This story is by Maggymac and was part of our 2023 Fall Writing Contest. You can find all the writing contest stories here.
I kinda love witches. Well, I love them to the extent I know anything about them. Which I don’t. Not really.
I really liked the three good witches in Disney’s Sleeping Beauty: Flora, Fauna and Merryweather. They were kind of like maiden aunts who always had Sleeping Beauty’s back and her best interests at heart.
I could have used a couple of them when I was a girl. Maybe I had them but they were all in my grandmother.
Witchcraft seemed to be a fairly limited career choice. I mean, there was all that mystery and spell casting and multiple spiritual dimensions to get a handle on.
And the danger of spell blowback haunting you. Like Mickey Mouse’s curious, if hapless, novice magician who got his comeuppance in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.
Then there has always been the very real danger to witches of being beaten or banished or burned or basically, disrespected.
Wait. That sounds vaguely similar to the risks any woman still lives with.
The world of spirits and the occult have largely gone out of fashion in the secular world. Well, except for today, of course. Halloween is the one day of the year when we can all express our inner witch by sporting pointy black hats and corn brooms and painting on shrieking blood red lipstick.
I got a particularly stunning shade of red Mac lipstick as a gift from my daughter’s girlfriend. Fashion forward and high marks for good taste. I still pull it out when I need an instant power boost.
I deliberately mixed up my witch costume one year by taking a Rocket stick vacuum cleaner with me as my ersatz transportation. A modern upgrade from the trusty corn broom. People looked at me funny.
Witches have had a real and traumatic, if compelling, history. I recently read on a self-identified witch’s website that the beauty of the “craft” (so-called by its practitioners) is in its simplicity. Many spells and potions can be concocted with readily available kitchen ingredients and implements, like a variety of spices and essential oils.
The allure of witchcraft to women in days of yore was understandable. Constrained by biology and narrow-minded society to dreary lives of minding the hearth and repetitive childbearing, it is easy to imagine women who would have been up for a good ol’ time dancing around a roaring campfire in their birthday suits.
Exuding a hint of witchery (aka mystery) was a useful tool for women whose power in other spheres was excruciatingly limited. My mother was a storyteller and would recount tales of backwoods provincial witches.
She may have been a tad more personally familiar with their witchy ways than she let on publicly. Just a guess. She was certainly drawn to the intricacies of the craft.
I remember one story, in particular, that Mom told about Granny Bubar. She was a “widder” (widow) woman of wide renown in the 100 mile circumference of the Nashwaak River village in backwoods New Brunswick.
In other locales, she might have been dismissed as crazy. But in her small, rural circle, she was feared. No one dared cross Granny Bubar for it was a known fact she was the real deal. A genuine witch. There was proof.
Local farmers recounted stories about Granny Bubar occasionally planting herself on a gatepost where the cattle had to go through. Each night, they were herded in from the fields to the barn for the night. But the cows wouldn’t pass by if Granny was near.
They bolted and mooed and generally made a fuss. Granny just sat there, quietly, and unmoved with her arms folded across her concave chest. It was reported she took much delight in the frustration and fear oozing from the farmers.
After a time, and much pleading and oaths from the farmers, Granny came down from her perch and sauntered slowly home. Once she was out of sight, the reluctant cows hightailed it through the gate and into the barn, leaving the farmers perplexed and shaken.
My mother would recount the story of Granny Bubar with unabashed glee. The story had interesting roots we discovered years later. Mom happened upon a PBS documentary about witches. The script explored some women’s deliberate attempts to curry respect and fear in their communities.
The deflection of cows and other livestock by certain women was a common tale. It turned out women would smear their bodies with bear grease under their clothing or roll about in a bear or polecat den.
There wasn’t a right-thinking cow out there who didn’t know that odor. Granny Bubar likely sauntered slowly home to wash and freshen up well-pleased with herself after her fence-post vigil.
Serious spiritual traditions swirl around the night of Halloween in the Celtic traditions, or Samhain as it is called. And while I come from that cultural stock, I don’t know much about it.
This is the one night of the year, I gather, when the veil between the spirit and material worlds is most transparent and permeable. It is the night when offerings and thanks should be generously given to our ancestors.
Honoring ancestors has disintegrated to practically nothing in our material world awash in superficial bling and Grey Goose vodka and fast cars and money. This lost contact with other dimensions out there seems a profound loss to our culture and to us, as individuals.
So tonight I think I’ll give my ancestors a deliberate and sacred shoutout. Many dear relatives have passed over the years. I wish to honor and reflect on them tonight as I do occasionally during the year on their birthday or death day.
I will give thanks for the gifts they gave me while they were here. I will forgive their trespasses.
The only difference I might expect tonight, I’m told, is that on this one night, my ancestors may not only hear me but respond. They may respond with a signal or a sign.
In any case, I’ll be watching and listening.
And if they do reach back in any tangible way, I’ll be sure to let you know. If I can hold it together ….
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