Exams, Rescue Remedy & witchcraft.

I have had a late start to the shop-sitting day after taking Sandy, with his teacher Sarah, to his violin exam this morning. If anything Sarah was more nervous than Sandy. We shan't know the results for 6 weeks which always strikes me as being unnecessarily long. They must have decided whilst he was there - mustn't they? Or do they have to juggle with figures so not too many students pass? I am deeply suspicious. Sarah had come armed with a Rescue Remedy spray to calm them both down so they went in smelling of brandy. Bach flower remedies are 'fixed' in brandy.

I had to drop-ship an Amazon order for 'Malleus Maleficarum' (The Hammer of the Witches, originally published in 1487.) The order was from Belgium so hopefully they won't notice when it is a little late. I had a nice long conversation with the seller of the substitute copy who lives in Edinburgh. She used to have a shop in the Royal Mile but now only sells through the net. We exchanged experiences of the secondhand booktrade and the various selling sites. The conversation has caused to me to change certain opinions and resolve to re-open my ebay shop although Amazon is doing just fine for me at present.

The Malleus Maleficarum order counts as another synchronicity. I've been researching local folk tales and many of them centre around the activity of certain witch covens. Last year a Nairn writer based a play on the Auldearn witches, Isabel Goudie being the best known of them. The story going around Nairn at the time this came out in book form was that a customer picked up the book and said jokingly, 'Ach Isobel Goudie you wicked woman. I have you in my hand!' She went home to find a dead crow on the doormat INSIDE the house.

Excellent!

Wikipedia: "The main purpose of the Malleus was to systematically refute arguments claiming that witchcraft does not exist, refute those who expressed skepticism about its reality, to prove that witches were more often women than men, and to educate magistrates on the procedures that could find them out and convict them."

"Misogyny runs rampant in the Malleus Maleficarum. The treatise singled out women as specifically inclined for witchcraft, because they were susceptible to demonic temptations through their manifold weaknesses. It was believed that they were weaker in faith and were more carnal than men."

Huh!

Witchcraft is a subject that both repels and fascinates me. On the one hand I believe some 'witches' to have been simple women in the old fashioned meaning of the term 'simple.' Others were perhaps healers in times when superstition and Christianity were intertwined and healing was perceived by many to happen at the whim of God who must be propitiated as the old gods had had to be. Some were probably quite evil women who did use their reputation to instill fear and thus get power for themselves, although why they would risk doing that once the burning began I can't imagine.

On the other hand as a pagan I believe that there is a foundation of truth in methods used by practitioners of the Craft and the universal laws it employs are as real as the healing properties in plants and as beneficial when applied with benign intent.