Sunday, June 7, 2015

The Witch In The Tree

Yes, you see her there ... if you use your imagination.

Well, you can now only see her in old photos because the once popular Pebble Beach, California landmark attraction is no more, having been felled by a storm in 1964.

Pareidolia, they call it, when a person sees something with the mind's eye which isn't really there. I mean, after all, witches don't really look like the popular conception of them, as for example, the wicked witch of the West in the movie the Wizard of Oz - do they?

But I do believe in witches. I haven't found a definitive history of witches, I don't think one exists. But as surely as folk wisdom and folk magic exist, so do witches. They were the "cunning folk" of old.

I think witches have gotten a lot of bad press in the movies and in fiction, in no small part because of the way Christianity has handled the subject.


Our imagination has surely run wild on this topic down through the centuries, but I suspect there is more to this than is commonly thought. And I think magic is poorly understood and too quickly dismissed as bunkum. 

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