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.
The Tribe of Witches: A Story for Our Day
This is the story of the Tribe of Witches.
Five hundred generations ago, a people called the Hwicce (HWICH-eh) lived in the basin of the River Severn in what is now England.
Their forebears, mostly Angles speaking a Germanic language, had come from the Continent, and settled in the tribal territory of a Keltic-speaking people called the Dobunni, the “People of the Two Tribes.”
In time, as is the way of things, these two peoples became one people: and this was the making of us. For from their union, some say, Kelt and German, sprang those that today we call the Tribe of Witches; and, indeed, we still bear their name.
And this is the main thing: that from our very beginning, we have been a mixed people.
Look at the Wheel of our Year: sunsteads, evendays, and cross-farthings together: the Keltic with the Germanic. We are a mixture of peoples, and our lore a mixture of lores.
Since then, our people have traveled far. Today, many of us live in the Uttermost West, the Land Over Waves, and our tribal homeland is the valley, not of the Severn, but of the Mississippi.
Always our people have been a river people.
Since then, we have joined with many peoples, and learned from many lores.
And this is the main thing: that still to this day, the Witches remain a mixed people.
Just as our ancestors were, in the days of him that we call Artos, Bear of Britain.
History? Metaphor?
Metaphor, at least.
And, in this era of ethnogenesis,
if Witches have never before been a tribe,
we would seem to be rapidly becoming one.
As always, we use the past
to talk about the future.
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