora shrugged and got up, “Wiccans call themselves 'witches' because they want to feel special, it's the religious equivalent of superman pajamas.”
If you would define such people as "witches", then, well, they would exist. To me, witches are beings with actual power. An old man with a long, grey beard and a pointy hat who mumbles to himself from time to time is not a Wizard.
I'm a divorced man, and I know how to correctly spell words that rhyme. What a debate I have launched! Witches exist, but if one cares to redefine the word to exclude existence, that is on that person, not on me. It is, of course, true, that if someone restricts the definition in such a manner, he or she can ascribe whatever characteristics one wishes. Satisfied? No? Oh well. That's on you also.
As far as I see witches, they don't fit a 'smoker' personality, wizards do, wizards seem to be more tidier and more 'gentelmen-ish' , rather than the dirty dark magic witches. If you know what I mean, smoking at start was presented as a cultural gentelmen-ish thing. Before people found out it's a cancer-mobile
But at the same time smoking has also become a very low class occupation. While it might be dignified to smoke a pipe or a cigar, is there anything more low class than chain smoking a carton of Malbro Light 100s?
The 'Malbro Light 100s' is the modern low class smoking, when you adresses smoking itself, I saw it as you were adressing classic smoking, the same way wizards smoke, and still, I myself don't see witches smoke a low class modern cig. Just dosen't fit in my head, but it's only my opinion.
Don't know, but I doubt I'd call doctors, lawyers, wall street workers, etc., low class, and there are smokers in each of those categories. Heck, in one study of Israeli docs published this year, 40 % of those who answered (just over 200 doctors) either smoked, or used to smoke. An Italian study in 2012 showed 21% of students in the Italian Schools of Public Health (future docs) showed 21 % of them smoked. While I agree that the stereotypical view is someone sitting in a trailer with a stained t-shirt and half a coffee can of butts on the table, the reality seems to be a bit different than that.
Crap! I remember reading the Crucible by Arthur Miller but I don't know if it accurately represents how many died in the real witch trails; in that play something like 20 people were executed.
Pagan witches probably did for herbal reasons. May be they don't smoke but inhale incense. Basically the same thing, just removing the masculinity of the cigarette. I say masculine only because Freud once stated that the cigarette was like a phallic symbol and for that reason women were used in cigarette advertising to attract both sexes. Tho to be fair everything with Freud had a association with sex. And pipes are old man ish hahah
