Sources for Witchcraft: Miss Marple as an Unexpected Source

I am re-reading Agatha Christie's The Thirteen Problems. I last read this book in 1995. I am not in the habit of keeping records of what I read – although I do note passages or quotes I want to be able to come back to – and the reason I remember this twentieth anniversary so precisely is of course that I was in a rather difficult time of my life. 

The precise circumstances were that I was a Benedictine novice. I was the last remaining of three novices in my noviciate – it was very apparent to me that not only was the community incredibly dysfunctional, despite there being some men there, now dead, who were the closest I have ever come to meeting real Christian saints, but it was also dominated by someone who in retrospect I can see as being very personality disordered. If at this point you have had a strong emotional reaction to those rather emotive words, I would just say to you that personality disorders are actually very common. Many executives of big corporations have symptoms of personality disorder, and in fact it is their disordered personalities which make them able to get to the top of organisations, which subsequently was exactly the case with the person I am talking about. The problem with these people, of course, is that because they identify the issue with their own safety, and also do not believe that other people's emotions are real, because they don't have any themselves, they can do a great deal of damage. I am not going to go into details – that is not the purpose of the post – but suffice to say that I have experienced the psychological abuse of which Catholic clergy are capable, at first hand. When this man's dramatic downfall comes, I will happily post here about how the authorities of his order know full well what he's about. My only sorrow is that that there is no point going to the police about him – the things I know for a fact about him can all be demolished by his facile tongue as my imagination or by means of attributing his own 'interests' to me. Needless to say I have not failed to resort to magical means to mimimise his damage to others and isolate him into his own little world: since he is personality disordered he will ultimately always self-sabotage until he accepts he is his problem, and so magically it is easiest to let him screw himself up.

In tandem with experiencing this abuse I have experienced how ones loved ones do not believe the fact that one is being abused. Over and again in the literature on child abuse (obviously I was an adult at the time), the tale is told of the target of abuse trying to tell someone and not being believed. Certainly in my situation, where I was capable of resisting the psychological intimidation and abuse to which I was suspect, and he would dearly have loved to have sex with me but could see that trying it on would give me the material to finish him, the most useful thing that I could have had would have simply to be believed by my mother. She did not. The only effect of this is to add to the abuse the person is suffering.

Into this situation came Miss Marple. I read this book in the evenings in bed. I found a woman of completely independent thought, who had the clarity of vision to stick by her own guns and this saw to the heart of the problem, and thirteen times, had the correct idea of what was happening. This is surely close to the heart of the witch figure, as somebody who stands apart, gets information in all sorts of ways, mostly unrecognised by everyone else, and is prepared to stick to their conclusion until it is proved right, which it will be.

One of my companions in the novitiate commented to me one day that he couldn't understand why I had seen through this person before he had. I told him at the time that I felt the monk of whom I speak had carefully put a front on what he was about, which my fellow-novice would see as being legitimate. For example, he decided he would try to give me a hard time, but told my fellow novice that the motivation for this was to test my vocation. He believed this at the time, although I told him it was a complete lie – it is not for nothing that nowadays I can recognise a good old-fashioned bully from a mile off – and it was not until the monk in question managed to get my fellow-novice alone in a car, put his hand on his genitals and said, 'What about it?', that he began to suspect he wasn't that interested in living his monastic commitment.

I think the reason I found Miss Marple's clarity of vision and refusal to be taken in by the way other people thought about things, was that, even though my Myers-Briggs personality test came out INFP at the time, I was actually already feeling my way towards the fact of being an INFJ. In fact the sentence I write above about Miss Marple's character being close to the archetypal witch figure, could also go for the INFJ personality. I had to mature into it, clearly, but definitely had the many traits already. This fact also indicates the basic cracks in my relationship with my mother, which inevitably led to it blowing apart when it was stressed by both of us getting older, with all the health problems that that involved. There are some of those lists on the internet along the lines of 'things never to say to an INFJ'. In fact, reading those lists, all of them are things that my mother routinely said to me over and over again: a friend asked me whether she winds me up on purpose. I can only answer that she does a fair imitation of it, not least because if you keep on saying things to someone that you know drives them up the wall, well, what can I say. The key one here, of course, is not being believed. This was often dressed up as 'you do exaggerate,' 'you make it up as you go along,' and so on, but the key thought being expressed here was always that the younger Hound was a liar. Touchy, and over-serious, as well. All of them guaranteed to have an INFJ foaming at the mouth; in fact I'm surprised it took me as long as 38 years to do an INFJ door slam on her.

I can see in the incidents of which I write here, and the inspiration I took from Miss Marple, the younger me feeling my way towards being the mature me. Miss Marple's example actually helped me, not only in a traumatic time of life when disbelieved and thus isolated by my own mother, but also towards becoming truly me, and arriving as a witch.

Blessed John Henry Newman “irrefutably heterosexual”

...so says Fr Ian Ker (source), using as evidence Newman's adolescent diary entries that dances would lead him into sin. This irrefutable evidence is confirmed by the picture illustrating this post. Another manly figure of a completely hetero Catholic priest.

Urban Grimoire: an ancient Egyptian incantation for reversing situations

I have recently made the reacquaintance of The Chatto Book of Dissent, which has this wonderful passage, headed Admonitions of a Prophet, unfortunately with no further source information than that it is from ancient Egypt. It would make a good incantation for changing or reversing situations. And magic really is the same the world over: it is prophetic but is couched in the past tense, so that what is being spoken of here has already taken place. 

Behold. A thing has been done, which has never happened before. It has now come to this, that the King has been taken away by Poor Men.

Behold. The land is full of confederates. The Wretched now rob the Mighty of their goods.

Behold. Ladies lie on cushions and magistrates in the storehouse. He that had no wall on which to sleep now sleeps upon a bed.

Behold. The rich man sleeps thirsty. He that once begged him for dregs now possesses strong beer.

Behold. They that possessed clothes are now in rags. He that wove not for himself now possesses fine linen.

Behold. He that had no shade has shade now. They that had shade are now in the full blast of the storm.

Behold. He that had no knowledge of harp-playing now possesses a harp. He to whom never a man sang, now praises the goddess of music.

Behold. She that had no box now possesses a coffer. She that looked at her face in the water now possesses a mirror…

Michael Rosen and David Widgery (editors): The Chatto Book of Dissent. Chatto and Windus, London, 1991, p. 8.

What I expect from the universe

Hedges need work

I was somewhat mystified the other day, when overhearing a conversation in a shop about how a man upset an observant Moslem by telling him he didn't believe in any god at all, to wonder how I would answer the question, 'Do you believe in God?' Not conventionally, is how I usually answer. But in reality my answer should be something more along the lines of, I don't believe, I know! While I don't buy the usual approach which is called fundamentalism among witches, which is a very literal understanding of the foundation myth of Wicca, I am really very fundamentalist about other things. The reason for this is that I know for the magic to happen, what is happening in my mind has to be identical with reality as I understand it. For example, I know for a fact that the ancient gods and goddesses were and are powers in the world. They are amongst other powers, which would include myself. I probably don't understand them in a terribly traditional way, but as powers which become entities in measure to how we acknowledge them. I wouldn't want to imply that the divinities are only humans' creations, but that the powers they represent are everywhere in the world and take a form or egregore which is frequently culture-specific. They are amongst all sorts of other powers, some of which are visible, some of which are known to our culture. I don't call myself a pagan, mainly because the pagan community irritates me intensely and I wouldn't want to be associated with many of the sort of people who call themselves pagan, but I suppose I am really. Divinity is initiated or recognised whenever anyone acknowledges one of these powers in the universe. 

Not only do we acknowledge them, but we come into relationship, or covenant with these powers, and this is where I tend to become very fundamentalist. I will not negotiate on the things I am about to say, because if I begin to cast any doubt on them at all, I break the covenant with the powers. The help that one needs will always appear when one needs it. That is a major one. For example, in the past seven months of being between homes, it is remarkable how often the exact amount of money I needed to pay a bill has appeared out of nowhere. The most recent case is that the returned deposit from the flat I was renting has been exactly enough to pay the electrician for needed work on the flat I have bought.

This is the sign that the witch is in right relationship with her hedge. I'm established in a very witchy hedge, of both personal (I used to go cruising around here years ago) and historical significance: it is round the corner in Gooch Street that the city of Birmingham started when the tribe of Beorma set up camp on the banks of the river Rea. Another sign for me is that the homeless people are getting to know me. I asked a witch friend recently why homeless people always greet me, and she said that it was because they recognise something in me, which she defined as a detachment from worldly things. I wouldn't phrase it that way, myself, but surely if you are reduced to being literally dependent on the street, that is about as close to the kind of relationship with the hedge I am talking about. There is one homeless man who has started saying 'God bless you', when he walks past me, and another wishes me a good day. They recognise there is a witch among them, my relationship to the hedge, and know that they are greeting a priest and witch (even if they wouldn't use those terms.

'Come on, universe, look after your witch,' has been my 'prayer' over the past seven months, and the universe has come up with the goods. Of course obligations come with the privilege of demanding that the universe looks after you, and true to form I'm a shit magnet still. But ones power grows as it is used, and sure enough, my boss curse has come to fruition. The boss I cursed is on his last legs in the business (he did something that was really very short-sighted for an executive and has ended up with egg on his face). My manager is on her way out: my observation is the work sphere is that things usually get worse before they get better. My prediction there is that my manager has obviously been explaining her ineffectual posturing to her superiors as indicating that her staff are unmanageable. What will happen next is a new manager will come in who will see the real situation. But that is on its way.

And how do I know? It is inconceivable that it could be any other way. This isn't a Christmas present list, this is the interaction of the powers of the universe. And we just have to… expect. 

Urban Grimoire: Boss Curse

In true witch form, I'm going to make a prediction that this will become one of the most-visited entries on this blog, purely because the title fills a much-felt need. Since this is a blog, I'll just bring my readers up to speed on what's happening with the Hound. I've moved house and bought a ridiculously cheap flat in part of Birmingham called something along the lines of Southgaychinesequartervillageside (delete as applicable). It is right in the middle of my Hedge: I can wander over to the river to have a chat with her, it's not that far from the spot where there tribe of Beorma set up on the river's banks and the city started, it is near to Park Street so I can wander over there to have a chat with some deceased gangsters. It is also on my old cruising ground of years ago – the things I could tell you.

When a witch is settled in her Hedge, things come along to her. They are all gifts. They may not seem like gifts, but the whole point of witchcraft is to change definitions and relationships. The universe gave me a lamp that someone had thrown out on the stairs, just as I was thinking one would be very useful. In this situation the universe also hands the witch the circumstances in which she can develop magically, moving herself and others on through the progression of life. And these opportunities are always traumatic.

For me the opportunity that has come up is related to my work life, which has been stagnant for some time – presumably because there was so much activity in my home life that there wasn't enough of a vacuum for something to come up. We are still stuck with the useless manager, who does no managing of any description but just wants to mother people. If you go to her with a gripe, she'll try to get you to cry on her shoulder, and think it's sorted.

This week the opportunity fell into my lap in that the chief executive of the organisation I work for came to a meeting with our customers. A shortfall in what we are doing became apparent and I tried to identify some of the barriers we need to overcome to offer that, saying that we could change the way we work to free staff up to do this, but that there were a number of other things to consider. He told me I was talking rubbish. Not quite in so many words, but when it became apparent what he thought I was saying, he said openly that I didn't think people had a right to the particular aspect of our service we were talking about, and they should be grateful for anything we gave them. I told him I agreed with all of those things, he looked furiously at me and tried to shush me, and I told him again that I didn't think any of the things he'd said I had.

My so-helpful manager had kittens after this. She was visibly terrified. She kept saying 'you argued publicly with the chief executive'! She told me that I would be dismissed for it. I reminded her (I have one of those voices like Charlie Brown's teacher, I say things but they just don't sink in to people's head for some reason) that my dearest dream is to see my employers in an employment tribunal and that I have so much on that organisation, the chief executive had better be prepared for some very bad publicity. I told her that I considered the attitudes he attributed to me to be defamatory to my professional reputation. Bizarrely she seemed to calm down a bit at this. Anyway, on to the curse.

How to curse your boss the easy way

As always in magic the key to a successful spell is a correct diagnosis of the problem. There is an ancient saying in the Craft of the Wise, going all the way back to the old days of the religion (the 1970s, that is): 'Where there's fear there is power.' So the first step is to identify your boss's use of power. It is essential at this point to forget what everyone else is saying. For example, if I had been thinking, 'I shouldn't have argued with the chief executive,' I would not have been able to identify the power dynamic here, which was very clearly 'Everybody's got to be on their best behaviour because the chief executive's here and not say anything out of turn.' I've found the fear, so I've found the power – he walked in and made everyone fearful of him. Unfortunately he then came up against the neighbourhood witch who made helpful suggestions but wouldn't let him attribute just any old motivation to me. What I don't know at this point is whether he genuinely misunderstood what I meant or whether he was just looking for a whipping boy, which brings us nicely on to the next stage, which is…

Do a divination. Have I stressed enough that a correct diagnosis of the problem is the key to a successful spell? In this case I drew the cards but got a friend to interpret them in case I was overly biased. It certainly seems what my boss keeps hearing, that he's going to go down the drive because of the contract we've lost under his guidance, is true. He really is on his last legs. I feel he's probably got heart trouble. He may even be going off his head, but at any rate he has the sort of health problems that would make sane people slow down. He really thought I would just bow to his authority. That was what was happening. The outcome for me of any action is 10 of pentacles (she actually phrased it as if he made any trouble for me I would end up rich), but the outcome for him of any action is 10 of cups. The friend I asked calls this the weed card, and says that it would send him further off his head. That was all I needed to know. However I still asked next day how he saw me now. I got 7 of pentacles, which of course is always the 'what now' card – the card of being out of depth and not knowing what to do. I asked what he was going to do about me now and got 3 of pentacles. I was minded to interpret this as he would make trouble for me, but another friend laughed and said she would interpret it as Business as Usual. Of course Etteilla gives nobility as a keyword for it, so he may just be gracious and appear to 'forgive' me (which stewed in my mind into an idea for part of the curse).

Get help. Even for the solitary witch there is always help available is we know where to look for it. The first thing I did (apart from enlisting friends' magical help) was to speak to a reputation management lawyer. I considered the attitudes he attributed to me as such that they would lower my professional standing in the eyes of those who heard it, but the lawyer didn't feel I had a case for slander. All acts are magical acts and if the law is the way we have to go then that is a magical act. It was music to my ears when I got this reply, since it reminded me of somewhere in one of Leland's books where he says words to the effect that in many of the most hurtful things that can happen to people the law has no power, and this is where magic comes in. Certainly my experience has always been that magic is its most poetic and ironic when all other channels have failed. So I started the curse.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I tend to dwell on things and therefore prefer magic that uses multiple means, rather than the do it, forget it approach. I have used a number of these. I have wiped my arse on him before offering him to Cloacina. I have gobbed on him, ground him under foot, dropped him in the river, there are two mice nibbling away at him, the possibilities of cursing for the resourceful witch are endless. I looked up the spell with a heart and thorns, but I see that that was traditionally for protection, and while that wouldn't stop me adapting it, of course I don't have a chimney to put the heart in for it to get dried out. I would have to freeze it. Of course the fact I haven't done this yet doesn't mean I'm not going to. But these multiple methods have made me realise a completely new way of cursing someone, which is both easy and very difficult, and is really the purpose of this post.

Give the person a chance to put it right.

This may seem like I'm starting to talk about forgiveness, but I'm not. I'm talking about giving the person a chance to make amends completely (for example, in this case if he made a public retraction and apology I would feel he had sufficiently made amends that I would not be owed anything by him any more, but would merely look on him as a dickhead for ever). So I'm really attributing a 'value' to the hurt he has done me, whether deliberately or by accident. This action will also dramatically revise the power dynamic. It means you wrong-foot the person and seize the moral high ground. It means you appear reasonable to anyone outside this. Magically, it means you are offering the person a golden chance to avoid this. Magic works on a balance, really, which is why the white and the black magicians are both wrong. Nature abhors a vacuum, and if the person owes you, and you give them an opportunity to correct that (in terms of their own life that would also imply they've learned the life lesson and probably won't get confronted with it again), and they don't correct it, they will owe you even more. For myself this is one of the most difficult things to do. I find it very difficult to be gracious to turds. But in this case I did something almost unprecedented. Off my own bat, and on my own personal email address, without discussing it with my manager since she's frightened were all going to get taken out and shot…

I apologised to him.

Yes, that's right, you heard it right. I said that out altercation was regrettable, said that I felt completely wrong-footed by his attributing values and attitudes not my own to me, assured his that I was only trying to suggest ways this particular provision could be eased, and then apologised to him for any offense I may have given.

As it happens, of course, I haven't done anything wrong. I've come up against another of the bullies that litter the world and stood my ground, but I have given him the opportunity to make this right. He won't take it. He didn't take it this week. He could have said that he didn't want to talk in that forum about practicalities or questioned what I actually meant. I have a feeling, though, that the 7 of pentacles means he's slept on it and thought how he lost control of the situation. He also clearly thought I was lying to him when I told him I agreed with everything he said. He will find nothing in what I said that will support that. At this point, he may well want to extricate himself from this. He may ring up my manager to give her what for, but that's fine, if she chooses to accept bullying like that it will just keep on happening until she puts her foot down. I've told her that repeatedly. He may ignore it. He may shove his head up his own arse. But whatever he now does, unless he puts it right, he will owe me. Nature abhors a vacuum, and all the bum-wiping, spitting, stamping and nibbling, will come to play even more. In fact, while sleep is nice, he won't be seeing much of it this weekend because of the number of entities in his bedroom.

I have learned something else, apart from the value of acting like a gentleman. When I sent the email to him, I felt the energy leave me. That was the part of the spell which actually got rid of it for me. I'm quite sure, of course that my pissed-offness will increase again, especially when I go to work and my colleagues are all telling me they'll have a leaving do for me because I bawled out the chief executive. With any luck they'll move the manager, and give us some hard-hitting no-nonsense tank, with whom I will get on like a house on fire. He's run out of time, and the things that are wrong in his life are about to come to a head all at once. He's about to have the most incredible run of bad luck. And what can he say about me? He misunderstood what I said and wouldn't let me stand up for my reputation and then I've been gracious enough to explain and apologise? That'd sound good in a tribunal.

All Acts Are Magical Acts

The wonderful Lori Bruno, in an interesting inversion of the witchfinders' principle that 'you cannot be a witch alone,' interprets it to mean that you can never be alone as a witch. In this post I intend to invert the quote from Crowley, 'All acts are magical acts,' to mean that for the magical person, all of ones acts ultimately become magical whether one intends them to or not.

I also want to invert the often-cited idea among the fluffies that it is very important to maintain the balance (for which read status quo) when one is doing magic. I can't find a quote I've been squirreling away for years on exactly that subject, so can't directly refer to these kinds of people, but I more mean a certain trend in the physics of magic often found among certain sorts of people. You must never do anything negative, is one of these ideas. Get consent for anything you do, is one of these ideas. I think these people are usually well-intentioned but sadly they've misunderstood both physics and the nature of magic.

Backed by no tradition at all but my own experience, I would say that the one seeking magic gets to a point where there is no return. Whether this is engineered as a ceremonial initiation or caused by a life event (and mark my words, it will be something horrible and be guaranteed to require a response from the initiate which transgresses all of his conditioning up to then), it is an event from which there is no going back. What the books don't tell you – I mean, honestly, has nobody noticed that initiation means beginning, rather than an end? – is that the universe sits up and pays attention to this. The sorcerer's initiation almost sets in train a pattern which sets up a 'signature' for what that person's magic will be like for the rest of his life. The wrong idea, promulgated in many paperback books about witchcraft, is that the effects of your actions rebound on you threefold (or whatever number that tradition lays down as an arbitrary law). What planet do these people live on? Life isn't like that. The world isn't like that. This ethic is merely a publicity venture by privileged people who've never experienced what magic is like when you have your back to the wall and no recourse in this world. What rather happens is that once you have done that sort of magic, and I will repeat that it is always transgressive of personal or cultural norms, the universe sees that that can be done by this person and so that same situation tends to be attracted to you again. I do not mean that the action you have done will be visited upon you, but that the situation in which you have to do that sort of action will keep arising.

And of course the trouble is that a witch is a witch all the time. This is a situation of which I have been reminded in my present situation. I am finally in a position where hopefully I will get the keys to my new flat this week. What causes me to reflect on this as a magical act is the number of actions transgressive to my mother's upbringing I have performed. She was all one for letting other people first, always giving way, or at least that is how she brought me up. Needless to say in retrospect she usually cloaked a completely self-centred approach under this apparent selflessness, leaving me with a suspicion of altruism that I really do find difficult to shake off.

For a start I gazumped someone else to buy this flat (in English law, until you get to a point where contracts are exchanged, the sale is not legally binding and the vendor can accept a higher offer). The internal commentary on this, inherited from my mother, is that I shouldn't do that, I should leave it for someone else. By doing this, I am going against one of these little shibboleths, which for the purpose of this post, indicates that I am creating my own mind set rather than slavishly following an inherited one.

Then there is the matter of the tenants who were given notice to leave, as one of the conditions of my offer is vacant possession on completion. 'You're putting people out in the street,' I can almost hear my mother's voice saying in my ear. This is the one that is really not true, since this was hardly a South African-style eviction with their stuff put out in the street. I notice her voice becomes silent but I can feel the disapproval when I point out that since this is one of those affordable flats for certain categories of workers, it should be the owner's sole residence and he should not be able to rent it out and live elsewhere.

Of course my mother's internal commentary disapproves of me buying one of these affordable 'keyworker' flats. 'You know how to work the system', is her comment on this. Of course she doesn't mean this neutrally, she means I'm somehow manipulating things to my own advantage, even though I'm one of the people who happen to be eligible for it under the terms of the lease.

So all in all, my making a better offer than somebody who failed to get their finance together fast enough, requiring the flat for myself to live in (which is the whole point of it anyway), and using the terms of the lease to buy a flat which only certain people can buy at a reduced rate, transgresses all sorts of things in my internal commentary from my upbringing. I am going to do this because it's perfectly all right, really, but of course the point of this post is that these magically transgressive acts have come upon me in the process of buying a flat. All acts are magical acts, and the ultimate object of all magic is the magician himself, which creates the future self of the magician.

My dad's commentary is quite different, incidentally. This flat will actually be the poshest place I will have lived in my life. Yes, dad, I will probably be the only person there with a duvet bought from Poundstretcher and a radio with a coat hanger as an aerial, but if the Town and Country Planning Act allows hoi polloi to live among the posh people, they can only expect the tone to be lowered somewhat. He's actually in two minds about it – it would have been even cheaper for me to buy an ex-council flat in the block known as Dorothy Towers (so nicknamed from the council's undeclared policy in the 1990s of housing all the gays and lesbians in one block). In fact he's just made a rude remark about social aspirations and my mother's family, but he needn't worry.

This is without even considering the personality of the vendor. Once you've done an act, my theory is that you open up a sort of channel where you can do it again, and so it attracts the kind of situation to you. My magical signature, for instance, is very much the righting of wrongs, or rather, usually holding a mirror up to people for them to see their own situation so that they have to do something about it. Needless to say I've attracted exactly the kind of person as a vendor I have to deal with all the time. But don't worry, of course the Hound has done it. His estate agent actually confided to me that he rings her every hour on the hour to see what's happening (and I'm not even her customer, he is). My solicitor actually described his behaviour as constituting unnecessary pressure. So on Friday when I told the estate agent that he could just shut the fuck up, and she said that she would dearly love to be able to say that to him herself, I keenly volunteered to say that to him myself if she would give me his number. Of course she didn't, so I just had to settle for telling him via her that he would get pain when the bank had decided I'd jumped through enough hoops and would have to live that. As a little incentive I passed on a message that if he continued to pressurise me I would reduce my offer by £5,000, and then if her didn't accept it I would pull out of the sale and report his violation of the use of the apartment to the planning department, as an enforcement notice would prevent him letting the flat, prevent him getting an income from it, and it could be months before another purchaser was ready to exchange. A soothing silence has followed.

This isn't gossip, by the way. This is magic. I attract these kind of demons, who breathe fire and stamp their foot. It *always* happens that they're doing something they shouldn't that I then have to hold up to them, and they retire bruised and bloody. This is a witch's bread and butter. 

My problem with responsibility

I have been absent from here for some time. One of the reasons for that is that I periodically think to myself 'I must write a blog post', and when I think that I know that writing a post because I feel beholden to this blog in some way is the wrong reason to do it.

I remain in the process of finding a permanent home, and in true witch style, if you should wish to find me you only have to follow the trail of bruised and bloodied estate agents to find me. Honestly, these people actively try to stop themselves doing their own job. I seem finally to have found an estate agent who is up to my standards of sensibleness and reliability. If I email her a question she replies either the same day with the information I require or to say she is finding it out. In fact, she's almost come on side (don't worry, the Hound hasn't forgotten that estate agents are in the employ of the vendor, although you wouldn't think that by the one I had). I was even impressed to find that although they've got a very swanky address in the Jewellery Quarter, they seem to be renting an office in a Georgian building which is at best tatty. Doing their job, instead of 'kippers and curtains'.

My thoughts have mostly been turning to the enduring problem I have with that word 'responsibility'. The heavy emphasis placed on this in the witchcraft community almost implies at times that taking responsibility for a situation means anything that goes wrong is always your own fault. Sometimes it is, of course, and the test of that is a frank evaluation of whether you've actually done everything you can to remedy a situation. There is another team in my workplace which has been having a very hard time, for example. I have limited sympathy for them because when you asked whether they have brought collective grievances, and so on, the answer is of course no. A major part of the problem is clearly themselves.

A very different situation is where someone is misusing power over you. In that situation, although the witch must always attempt to make of the situation what she wills, it is possible that your efforts will come to nothing. Apart from the fact that it is usually in that situation, where your back is to the wall, that magic is most spectacularly effective, ones ability to take responsibility for a situation can be compromised by somebody else's actions. This is seen most simply in a lot of bullying behaviours, which is why they are so tortuous for the target. I will still not allow that word that begins with a v to pass my lips.

And this is nicely where the witch comes in, but not in the way you may be expecting. As witches our bread and butter is taking a situation and making something different of it. This is the real fear which witchcraft will always put into those around us. People don't think that we should be able to create independently. Certainly for the Abrahamic traditions which mainly surround us at this end of Europe, creation is a function reserved to God. Witchcraft, by blurring the rigid distinction between what is divine and what is human, permanently puts the mockers on being told that we can't do something.

That said, one of the phrases I do love in the Christian tradition is 'the sins crying to heaven for vengeance'. There are only four of them, they can be found in the Bible. It is this idea of an act so bad it calls for its immediate divine retribution. I'm going to say something quite radical here – I would love to meet a real Christian. I have a feeling that I would get on with a real Christian extremely well, although they would consider me damned. That simple embodiment of divinity in the world is almost exactly what we witches do, with a few different emphases. They would ask God for vengeance on an injustice – we would damn well create that vengeance. It's what we do best, although as everything else it has a come back for the witch, in that once you've dealt with a particular situation, you seem to attract that situation again. Nature knows you can deal with this particular set of circumstances so those circumstances get sent to you over and over again.

And it should come as no surprise to the witch. It has come as no surprise to me that while I have found one estate agent I'm impressed with and my purchase of an absurdly cheap apartment is going through remarkably easily – that is just the hedge looking after the witch. It's one of the things that happens when you bow deeply to the universe: it bows back (I have borrowed this phrase from Morihei Ueshiba, the founder of Aikido). For the witch, what she needs will literally fall into her lap at the exact right moment. If it doesn't, give something away. Nature abhors a vacuum and will not be outdone in generosity.

But the real responsibility is to know that in the same time frame I will be cursed with an absolutely idiotic letting agent. I'll assume if you're reading this you're a clever person, but unfortunately it is the case that the majority of the world's population don't learn. They keep on ignoring the blatantly obvious and ending up paying the price. It's just another case of moaning but not doing anything to make a change. I'll also assume if you're reading this, you will understand that I am the warning. You don't need to know that I attempt to be both mercy and severity at once to understand that as a human being you should treat me right. I don't expect to be given special treatment, you don't have to know I'm a witch, you just have to do the right thing. This agent took a reference from my employer, which asked amongst other things, about my attitude to other people's property. They were asking the wrong question. They should have asked what kind of enemy I would make. It's not difficult, they only had to mend the gutter. When they didn't, I also made it plain they only had to write me a cheque to compensate me for the damage. When they didn't they made the mistake of trying to intimidate me out of taking legal action. They should really have asked what I am like when the gloves are off, because that's when it gets painful, and it will be painful because they have invited the universe to cause them pain by not treating the witch right.

As usual the hedge has bent over backwards to take care of me, not least because I'm sitting here writing this virtually on top of the river which is the reason for the city. Advertisements have appeared in Birmingham's buses for a solicitors firm which specialises in tenancy problems, and I have put the problem in their hands. They are no win no fee, so I stand not to lose anything, whatever happens. The lettings agency have invited the hedge to give them trouble. It will end costing them much more money (and what's the betting they'll be really pissed off when I turn down monetary offers associated with gagging clauses?), and the negative publicity will cause their business to be dissolved again. I notice a business of the same name was dissolved in 2010. I'm a witch and an INFJ: don't piss me off because I will find out your stuff. And here's what they will do next: they will put up the rent when my assured shorthold tenancy comes to an end. Not a problem – grist to my mill, that is. In something like two months' time I will be all set up in the city centre. And all of this will come out in court. Because they wouldn't take responsibility, this is. They've attracted to themselves someone who will and will take them to school.

Incidentally, I must post the result of another post I've made a little while back, about having a problem with someone at work. I eventually withdrew my complaint, but what I didn't know was that while I sent mine in, another one went in as well. He applied for a promotion, and didn't get it, to his great chagrin. Shame. Shouldn't be an idiot. It's just some people need a firm lesson a right action. And there's no guarantee they'll get the lesson.