Becoming Other

Becoming Other

I sat across from the Village Witch. We were sharing tea. The tradition of friendship. 

I stared around at her lovely cottage. Tea cups were displayed on the rafters (I had hit my head on a few!). The snail talisman I had gifted her was hanging there: a ward against evil. In the corner, the skull of a horse. Great power emanated form this fetish. Its hollow eyes burned into mine. In it, I could see vast depths of good fortune and death. 

Her eyes, the witch’s eyes, were upon me, too. 

“You are eldrich,” she said curtly.

“Oh?”

“Yes,” she smiled slyly. “You are eldrich. You are witch.”

I dance about the fire, singing a song with the drums. It is a song from no where. 

A song of the winds. 

Of the stars. Of the rain. 

It is a wailing song of love and loss. It is fevered and hot. And wild. 

It is my song.

Fire glows on my naked, writhing body. I glow bright gold. A sun in the wild night. 

Faery songs and stories cascade from my lips. I give out wine in exchange for kisses, and sensually massage secret ointments into the skin of those who wish to fly. 

“Elf!” They call me. “Shining One!”

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by Maria Zolotukhina

Some ideas for bad things that are white/light:

lightning, very hot fire

snow storms, ice, frost on crops

some types of fungus/mold

corpses, ghosts, bones, a diseased person

clothing, skin tone, hair, etc. of a bad person

fur, teeth, eyes of an attacking animal/monster

bleached out deserts, dead trees, lifeless places

poison

Some ideas for good things that are black/dark:

rich earth/soil

chocolate, truffles, wine, cooked meat

friendly animals/pets/creatures

a character’s favorite vehicle, technology, coat, etc.

a pleasant night

hair, skin tone, clothing, etc. of a good person

undisturbed water of a lake

the case/container of something important

valued wood, furniture, art

velvet

Think to burn, to infect, to bleach vs. to enrich, to protect, to be of substance.

Dandelions symbolize everything I want to be in life

The very term ‘the crooked path’ suggests at first glance that the path of witchcraft is the opposite path to that of Christianity. The term is in fact related to the tradition of ‘sacred walking’, of walking for meditative purposes by early Celtic Christians on pilgrimage. These tracks were laid out to connect sites of holy significance and being on the ‘straight and narrow path’ symbolised the meditative walkers adherence to God.[6] As an old Gaelic maxim tells us, ‘He who will not take advice will take the crooked track.’

But like with many seemingly ‘Christian reversals’ that have found their way into the witchcraft legacy there is more to this notion of the ‘crooked path’ than simply doing the opposite to the church. Like Hermes’ Caduceus the ‘straight tracks’ around Britain (and other locations) and the human spine itself, the straight path is always coiled around by twin serpent lines. In the case of these twining ‘serpent lines’ in the land numerous ancient pagan holy sites emerge along them. It seems that our ancestors set out these holy sites both to recognise the straight track down the middle and the crooked one that twined around it. Like the migratory path of geese, something often associated with the host of the dead in flight along the ‘ghost tracks’; these straight tracks are best appreciated from the air. The ‘crooked’ snaking paths around them however are very much the path of the walker, they penetrate the land with many a holy well and standing stone.

So we might say that in reviling the serpent, in reviling this crooked and snaking path, it was walking the path of the earth and its interior that the Christian saints were rejecting. It also implies that if we agree to walk this path we accept the ‘hooks and crooks’ of the road that may obscure what lies ahead and agree to follow the irregularities of the earth’s path and be guided by our intuition. We could even say that in the context of this book, itself an exercise in meditative walking, that the scholarly component of witchcraft lore is the ‘straight track’ and the path of experiential gnosis via occult practice is the ‘crooked road’ that winds and snakes around it.

Morgan, Lee. A Deed Without a Name: Unearthing the Legacy of Traditional Witchcraft (pp. 7-8). John Hunt Publishing. Kindle Edition.