Paganistan: Notes from the Secret Commonwealth
In Which One Midwest Man-in-Black Confers, Converses & Otherwise Hob-Nobs with his Fellow Hob-Men (& -Women) Concerning the Sundry Ways of the Famed but Ill-Starred Tribe of Witches.
Dancing with the Black Man
I recently had an e-mail from a friend who, after this year's Midwest Grand Sabbat, had packed up the family and headed out on a road trip, destination: Salem, Mass.
As an offering, she'd brought a cork from the Grand Sabbat night.
Now, this may seem an odd kind of offering to make, of little or no intrinsic value, but think about it.
Gods help us, the Salem witch craze of 1692 is probably the most famous witch hunt of history. (Americans have always been good at publicity.) Personally, I doubt that we see here anything more than scapegoating and the pathological inner workings of theocratic society.
But let us say for a moment—call it “mythic history”—that there actually were witches of our sort in “17th” century Salem: people who fled to the New World because it was no longer safe to keep to the Old Ways back in the old one.
What do they find when they get here? A mighty Forest (and such a forest!) and in that forest, who but the Black Man Himself, our beloved Horn-God, more beautiful and terrible than ever, already waiting for us.
Waiting to dance.
Would you not want to know that, 300-some years on, our people are still here?
Would you not love to learn that still, down all those centuries, we go to the woods to dance, as we always have, with the Black Man Himself?
Of course you would.
And here's the evidence.
For M.M. and the Many Hands crew
Is that a caduceus in your lap, or are you glad to see me?
Image: Paul B. Rucker
Design: Steven Posch
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