The Winter Witch
“It was lonely on the hill, and cold. And all you could do was keep going. You could scream, cry, and stamp your feet, but apart from making you feel warmer, it wouldn’t do any good. You could say it was unfair, and that was true, but the universe didn’t care because it didn’t know what “fair” meant. That was the big problem about being a witch. It was up to you. It was always up to you.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wintersmith
January skies are beautiful indeed.
Clear nights that seem to open the world up to the impossible vastness of the universe, the cold stars burning brightly in its dark depths, glittering in the blackness, and the bright disk of the moon, a mirror to the soul. My favourite though, is the early morning sky, that moment when it is neither day nor night where the dawn arrives in pale light revealing a pastel ombre sky, all purples turning to dusky pinks and then grey. It’s the kind of sky that brings with it deep frosts, pregnant with the promise of snow (or hope if you are a young one, ah memories of snow days come unbidden, of my own childhood and of my children’s too).
I always think of January as being a quiet sort of month. Yes, there is the clamour of resolutions eagerly made and started, the new year new me trade to replace the Christmas shopping frenzy, but still, I can’t help but feel the need to hide away, to slow down and just be, even as it is at odds with the mundane world. Perhaps not a quiet month, but rather a month for quieting, that splendid slowing down. It’s the kind of feeling that you get when you snuggle down in your favourite chair with a good book and a cosy blanket.
As I write this, the first snow of the year is falling. I don’t think it will last long, nor will it be severe or settle, not this time. I like watching the flakes as they fall lazily from the sky, fat fluffy ones at first. Soon, though, they grow smaller and eventually stop. Still, as I look out from my office window, I can’t help but admire the wintry scene. Bare fields, now snow spotted, the dark of the earth and the white of the snow mirroring the pair of magpies that take flight into the boughs of unseen trees and that glorious winter sky.
And, as I do stare out at this wintry scene, I can’t help but think of the Snow Queen. You know the story, the one by Hans Christian Anderson, and if not that one then you will know the trope. Perhaps you're thinking of she from CS Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, and you wouldn’t be much wrong either. In fact, whatever witch comes to mind, I’m sure she is the ugly old hag, baby-eater galore, or maybe a somewhat kinder but no less forbidding old crone, a wise woman with silvery locks and wrinkled skin. Or maybe you picture a woman beautiful to behold but cold to her very core.
They are all the witches of winter, all fearsome in their own way. All aspects of winter.
Let us start with the crone, that old wise woman who could be as old as the earth itself and carrying all of its wisdom within her. In this witch we see the winter of life. The experiences of youth, of spring and summer, the maturation of autumn and the culmination of all in winter. It’s easy to imagine her cloaked in the white of winter robes, slowly walking the land, a Galadriel like figure with a power belied by her withered frame.
And then there is the winter that frightens. I speak so lovingly of the winter scene, and yet winter is deadly to those ill prepared or ill. The cold kills. Snow days are fun when you can warm frosted fingers in centrally heated houses but ask those without, and I’m sure you can imagine the answer. This is the winter of the hag. You might bring to mind Baba Yaga or some other ferocious and deadly witch, her outer countenance reflecting the ill will in her heart. And then the Snow Queen, her beauty that of the snow and ice, cold and unreachable, much like her heart. And yet in each of their stories, or any other where the witch is othered, made ugly and evil, an outlier, there is another side. We never view the witch as a complete person, instead seeing only what our own fears reveal. We never see that which transforms her into what she has become. Maybe that is her power.
Really, though, these stories shared are threads woven into the wider web of life, to aid our understanding of the world around us. The winter witch teaches us it is okay to take a step back, to step away from the crowd, to hear the slow winter song of the quieting Earth.
“To animals they were just the weather, just part of everything.
But humans arose and gave them names, just as people filled the starry sky with heroes and monsters, because this turned them into stories.
And humans loved stories, because once you'd turned things into stories, you could change the stories.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wintersmith
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.
You can follow Emma on Facebook.