Surely you’ve had this problem, haven’t you?
People keep asking why so many witches turn out badly, as if the answer were a single moral failing and not a stack of invoices, a bad press agent, and several centuries of other people writing the minutes.
Shakespeare’s lot, standing over a pot they almost certainly did not get permitted, were already doing public relations: “Fair is foul, and foul is fair.” That is not a confession. That is a weather report. Once the weather has been assigned to you, you might as well work in it.
The old charge was never really about pointed hats. It was about will. Crowley — the actual Crowley, not the one I invented for line 10 — put it with the sort of capital letters that make librarians nervous: “Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will.” The difficulty is that Will, left unsupervised, buys a house that eats things, a broom that takes twenty-five years to learn, and a reputation that arrives before you do. Change occurs. The neighbors notice. Someone fetches a pitchfork who has never once fetched a casserole.
Machiavelli gets dragged into this more often than he deserves. He did say it is safer to be feared than loved, *if you cannot be both*. He did not say you should be feared by the grocer, the building inspector, the health department, and your last three dates. Loneliness is not a familiar. Loneliness is what happens when the only person who will sit in the candy house is the candy house.
There is also the calendar. Halloween — All Hallows — was a night when the living admitted the dead were not done talking. Witches got blamed for the conversation and then, reasonably enough, decided that if they were going to be the subject of the evening, they might as well keep the candy. I have never gotten a straight answer as to why the extra sweets arrive. I have stopped asking. Some questions improve a kitchen. That is not one of them.
So here are thirteen reasons, which is the correct number, and not one of them is “because I was born wicked.” Wicked is a look other people put on you when your roof is made of gingerbread and your transportation budget no longer includes petrol. If that is evil, it is a very practical evil. The sort that still has to meet code.
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- I realize that Machiavelli said that it is better to be feared than loved…but he didn’t mean by EVERYONE. It gets kinda lonely. You at least need a toady or two.
- Do you have ANY IDEA how much it costs build a genuine, fully-functional house out of candy? One that meets both building and health departments in the middle of a forest?
- Eye of newt is SO expensive these days.
- In other real estate related problems…would you like to guess the monthly feeding bill on a house on chicken logs? No. You do not. And do you want to know what the house actually eats? it’s not people. It’s worse than people. We won’t talk about it.
- The ladies find green noses a turn-on. Which statistically helps only a small number of people, but the people it DOES help, it kinda really matters. Even if “The Wizard Of Oz” did make people aware that green noses are inevitable indicators of cruelty and viciousness. We all know this, of course.
- You can celebrate Beltane old-school style. For those of you who know what that means, it mean…it isn’t boring, is what I’m saying. Isaac Bonewits would understand.
- It takes 25 years to learn how to fly a broom properly. Given the rising cost of petrol, however, this will STILL save you a fortune in the long run.
- Children actually taste TERRIBLE but it’s a real bad look not to eat them.
- I mean, you never get the flavor out of your oven.
- “Magic is change in accordance with Will and a whole ton of good luck.” as Aleister Crowley never, ever would have said. Like never.
- You get extra candy on Halloween. We’ve never asked why. We’re afraid someone will…anyway, you get a LOT of candy. Not enough to build a house, but a LOT.
- You can turn everyone you like into small animals, which is part of why you’re the only person in your town.
- Thirteen is your lucky number; why not go out and cast some curses by the darkling road? It’s so much fun.
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