Good Witch

A woman invites Amber to a bonfire in her backyard. Amber asks whether the invitation extends to me. I assume any invitation not marked under the columns "work" or "women only" involves me, but Amber is more circumspect in social occasions. Better that she asks now than have them look uncomfortable at the door when I am on their porch.

I skim the invite list. The hostess and two other women came to our wedding and are (were?) members of the circle Amber used to attend in Poughkeepsie. Amber stopped going to the circles because they became women-only, implicitly excluding me. I did not fault her for these. Witches are often more focused toward the feminine, having been burned by the masculine, and how could I be bothered by Amber having her own social circle?

I am unsurprised when Amber says the bonfire will now involve a full moon ritual. If you get three witches outside at night near a fire, you are naive not to realize witchery will introduce itself.

I assent to this ritual, having already negotiated this invitation. I shouldn't begrudge a little witchcraft on an October night.

I sometimes label myself a lapsed Pagan. I keep a diverse altar above my bookcase and add to it infrequently, but I cannot deny that the most sacred part of this is acquiring and displaying spooky/pretty objects. I read and write about magick and the occult, but that is more for entertainment, research for fiction, and general scholarship; I know rituals and their components, but I am not likely to have tried them because I cannot rope others into them. My last two significant spells involved creating an anxiety sponge for my car (consecrated rocks and herbs in a steel earplugs container, which I shake upon leaving work; it is on a brightly colored pom-pom keychain) and a binding for some insistent thoughts (the anchor object of which I placed on the altar for safekeeping, but also because it is spooky-pretty). I did them, respectively, over a year and around six months ago. Aside from those, only a few Saint Anthony chants for lost objects or invocations to fire for cure. Kiddy stuff. I know how Aleister Crowley and Jack Parsons punched holes in reality -- it involved more power-bottoming than an outsider might imagine -- but it is more seductive to write about than do.

The hostess was next to Amber when I introduced myself at the peace drumming, but I never had the sense she felt positively about me. I do not think this affects my ability to eat her roasted chicken and salad tonight. In exchange, I bring cookie brownies from a mix, partly because I wanted the box out of my cupboard. I also wanted to eat the batter and dough (Amber looks askance when I eat batter containing raw eggs, so I did this while she worked).

After a few knocks, the hostess lets us in. She is a short, bright-faced woman who at once leaves Amber and me to poke about her possessions. She has cooking to finish, and I have crystals to admire. Witches always have the best crystals, if simply through sheer mass. Her witchcraft books are no less respectable, displayed in her living room. No one entering the front door could have any question that she was a witch.

I feel no awkwardness being in a near-stranger's home until another guest asks me about my books. I have no end of things to say on that topic, but it feels like bragging or masturbatory mysticism, and vague at that. That morning, I went to my biweekly writing group, where the other members asked me similar questions as the only Real Author. My answers are no more solid now. I will write until I finish. I have no idea how long I wrote this project, as I have several written in a hurry for NaNoWriMo, then left to gestate for years. I don't know why I wrote this, only that I did -- it comes close to automatic writing when I get going. (I am often surprised at what is now on the page or screen.) I explain the premise of Sorry about the Apocalypse, but it sounds like some Marvel fanfic instead of a meditation on mental illness (with superpowers and gray-goo zombies).

Food is on the table, but I don't want to be the first to take it, so I default to loving the hostess's gray cat until it bats my hand for touching its belly as I might my cats.

We retreat to the back porch to eat our food before the ritual. The altar is set up in the middle of the yard, a small table on which is a candelabra of red, black, and white candles. I go back for seconds on dinner to give my mouth something to do other than talk. When permitted too much idleness, my mouth, entirely outside my will, tends to start explaining about Gef the Talking Mongoose or AI sex dolls.

Camp chairs surround the ritual space, which I like. Who wants to spend a whole ritual standing? Plus, it marks the boundaries of the circle, so I do not wander out when facing the Watchtowers of the cardinal directions (which I screw up, instinctively looking at the direction where I see the bonfire rather than the south, which represents fire -- the Guardians of the Watchtowers will have to forgive me for being literal).

It is brief. We do not drink from the same chalice as we might have years ago, instead enjoying cider from individual paper cups. Covid does not respect sacredness. We libate the lawn after thanking the gods and spirits or asking for their help. I thank them for inspiring me and allowing my life to be ordered so that I write so much.

The hostess impresses my cookie brownies into service as the altar cakes, making me wish I had baked something from scratch rather than softening butter and adding an egg to a mix.

We sit around the fire then, which was the selling point for me. Ritual is ritual, though I felt at peace there before inspiration struck, and I had to think it through. I had brought it on myself by thanking the gods for writing yet again. If I have any real magick, it is in creating worlds from fountain pen tips.

The fire and the talk around it feel sacred to me. It is something ancestors have done since prehistory, sharing stories. Talking comes more easily around a fire, listening easier still. Silence is respected as one watches the crackling instead of looking expectantly at everyone else's faces.

last watched: Wednesday
reading: The Psychopath Test