![]() Heal the cow and a witch was treated like a true saviour. Witches were valued for their ability to heal the sick, both human and animal. Hence, their neighbours often came to them for help with whatever tribulations were visited upon them by lives lived in filth and darkness. They could, if not read, remember the wisdom of those who lived before them. Witches, on the other hand, possessed knowledge and powers unfathomable to those they, by necessity, lived among. ![]() Peoples’ own concept of place rarely expanded beyond a day’s walk their fealty and loyalty stopped at the physical boundaries of whatever petty noble they laboured to keep in the style of the day, their own life coming nowhere near anything that could be called style. For most of the world’s inhabitants, it was as unknown as parts of Africa were a mere 150 years ago. Europe wasn’t really Europe then, of course. ![]() While witchcraft was practised with zeal around the world, the true hotbed was in the Tyrol area of central Europe. The time was long ago in Christian time, perhaps the mid-700s. Let me, on this eve of Halloween, tell you a story of the cultural height of witchery, a little-known quadrennial gathering of the clans, a chance for witches from around the world to come together in spirited camaraderie to showcase their skills and powers against others who, like them, believed they were the best at their particular craft. They were, if anything, a more enlightened, stronger, parallel culture to the often atomized, ill-managed, largely illiterate world of mere mortals.īut that was then. In those days, witches were not a counterculture to be snickered at and marginalized. Oh sure, they’ve been reduced to cartoonish characters, social stereotypes and the de rigueur butt of mother-in-law jokes, but there was a time, boys and girls, when witches-real witches-were both powerful and organized. ![]()
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