Halloween Witch
angel copyright 6-26-99
Petals and Thorns
Each year they parade her about,
the traditional Halloween Witch.
Misshapen green face, stringy scraps of hair,
a toothless mouth beneath her deformed nose.
Gnarled knobby fingers twisted into a claw
protracting from a bent and twisted torso
that lurches about on wobbly legs.
Most think this abject image to be the creation
of a prejudiced mind or merely a Halloween caraicature.
I disagree.
I believe this to be how Witches were really seen.
Consider that most Witches:
were women, were abducted in the night,
and smuggled into dungeons or prisons under the
secrecy of darkness to be presented by light of day
as a confessed Witch.
Few if any saw a frightened normal looking woman
being dragged into a secret room filled with
instruments of torture, to be questioned until she
confessed to anything suggested to her and to give names or whatever would stop the questions.
Crowds saw the aberration denounced to the world
as a self-proclaimed Witch.
As the Witch was paraded through town
en route to be burned, hanged, drowned, stoned
or disposed of in various other forms of Christian Love,
all created to free and save her soul from her depraved body,
the jeering crowds viewed the results of hours of torture:
The face bruised and broken by countless blows
bore a hue of sickly green.
The once warm and loving smile gone–replaced
by a grimace of broken teeth and torn gums that
leers beneath a battered disfigured nose.
The disheveled hair conceals bleedy gaps of torn scapl
from whence cruel hands had torn away the lovely tresses.
Broken twisted hands clutched the wagon for support,
fractured fingers with nails torn away locked like groping claws
to steady her broken body.
All semblance of humanity gone.
This was truly a demon–a Bride of Satan…a Witch.
I revere this Halloween Crone and hold her sacred above all.
I honor her courage and listen to her warnings of the dark side of man.
Each year, I shed tears of respect when the mundane
exhibit their symbol of “Christian” Love.
– – – – – – –
Did she look like this before being tortured?
Torture, whether of witches or of “enemy combatants”, is evil.
As we go about this weekend some of us will consider this a sacred time. October 31, Halloween to some and Samhain to others, is the New Year for a lot of Pagans. Each day I will try to post a different perspective….
Never again the Burning Times
Blessed Be