Equinox

It's the most wonderful time of the year!  I think Fall is my favorite season of all.  The other seasons undoubtedly have their charms; the profuse floral explosion that is Spring, the slow, hot beauty of Summer, the piercing intensity of Winter cold and all the joys they bring, but they can't match the feeling of Fall.  Fall brings relief from the oppressive late summer heat of the South.  It brings bold color and the bluest skies.  It is change, it is that knife edge between light and dark, it is a border, an edge.  It is a slowing, a dying, with the promise of rebirth the following spring.  And today it begins.


I can't tell you how disappointing it was for me to learn how far my idea of witches that I picked up in my childhood was from the truth.  I never desired to practice witchcraft, and it wasn't because I had a religious upbringing.  It was because magic wasn't a waving of wands or a flick of a hand and it wasn't flying on broomsticks and magical fruit and swords and all the stuff of television and legend.  I have friends who are witches and what they do differs very little from any other religious practice in many ways.  And I already have one of those.

So, because I am inspired by the worlds of J .K. Rowling and Sir Terry Pratchett, by C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkein, by Bewitched and Buffy, by characters portrayed by Margaret Hamilton and Agnes Moorehead and a zillion other fantastic and fictitious ideas of witchcraft, I am a hobby witch.

I make my own magic just like I did when I was a kid, mixing mud and seeds into "witches brew" and running around the backyard with the broomstick hoping for flight.  The only difference now is that I am a bit more dignified.  At least I hope so.