The icon of the witch is enigmatic and it is
supposed to be enigmatic. People of the world respond to enigmas in various
ways. Some gets intrigued, others get annoyed and frustrated. Yet others pursue
it as a challenge while others see it is a mindfuck and leave it alone. An
enigma invites ambiguity and possibility, because an enigma is a riddle and has
as purpose to puzzle. No matter the kind of resistance I have with the term
‘witch’, given its multiple interpretations and also in this confused plurality
need to accept that this ambiguous label is mine to hold. I am a lover of
paradox, because I believe it is in paradox and dispersion, contradiction and
battle truth speaks with her tongues of air from the deep waters of her well.
What is a witch? Is it a social rebel or is it
someone who has deep ecologic concern for the earth? Is the witch someone who
can strike you down in malefic workings or someone who made a pact with the
minions of Hell? Is the witch someone
who calls upon the Great Mother and the Horned Lord to ensure that the seasonal
cycles are fed with attention, food and praise? A witch can do all this and
give attention to all this, but at the core I have found the dwelling of the
witch to be one of solace. And with solace I have in mind the witches’
apothecary, this great family of green allies that is known as solanum, because
for me the icon of the witch is at large about solace one way or the other. We
know them as nightshades. belladonna, henbane, datura and mandrake – but they
are also potato, tomato and eggplant. It is about a power of
feeding life, taking life and give light to life.
I am sure most people never reflect about this,
because after all witchcraft is peasant craft and the more we live in concord
with nature and dwell in farmlands the more salient this will be. An urban
dwelling witch will have a feeling of this heritage that he or she can take in
whatever direction, but I feel it is important to remind oneself about where we
came from. We are speaking of humble men and woman, who saw more than the field
showed to the many, someone who had a willing or unwilling touch with the
invisible realm. This realm that is so dreadfully close and yet for many so
distant is the field where I live. I do plant my henbane, mandrake, belladonna
as well as potato, eggplant and tomato and this just mimics the peasant world
where I live. People come for blessings and cures as much as they blame
anything wrong happening in their lives on “the witches”. It is good and it is
interesting, because I do live the ambiguity that is rooted in the enigma and
riddle that is the ‘witch’. I get the blame for bad crops, the lack of rain and
what not and yet people come to get a blessing for some bodily affliction as
much as counsel about how to solve private predicaments in family and marriages
– and of course the requests of murdering some relative or opponent. It is a
feisty dance of everything the world has to offer – and the witch is the still
centre in all this locomotion. He or she is that neutral ground that rests in
the outskirts no one dares to venture. This is the dwelling of the witch, the
outlandish otherness that rains riddles over its community in her capacity of
providing any kind of solace...
We make our world as we walk along its joints
and crossroads, we see what we are as the journey we make is always our own.
But this journey along bones, beads and twain roads that gives us experiences
after experience and deepening of experience – what we do with it in the end?
Do we generate a system of the self sustained mage or witch? Do we get confused
and entertain delusions and confusions or do we get lost in this journey that
always aim to lead us back home where we find the fruit of our Fate, fulfilled
or not?
In this, many wise and many foolish answers can
be given, and perhaps the simplest one is often the best one, because between
the battles and caresses we all share the unique journey together... One hand
helps the other as the other hand slaps all others – we are ourselves the
authors of these effects - the masters of our own Fortune and Misfortune as the
compass of choice swirls in the wind and blood... what wind and what blood? We
dictate our journey by emotion, memory and remembrance. In some mysterious ways
we retrace steps already engraved in stardust with the ink of angels dancing on
the quills of demons... because this makes up the journey, this dance between
wormwood and honey that keep us on track. So bless the wormwood and bless the
honey... These are lanterns on the path.
But when the path challenges the journeyman for
its heritage, do you know your heritage, haven, and hearth and home – because
if you don’t know from whence you came - any road will do...
So many of us gets confused when we are on the
path and we see wormwood and honey shining with in equal brilliance. We make
false friends, because these false friends made the errors we are in the
process of making. We find companions because they signal the track being
found. We find those who challenge us and we find those who deceive us, those who
make up the plethora of experience that brings illumination. Our path is a walk
in a hall of mirrors that strikes from six angles simultaneously – it can at
times be difficult to know what reflection to pursue - and what illusion to
leave alone. But this discernment becomes easier if we know from where we are
coming.
This is why the path of constant enigma and
paradox, even torturous, becomes more manageable and understandable for the
witch, because this path defines the witch as it speaks of solace, all kinds of
solace...