By Thorn & By Poison
Autumn brings with it a melancholic feeling. The summer’s end and we are left with sepia toned memories and rose-tinted recounts of what feels like long ago.
As the equinox approaches, I always think of it as a transitional time. Soon the smell of sugar beet will fill the cool autumn air. There’s a sugar beet factory on the edge of the town where I live and processing will begin soon. It’s a pungent yet sweet smell, one that splits the local population; for some it is sentimental, is a sign that autumn has arrived. It inspires images of misty damp days and woodsmoke. Others detest it with a passion. Autumn has always been my favourite season. There’s something special to be found in all the seasons, but my heart belongs to the growing dark. I find something soothing in the winding down, in the retreat, and as an introvert, it feels like coming home. And of course, there is a beauty in the slow decay that comes with autumn. The trees put on a colour show far more beautiful than any illuminations. The murmuration of the starlings more dramatic and entrancing than any tv show or film.
And even as nature is on the cusp of a beautiful death, a glorious release, it still has so much to offer. Apples and pears ripen and blackberries are still good to eat up to the 29th (Michaelmas). After that date, it is said the devil spits on them, making them inedible (though a local deviation of this is a little more vulgar, with piss replacing spit). Hazelnuts are good now and soon the walnuts will be too. The bright red of rowan berries and rose hips too make good eating for those in the know, and still there are plums, gages, bullaces and sloe.
I adore all the seasons, but there is something about autumn that inspires a feeling of comfort and a closeness to nature. And in this closeness to nature, we can see nature for what it is, can appreciate more deeply the cycles of life and death, see the fierce beauty of the earth. Can feel it within ourselves too.
Last year, a hydroelectric turbine was built on a stretch of river. Whether or not you are for or against this type of energy is neither here nor there, at least for this piece anyway and I have neither the time nor the patience for such a debate, at least not right now. Instead, I wanted to talk about the damage done to that stretch of land and the results I have noticed since. You see, the river that flows through my town had a bit of a face lift a couple of decades or so ago and the stretch that passes through the town is picturesque if a little landscaped for my liking. It’s lovely, don’t get me wrong, but it is not wild. Instead I prefer the part of the river close to my home, that was and is still, a little more wild at least.
But now there is a crude access road for the turbine. Where once brambles and other shrubs, and plants grew, piles of earth had been piled, creating banks where none existed before. And growing in absolute abundance on those banks are black nightshade and woody nightshade, sometimes known as bitter sweet. No doubt you’ve heard of their rather famous, or infamous cousin, belladonna aka deadly nightshade. Many species are toxic to varying degrees, and even within the same species, many factors can affect the potency.
What I find interesting though is that these plants have sprouted, almost out of nowhere. Obviously their seeds have laid dormant in the ground to be dislodged, shaken about and woken up by the disturbance caused by the construction of the access road, or some such other logical explanation. Like the brambles that were hacked away only to return, we see that these plants, often unwanted, called weeds and torn up, often sprout first as a defence mechanism, a sign of the land healing itself. The poison of the nightshades, the sharp thorns of the bramble. They provide cover for the soil, habitat, homes and food for the creatures that live there.
There is something about these plants. Yes the nightshades are alluring, perhaps in part due to their toxicity and the bramble is a wild thing with a will all of its own and sweet juicy fruits.
I’ve already touched upon the devil’s piss soaked blackberries, but the link with the great adversary goes deeper than that. Once upon a time, the bramble was a beautiful plant, a sight to behold but upon his fall from grace, Lucifer landed in a bush of bramble and so cursed it. Despite such negative connotations, there is also folklore hailing from the south of England that speaks of the arched canes of the blackberry and their ability to protect babies from illness if passed beneath them seven times. And while the devil may indeed spit (or piss) upon the last of the blackberries, the first of the season belongs to the fair folk according to tales from the Isle of Man.
The bittersweet is a beautiful plant, or at least to me, with delicate purple flowers with a yellow orange trumpet at the centre. It grows on the wayside and in those forgotten places. It has a history of being used to prevent ill magic. When I talk about this, it’s important to say much of the history of folk magic in the UK concerns the protection of livestock, however I like to think of it as offering protection for people who, like the plant itself, find themselves by the wayside too, who exist in those liminal spaces.
Like the land, we must attempt to heal the wrongs done to us.
Like the bittersweet and the bramble too, let us grow wild.
EMMA KATHRYN
Emma Kathryn, practises traditional British witchcraft, Vodou and Obeah, a mixture representing her heritage. She lives in the sticks with her family where she reads tarot, practises witchcraft and drink copious amounts of coffee.
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