A few months after the first Sweetwood Grand Sabbat—that's the tribal gathering of the Midwest Tribe of Witches, which takes place when the corn first ripens in the fields, and the berries hang red on the rowans—a long-time tribal member, while at the store one day, ran into some Sabbat first-timers that she'd met that year.
They talked for a while. When it was time, she said—we all get such a charge out of saying this—Well, see you at the Sabbat.
No, they told her, they weren't planning to go back.
Flabbergasted, my friend had to know: Why ever not?
It was too emotionally intense, they told her, and too culturally immersive.
Too emotionally intense, and too culturally immersive.
That's got to be the best bad review that I've ever heard.
It's also a thoughtful and articulate review. As we all know, the Sabbat is not for everyone. For those accustomed to the well-meaning but undemanding eclecticism of your average pagan festival, a crash course in tribal immersion like the Sabbat might well overwhelm.
But for those of us who belong, there's no place else like it. As Jeanne Dibason told the court at her trial in 1620, “The Sabbat is the witch's true Paradise.”
Today, we arrive at the culturally immersive part. The songs and dances that we're about to learn are already yours, yours by inheritance.
Lakota elder Ernie laPointe, great-grandson of Sitting Bull, once observed that “The Lakota Way is transmitted through story and song, and actualized in ritual.”
The Witch Way is the same.
So what we learn here today isn't just for the Sabbat tonight. Take these songs and dances home with you; they're yours. Use them regularly; teach them to others. This stuff isn't just What Witches Do.
This stuff is Who We Are.
My brothers and sisters, prepare to be immersed.