Wickedness is not all bad. Wicked can mean going beyond what is reasonable or predictable. Dastardly is the word that explains things that are bad and I’ve yet to find any reference of a dastard witch, the more common phrase being wicked witch. Witches are associated with a bag of tools, things that invoke a sense of eeriness, evil or just plain wickedness. The bag contains a pointed hat, a broom, a caldron, a wand and maybe a flying monkey. But the aura of “witchiness” is only smoke and mirrors, creating an atmosphere that has no other explanation than wicked.
As a self- proclaimed witch, I have no idea what witchcraft is about, but I do like people to believe I am something that I’m not. I believe someone can be spiritual, sensing the real as well as the unreal and perhaps calling it the west wind. It is pretty much jibber jabber and blaming it on wickedness is just a trick in a Hag’s Bag.
There is a saying – “Somedays you have to just put on the hat to remind them who they are dealing with.” The primary tool in the bag is a hat. Although I own several witches hats, hats are not becoming on me, pointed or otherwise. The conical hat, called a hennin, is an exaggerated dunce cap which the Church related to the devil’s horns and therefore evil. The witch hat, a more brimmed version of the cone-shaped hat was used in Victorian Age fairy tales and art to depict old hags who scare children by luring them to gingerbread houses. Immortalized in the movie, The Wizard of Oz, the nightmarish character of the Wicked Witch of the West still scares children and small dogs.
Brooms are useful for moving dust and dirt from hither to yon but as a mode of transportation they are not very practical and downright impossible to get in a bag. Saints can levitate, but the broom is the essential means for witches to go places and do witchy things. The key to soaring across the night sky is balance, a firm grip of the stick, and finesse.
I am not the type of witch that simmers newts and toads in a caldron, concocting potions that will simultaneously cause and relieve pain. Although I might have a caldron somewhere in the bag, this activity is too reminiscent of my bayou relatives preparing dinner, boiling and simmering whatever crossed the yard that day and calling it supper. They taught me if you couldn’t keep the critter in the pot, get out of the kitchen.
The wand is simply a stick. A magic stick, however, because this piece of wood is not chosen by you but instead chooses you. When you see a stick lying around somewhere, you know that it is your stick. It does not possess any magic properties before it is cleansed and energized with magic lunar energy acquired by leaving it out all night when there is a full moon. Then wah-lay, you’ve got yourself a magic stick for the bag. Wands can be used for casting spells by focusing energies on “spell-ees.” One should use caution when focusing sticks on others; they might have a bigger stick.
Mark Twain wrote: “Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.” A witch knows about accessorizing in order to weave magic into any social gathering and any good witch knows that one must accessorize, accessorize, accessorize. With our bags properly packed, wickedness can be charmingly unpredictable especially with a monkey or two. To paraphrase Coco Chanel, “A witch should be two things: classy and fabulous.” It’s all in the bag.
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