This post will probably be somewhat in disarray. I mean, dammit, it's my blog & so I don't see why it wouldn't represent the state of my mind at the time. My year card for this year is the Hanged Man: I think I probably groaned out loud when I realised this, since the last time this card came up with any frequency it was both one of the most traumatic & yet transformative experiences of my life.
The illustration is of Christian Day (who seems to have stopped doing his radio show now he has a TV show) & Laurie Cabot fighting over a dollar. Day has often himself humorously referred to this cartoon, but I'd never seen it. The somewhat specious connection here is to Salem, where as we know there was a huge roll call of women killed for alleged 'witchcraft', contributing to the mythology (for such it is) of the Burning Times. It is also a centre of modern witchcraft, & this post was partly inspired by this comment:
'[The witch trials memorial is] The only place you can pay respect to all the innocent people killed in 1692. Remember, we all have so much fun in Salem because a bunch of people were tortured and killed unjustly - how's that for a guilt trip? Take a little bit of time to reflect at the memorial and pay your respects.' (http://salemwitchwiles.blogspot.com/2012/10/after-living-and-working-in-salem-for.html?m=1)
This comes immediately above a mention of the statue of Samantha Stevens. This may seem a flippant point, but for me this is the point. The whole point. Without this the modern witchcraft movement is nothing. We have the dramas & politics that witches do because we are dramatic people. We are dramatic people because we experience life in epic terms. It is the fact that we experience the lows that allows us to experience the highs. We draw on the ambivalent, dubious, witch figure because it is so multi-faceted, that it means we can unite the opposites of being a figure of tragedy with some serious partying.
This year, while I'm hanging upside down, I know I'm going to have long periods of suspension (of time, ability, etc), meaning I have to wait. But that also means I'm going to emerge transformed (again) from this & have the highs with the lows. This is what being a witch is all about.
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