Witches Apart

There's a funny thing about the phenomenon of the solitary witch from the 1980s onwards. Historically it represents an older magic than Wicca does - of the individual person who learned magic usually from books, did folk medicine, etc.

Witchily that's not really the point I want to make. In witch terms my point is more that while we are solitaries, it is well known that we tend to be a community of solitaries, but less well known that we stand out (as a group) like a sore thumb, even if people don't have a word for us.

I'm writing this in a certain pub in the city centre, where I've come to try to chat with the dead landlay again as an experiment - & succeeded.

On the way here I got some money out by the cathedral where the skateboarding emos looked at me like I was one of them. Then a homeless man greeted me, without a request for money, which he didn't to all the other people passing him. I suppose what these two groups have in common is that they are on the edge, which is dangerously close to being a hedge. Have I mentioned before that that hedge represents liminality & transformation? Once you've seen the unreal, the impossible is nothing, & it's not even inconceivable to see a witch.

This is the real test of a witch: can she do the tasks of witchcraft, of transformation, balancing & rearranging? The power to do these things can be recognised by anyone, in dire straits usually, & this is when they come to us, even if they don't know what we are. I may wear black but that black is a shining light to those stuck in the hedge with no apparent way forward.

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