The Halloween Witch

The decorations are out there. Lots of wrinkly, green women in pointy hats. A friend asked me to post this  tonight and this full moon is as good as any time, so here it is, written about 18 years ago:

The Halloween Witch

Each year they parade her about, the traditional Halloween
Witch. Misshapen green face, stringy scraps of hair, a toothless mouth beneath
her deformed nose. Gnarled knobby fingers twisted into a claw protracting from a
bent and twisted torso that lurches about on wobbly legs. Most think this abject
image to be the creation of a prejudiced mind or merely a Halloween caricature.

I disagree, I believe this to be how Witches were really seen. Consider that
most Witches were women, were abducted in the night, and smuggled into dungeons
or prisons under the secrecy of darkness to be presented by light of day as a
confessed Witch. Few if any saw a frightened normal looking woman being dragged
into a secret room filled with instruments of torture, to be questioned until
she confessed to anything suggested to her and to give names or what ever would
stop the questions.

Crowds saw the aberration denounced to the world as a
self-proclaimed Witch. As the Witch was paraded through town en route to be
burned, hanged, drowned, stoned or disposed of in various other forms of
Christian love all created to free and save her soul from her depraved body, the
jeering crowds viewed the results of hours of torture.

The face bruised and broken by countless blows bore a hue of sickly green. The
once warm and loving smile gone, replaced by a grimace of broken teeth and torn
gums that leers beneath a battered disfigured nose. The disheveled hair conceals
bleeding gaps of torn scalp from whence cruel hands had torn away the lovely
tresses. Broken twisted hands clutched the wagon for support, fractured fingers
with nails torn away locked like groping claws to steady her broken body. All
semblance of humanity gone this was truly a demon, a bride of Satan, a Witch.

I revere this Halloween Crone and hold her sacred above all. I honor her courage
and listen to her warnings of the dark side of man. Each year I shed tears of
respect when the mundane exhibit their symbol of Christian love.

poetry by angel © 1993

Sweet sorrow

Today I was drawn to wear my Apollo ring. It's not one I specifically procured in His name or in His honor. It's one which was gifted to me many years ago and over the years I've only worn it on occasion. At the beginning of this summer I felt a powerful call to wear it. It was around the same time that Apollo was becoming more of a presence in my life. I've written before about how He surprised me with His involvement in my labyrinth consecration! He is also the one who gave me my name. It is not one I share outside of mia famiglia, tho I do believe that will soon change.


I have been complaining about the earlier sunsets and now, we've almost reached the balance point. After that, I think I will miss Him in a way I haven't experienced before, hence the title of this post. I've always been very Goddess centered because there is too much male = God energy in the world. However, I need to balance that energy within myself first. This transition into the next cycle of the year has been a strange one for me. I have gone over some of my posts from the summer and there was a definite theme running through it.


Many Pagan groups, especially the ones who celebrate "Mabon" appear to be very focused on the male journey. The King is sacrificed for the land, he goes away, he is conceived once again, the Goddess is pregnant, and then she gives birth. He grows up, faces challenges, is proven worthy of the Goddess, they mate, the King is sacrificed, and around again we go. The amount of focus on it seems incredibly Christian. Every Sunday they celebrate this sacrifice. Maybe that's why I'm tired of it when it comes to this time of the year. Maybe it's because I don't see it as the King being sacrificed for the people. It's really about Mother Earth. The wheat grows from Her body. And why is the wheat a he? The tree flowers, the flower turns to fruit, the fruit falls, is buried, sprouts and a new tree is born from the death of the fruit. The Sun, or Father Sky assists, but all of this takes place in and on Mother Earth.

In my tradition, the cycle of the Goddess is the focus and it's not only a mimic of a life cycle, it's a shift in focus, or power. We are transitioning into Her aspect as the Dark Mother. This is the time of the Greater Mysteries, of the transformation of Proserpine from maiden of flowers to Queen of the Underworld. I've posted before about this time of year and how we're supposed to be "going within" and using this allegedly not busy season to focus on spiritual improvement and exploration.


I'm going to leave off here about the cycle of the year and pick that up again another time, when I have proper examples and pictures to add! Part 1!

Righteous, Man.

I read a blog post today, which is a response to the Reuters article on how Wiccans think the characters in True Blood are "giving Witchcraft a bad name." If you haven't seen the Reuters article, you can find it here.

The blog post, also entitled "A Popular TV Show Finally Depicts Sorcerers and Witches Properly," defends the idea that the Wiccans portrayed on the show, as well as the necromancer, are accurate (if sensationalized), and also defends the idea that we need to embrace and use what some call our "dark" or "negative" side. I've addressed this topic in the past in the post "Darth Strega." The "dark side of the force" should be embraced as much as the "light" side. Luke should have used his anger instead of denying it, and accomplished his goal of saving his dad. The two could have flown off into the suns-set together and made sequels. But back to this blog post.

He throws down a lot of smack talk about Wiccans, and of course not all Wiccans are as he describes, but there is an overwhelming contingent of practitioners out there who have diluted and polluted the concept of Wicca to the point of "anything (happy) goes." It's become the new catch word for "Pagan;" It's a safe word to hide behind to make the neighbors happy. Ellen Cannon Reed writes about this in Heart of Wicca. She defends her Wiccan practice as an "initiatory mystery tradition" while acknowledging that there are those out there who call themselves Wiccan who are "crystal-hugging, air-headed veganazis who believe (at high volume) that their way is the way all pagans should be."(page viii Introduction). I believe the blog's author is talking about the later. Here are a few highlights from the article which resonated with me. I encourage you to read the entire article even if you're not a True Blood fan.

Nothing less than the truth about us will ever serve to heal what divisions slice deeply into the blood and body of this world and our cultures. New-agers help to create those divisions by continuing- ironically- the same "witch hunt" started by Christians- except now, the witches are "negative" emotions which must be "banished" or driven from the body as visualized dark clouds, and replaced with visualized "white light" that enters you and "heals" you. This isn't healing; this is amputating half of our own humanity and our natural power. 

Our experts want to be as non-threatening to their neighbors as they can, and truly, who could blame them? But I feel I must suggest that what their neighbors need to know isn't that historical witchcraft really was “all lovely”- all those neighbors need to know is that what our Wiccan friends are doing isn't historical witchcraft; it is, instead, a new-age brew of goodness, peace, pop-culture cabbalism, light, so-called "shamanism", ceremonial magic, and karma, which couldn't harm anyone, at any time, ever- unless you consider massive confusion to be "harm"

Far from misrepresenting historical necromantic sorcery, Antonia embodies it. Women (and men) like her once really existed. They commanded the shades of the dead, made them give omens, divinations, and do favors for them- they threatened them, cajoled them, offered to them, seduced them, and held power over them. It doesn't sound pretty from a Christian or white-light New Ager perspective, but it is the historical fact of the matter.

He recommends the book:  Arcana Mundi: Magic and the Occult in the Greek and Roman World. This book is full of win. It's not epic win, but win nonetheless. A last quote to ponder:

The term "witch" refers to a region of the Western/Indo-European consciousness which, for whatever historical reasons (and there are many) has survived into our modern day loaded with power. Sure, most of that power is tied into sensationalism and smacks of villainy, but there is something standing behind it- the legitimate image of hedge-crossing, boundary-crossing sorcerer/sorceress who once interacted with the underworld and other more-or-less frightening or forbidden reaches of this reality, for the purposes of power-gaining, divination, and wisdom.

Yeah, I'd agree with that. I have one last note on the idea of embracing your "dark side" or "negative emotions" to share for you Christian readers who are lurking: Jesus did it too.

Matthew 21: 12-13: And Jesus entered the temple of God and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the moneychangers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. He said to them, ‘It is written, My house shall be called a house of prayer; but you make it a den of thieves.”

Righteous anger is righteous.


Tomorrow? Mercury in his many forms is a-callin once again! I'm reading Trials of the Moon! Perhaps a discussion on Arcana Mundi!