Witches

ETHREE Witch Sneering Bubbly A pimply nose To be feared by all So Halloween friendly More terrifying than ghosts Placing eye of newt in cauldrons Pure evil in our fantasy books Horribly foul and mean in faerie tales. A frozen heart places children in ovens Crones of the worst sort avoided at every turn Please good children, cross the street if you see them coming. Old woman laughter cackling with a murderous meanness. They are dangerous and vindictive, with meanness in their hearts. Devils in pointed hats, standing over dead bodies of children. My own husband has been afraid of them his whole natural-born sweet life. Monsters and bogeymen and alligators are terrified by witches. Not actually meeting one, these are the nicest things I have heard about them. If these crazy rumors are true we should banish witches from our lovely planet. Early Salem witch hunts and the purging of them might have been the absolute right track. Going back in time I would be in the crowd to cheer and shout for this. I am good with showing these crones and hags a not so nice way out the door. What if the rumors spread by tiny-brained men frightened by bold, older, assertive women are wrong? Let us put on our giant female thinking caps now, knowing what we do at our ripe seasoned age. What if some tiny-brained macho men just ganged up on these women in a brutish way? Have we read up on Wicca, a religion that exudes warmth and love, and gardening of the pure at heart? Have women once known as chattle, been deluded, excluded, by crafty authors of scary fairy tale days? Possible that the men of old wanted children to be less fond of their ridiculously doting grandmothers? I am not saying I have an inside track, because I honestly truly do not, but Maybe yesterday’s grandpas wanted a child’s love to be completely directed to only them? My sincere apologies ahead of time to those who do not understand open, independent, womanly free thinking. But mysterious little witch-self inside me said hey, what if old women are not the crones we try to make them out to be? What if we got a bad rap a long time ago by men who wanted to keep us at their beck and call, slaves in a way, their manly way? What if Hansel and Gretel and other wicked witches from those sad stories is a bunch of random hooey meant to shoot down old women? My creative muse, conservationist before the beginning of time, who loves magic and pixie dust and stuff was in complete agreement. But it popped out of me one day, in the middle of a bunch of research when I was investigating things I do not know, and have never seen. We want to believe in the tales, because they delight the dark side of ourselves, appealing to the part of ourselves we reflect only in nightmares. Goblins, ghosts, monsters under the beds, devils, and wild, crazy, old crones, with witch cackles are to be immensely feared universally by one and all. The Wiccan creed is old German ‘An harm ye’ none, do what ye will,” the thinking toward goodness reinforced by a belief that what you do comes back to you three times.