Matriarchal Mayhem - John Stormm (little red riding hood read aloud TXT) 📗

Her father had seen the problems incurred by well meaning dabblers all too often.

“You often said,” Mel went on, “that the world, during the Dark Ages, had separated itself from its own roots. Since we’re not exactly on the Inquisition’s list anymore, I was wondering what we might do to restore some of the balance.”

“If I fear anything,” her father replied, “it’s religious zealots, both ours and theirs. I don’t want to convert the world to Wicca. I’m very happy with Christ. I’m still not overly trusting of Christians with matches though. I don’t want to be anyone’s high priest. I’m a confirmed solitary wizard. Even when I belonged to a coven, I saw good magick take a back seat to coven politics, and the same goes for even the best Christian churches. What could I produce? Christian witches? Most people believe that to be an oxymoron.”

“You raised FOUR Christian witches,” Mel remonstrated, holding up four fingers, “with no little success. And that, with no support from the rest of your clan, nor any from our local church. But I’m not suggesting religious education. I’m asking we teach them how to see and think like a witch, learn to base things on solid foundations so that they work as they should, in a stable and sane way. I’ve been learning how few people there are in the world who have any idea of what that really is. Every concept of the greater reality has been cloaked in mumbo-jumbo for centuries. Is it any wonder, that the ones that possess the tiniest bit of sight for such things, get into the most trouble with them?”

“That’s why a clan such as ours,” the old wizard remarked, “needs an adept witch as a matriarch, or even a patriarch as times might demand. Only an adept will see and understand the fullest needs of the clan. Your idea of kin, is a bit broader than mine. I’m too used to being excluded from humanity.” He continued with a sigh, “It’s a high goal to reach for, but your argument is a sound one. Perhaps, something of the informal women’s circle my grandma and aunts used, will work for us here. There’s a lot of Disney-fied, misconceptions that we’ll have to tackle one on one, but if the ladies are willing, I think we can help with some things that will make them better able to manage as their own witch. Solitaires only, no covens. No high priestesses and grand exalted poobahs, just witch to witch. Om biggun tu?” he broke into Irish.

“I understand,” Mel smiled, and hugged him tightly “Thanks Dad.”

* * *

    Mel and her father coached Gem through some tough times. They would meet at restaurants and sometimes at their individual abodes. He would allow Gem to talk out her problems, and then patiently, begin building precept upon precept, and define why he was tackling items in a particular order. By the following Lughnasadh Festival, at Midsummer, her father had helped Gem accumulate the spell components she would need to crossover into the Otherworld and set things in motion to effect a positive change in her life. It was like moving in baby steps all that year, but when they took Gem through the woods to Kidron, the spellwork was as marvelous as anyone could expect. A well grounded witch was beginning to emerge from a frightened woman. Mel’s intuition told her that the cultural boundaries would represent no real problem, if the fundamentals were in put in place. She was proven right.

The women’s circle first met, without her father present, so that the ladies would become comfortable with each other and why they were there. In the first meeting, there were four women, besides Melanie. Tammy was a feisty, middle aged, red haired, divorcee. Her children lived in the house behind old Storm’s apartment. When she was visiting her kids, she caught sight of Mel and her dad working out with swords from the back yard, so she took it on herself to meet them. Sarah was a lovely dark haired, doe eyed, jewess, in her early twenties with an overpowering intuition about people and things. She wasn’t comfortable with her talents and wanted to understand and explore them. Tara was an auburn haired Irish woman in her late twenties, with an unquenchable thirst for all things Celtic. Helene Mpoyi was probably the eldest of all the women, excluding Gem. She was from the old Congo, now called Zimbabwe. Her husband Max was the clan chieftain of her extended family. Being the clan mother, she felt a kinship with Mel and her father. Managing her extended household wisely, was important to her, so she felt her time in these meetings would be well spent.

Melanie shared with them some stories of her own childhood, being raised in martial arts, and wood lore with her siblings, by their father, and her mother teaching them needlework and fabrics. They were somewhat envious of Mel’s good fortune to be raised as a witch, in a modern family. She seemed so comfortable with the craft, as if she were in a sewing circle.

“Being a real witch,” Mel explained, “is not putting on a robe on certain portentous days and waving wands and chanting at things. It’s the ‘craft of the wise.’ It’s a way of living and looking at the world around you, and being prepared to deal with the circumstances it throws at you. The robes and wands have their places, but they are only a couple tools out of a vast tool chest.”

“It sounds like your parents raised you to be prepared for any eventuality,” Helene commented.

“Take it to the next level, and you‘d be right,” Mel replied. “To some people, shit happens. Witches have the power to MAKE shit happen. Some people are victims of circumstance, and anything else that comes their way. Witches are manipulators of circumstance. If there’s a force in nature, it will be a witch, of one sort or another, who will find a way to make it work for them.”

“I want to put a curse on my ex-husband,” Tammy laughed. “He never worked for me.”

“That’s an idea to start with,” Mel said, “but not one to carry through as such. You’ll make yourself even more miserable than he makes you.” Tammy and the ladies looked puzzled.

“The number three is a powerful number in most arcane disciplines,” Mel explained. “The witch’s Law of Threes states that anything you do, be it good or bad, will come back to you threefold.”

“I’ve heard of this before,” Tara said wonderingly.

“So any cooties, I put on my old man, will come back on me triple?” Tammy asked.

“BINGO!” Mel said. “Likewise, anything done to a witch, will incur this same law. You just watch and wait for him to get his payback. But that doesn’t mean we have to sit back and take all that abuse patiently. Sometimes, we have to manipulate a few circumstances to put our tormentors in a position where they are more apt to learn what a bad idea it might be to piss off a witch. We have to be wise about such things. It doesn’t pay to burn your house down around your ears.”

“But, isn’t your mom a Christian?” Sarah interposed. “Doesn’t that make for a lot of conflict in your family?”

“It makes for conflict,” Mel replied. “But, not the way you might think. Of all pagans, witches are notoriously individualistic about what patron deities or entities they choose to pay homage to. Some are Dianic witches. They pray to the Moon goddess. Some prefer Danu or Gaia, otherwise known as Mother Earth. My father was originally a lunar witch. The last thirty years or so, he’s been a Christian, and raised us that way too.”

“How can you be both?” Tara asked. “In Ireland, Catholics and Protestants would stop fighting each other long enough to burn a witch. It was said that the Protestants would bring the matches and the Catholics would gather the wood.”

“I never thought about it much,” Mel said. “The things the Bible said not to do, I didn’t bother doing. The things it said about being wise as serpents, and harmless as doves, I took to heart. To many, “witch” is an evil word that gives them an image of something caricatured and demonized by the Holy Roman Empire. To me, “witch” or “wizard“ means wise woman or wise man. It’s a Celtic word for wisdom. There’s no edict against being wise. If there was, by definition, only idiots would abide by it.”

“You mean to tell me that witches and Christians can be comfortable together?” Helene queried.

“Only if they drop all the bigoted garbage that has been handed down for so long,” Mel went on, “Everybody respects the “Magi” that honored Christ at his birth. But who or what did you think they were? My dad likes to say that our people knew about Christ, before the Jews were even aware of what was happening within their midst. We were the ones who warned Joseph and misdirected Herod. My allegiance is unwaveringly with Christ. That is my wise choice as a witch.”

“Then why all the centuries of conflict?” Tammy asked.

“The conflict comes from Christians, or any sect, who have no knowledge of who or what we are, apart from what they see in movies or read about in fairy tales and comic books.” Mel explained, “The same church that has the heartfelt calling to send its missionaries to the pagans of Papua, New Guinea, will reject the pagans of North America, out of hand, as beyond redemption. Most people don’t like to be preached at. Witches aren’t likely to take this kind of treatment as an invitation to come join our church. To them, ‘Christian love’ is open hostility. As always, the true enemy is ignorance.”

“What do you consider yourself to be?” Sarah posed.

“My culture is a mixed bag of traditions.” Mel went on, “Christianity in every country, has its own peculiar culture and traditions, and for the most part, they are comfortable with the diversity. My family are not all that different in this aspect. My religion is where I place my faith and trust. My way of life is that of an Irish witch, with a good portion of Native American lore thrown in. It‘s amazing the similarities that exist in the old Celtic and Native cultures here. Every witch makes a conscious choice of who or what they want to be, and it has to fit the individual.” She continued, “But just like the rules about what goes up, must go down, there are certain precepts that bind us all. You want to know about witchcraft, we‘re willing to share some of the best precepts of it for you to avoid the worst mistakes. Remember, the blessings we share with you, return to us threefold. It‘s for our mutual good.”

“How much, do you think your father will charge for these lessons?” Tammy asked.

“If you want my dad to speak at a conference,” Mel replied, “or travel somewhere to talk to a group, you’ll need to consider an honorarium. To share knowledge within our own clan confines, it’s his privilege. His return is karmic, and he prefers it that way. He has an ironbound code of ethics he feels comfortable with. Trust me, if anybody started trying to foist money or gifts on him when he’s not receptive, he can become very abrupt, and downright rude.”

The women’s circle was a hit with the ladies. Often they would bring knitting or busywork with them as they sat and shared. On an occasion when preparing for a big dinner conflicted with the circle, Tammy used her “hands free” cell phone to stay in the circle with Mel as she was baking in her kitchen at home. For a small portion of the circle’s time, the old wizard would come and speak to the ladies about the craft. The number of