Funkyrae
Posts: 20306
Joined: 30/9/2005
From: Just stick a pin in a map
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Witchcraft, my mother and me
None of you really knew my mother. I mean, you're all here saying your final farewells. All of you wishing her the very best for life in the Summerlands but how many of you can say you actually knew her?
You who called her sister, those that she called daughter. To her every woman was her kin, her blood, her earth. We are all guilty of feeding from her like leeches, we absorbed her energy, we basked in her glow. We came to her for advice, we shared tears together; much as we are now.
My mother. I was her only child. A fact I knew she lamented. She would have taken all the world's children under her wing, raised them as she did me, with a love of life that was infectious. It was contagious. One hour with her and it felt as though there was nothing you couldn't accomplish and she was right.
During my childhood, she used to spin me this tale of her being a witch. She inspired the imagination of many of my friends, night would come when they would stay over with me and she would insist that should we not behave she would turn us into frogs, the only problem being that she knew the spell to transform us into frogs but not to transform us back into little girls. She would tell us that it was a last resort spell, that she really didn't want to use it as it would mean her having to explain to my friend's parents that their little girl was now an amphibian. If we really were playing up she'd remind us that they eat frog's legs in France and that it wasn't so far away that she couldn't ship us over there.
I was so proud of my mother. I told all my friends in school that she was a witch. When she got a job there she laughed it off, but she never once denied it.
As the years passed and there was never a sign of any of us being turned to frogs, I stopped believing she had these powers. She started showing more outward signs of her belief, moonstone jewelry, candles, incense. Again, like many others I just thought this was a bit of a quirk.
I caught her one night with some tarot cards, she was with a friend of hers who was desperately upset. My mother told me I needed to go back to bed and I did, later that night there was a pungent, sweet smell coming from the kitchen. My mother had distilled some herbs for her friend. Her friend is here today, with the baby she thought she had lost, that the hospital had told her had died.
We used to watch television together. One of my strongest memories is my mother shaking her head and laughing at Charmed.
Only once did I ever get her angry, I soon learned that it wasn't a wise thing to do. She always had the most incredible eyes. One minute the colour of rich soil, the next you could see the emerald in the earth. The time I flared her temper, her eyes became like jade and just as cold as that stone. She was fearsome when she was angry, there was no denying that. Very few ever saw it and the ones that did caused her that anger and hurt. Yet there was never once she used her rage. Hers was a contained anger.
She insisted that she had lost the book she kept her spells in some time ago. That she had no need for them any longer, that she didn't want to have the opportunity to use them again. She turned her back to the power preferring to pass on wisdom and energy. I found that book. She was right, she had lost the spell to return frogs to little girls.
And so as you made the transition from maid to mother to crone we lay your body to rest in your favourite glade, we place acorns as you requested and now ladies, as the sun has set, please extinguish your candles. May the earth accept her daughter. As above, so below.
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That's me that is!
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