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You didn’t choose magic, it chose you; it bloomed inside you, blood and bones.
stories change, depending on who tells them, and stories are nothing if you don’t have someone to tell them
to.
The Discoverie of Witchcraft, written in 1584, contained lists of charms and conjurations, all while trying to convince the reader that there was no such creature as a witch. Charles Godfrey Leland’s Aradia or the Gospel of the Witches, a feminist retelling of the creation story that included folk medicine and magic from Italy. The Golden Bough by Sir James George Frazer, filled with folktales, an exploration of witchcraft in the ancient world.
Half Magic and Magic by the Lake
Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle.
mandrake to open the door to the other side.
He’d twisted himself to fit into a family and had failed despite his attempts.
“There are no witches,” Antonia said. “Only people who want to burn them.”
wondered if she knew that crows were more intelligent than most men, and more loyal, and that you could not choose them, they must choose you, they must come to you and once they did they would never leave you, at least not of their own accord.
binding spell, what the Greeks called katadesmos.
only the numbers 17608415 on the door, healing numbers
The past can take over if you let it.
There was a false story that had passed through generations claiming witches couldn’t cry. Perhaps that made it easier to burn them; perhaps you could drown a woman if you convinced yourself she had no feelings at all.
“If a woman doesn’t write her own history, there are very few who will.”
she thought about the women before her who had fought to protect those they loved, those who had been erased from history, who never had a chance to tell their own stories.
Cures, remedies, stories, books, ink, paper, talismans, protection, hope, conjurations, oaths, blessings.
Write what you must, write what you will leave behind, write magic.
It was a beautiful morning, perhaps the most beautiful day there had ever been. She’d had everything. A breath, a blink, a kiss, who needed more?
She understood why her sister had felt lucky even when she knew the end had come. Oh, beautiful world; most glorious day.
You’ll be safe here.
he ran straight away into the green water
Everything worthwhile was dangerous,
It was funny how you could come to love people who began as strangers, how they could change your fate, how surprised you could be by how grateful you were.
Yes!
This is what love was, you stayed when you wanted to run away. You held on when you knew you had no choice but to let go.
What begins can end. What is done can be undone. What is sent in the world comes back to you three times over.
They all wore white, a tradition among the family. White for funerals, black for every other day.
magnolia tree, the oldest tree on earth, here long before men and women lived and died, before there were bees.
