A musing on Agency, Language, and the Fear of Discernment.
I was thinking about grammar.
Specifically the word “which.”
Who, what, when, where, why, how — these gather information.
They open the field.
They describe reality.
But which does something different.
“Which” narrows.
It assumes plurality.
It demands selection.
When you ask which, you acknowledge there is more than one real possibility—
and that you cannot live them all.
It is the moment possibility becomes commitment.
And then I saw it.
Which.
Witch.
One vowel shift.
One letter’s movement.
And suddenly grammar wasn’t neutral anymore.
The Grammar of Agency
“Which” is not just a question word.
It is an act of agency.
It says:
- There are options.
- I must discriminate between them.
- My criteria matter.
- I will select.
The other WH-words explore the landscape.
“Which” is where you plant your foot.
And planting your foot always excludes something else.
Every “which” quietly contains a funeral:
Not that one.
Discernment always carries loss.
When Discernment Becomes Dangerous
Historically, the word “witch” was not just superstition.
It was accusation.
The Salem witch trials remain one of the most infamous examples — a moment of panic, projection, and social enforcement. But Salem was not unique. Across Europe and colonial America, waves of fear resulted in tens of thousands of executions.
And when you look closer, a pattern emerges.
A “witch” was often:
- A woman with knowledge outside sanctioned authority
- A healer or midwife
- A property owner without male oversight
- Someone who embodied agency beyond permission
The accusation was rarely about magic.
It was about unsanctioned power.
It was about someone using criteria the system did not authorize.
The Unsettling Thread
Which = I choose.
Witch = You chose wrongly.
The parallel is accidental linguistically.
But symbolically, it exposes something deeper.
Both orbit the same tension:
Who gets to decide?
Every system depends on shared “whiches.”
Which beliefs are acceptable.
Which roles are fixed.
Which paths are honorable.
Which voices count.
When someone introduces a different “which,” the system destabilizes.
And when systems destabilize, they often respond with accusation.
“Burn the witches” was not just hysteria.
It was a reflex against unsanctioned discernment.
The Risk of Choosing
The moment you move from:
“What is possible?” to “Which is mine?”
you step into visibility.
And visibility carries consequence.
This is why “which” feels heavier than the other WH-words.
It is the hinge between abundance and limitation.
Between wonder and weight.
Between infinite paths and one lived life.
It is small.
But existential.
Because once you answer “which,” you cannot remain abstract.
You must embody it.
And embodiment has always unsettled systems that depend on compliance.
The Quiet Question
Maybe that is why the coincidence struck so deeply.
Language revealed something older:
Discernment is sacred when it aligns.
It is dangerous when it disrupts.
Which path?
Which voice?
Which truth?
Which allegiance?
The word is simple.
But it holds the drama of freedom.
And perhaps the deeper invitation is not to fear the vowel shift—
but to understand what it exposes:
Agency is not loud. It is not magical.
It is simply the courage to answer the question: Which?