My Family Secrets in 2020

After my great grandmother curmudgeon and ornery self finally passed away at the tender ripe old age of 113. I was asked to clean out her attic. I was somewhat apprehensive about that family assignment because attics are usually unsettling not only because of all the ghost stories that appear to me in urban legends and online but also because my penny pinching grandmother was reluctant on spending any money fixing the attic up or making it into something like a home office or spare bedroom, her attic was dreary and full of dust.

In the back of the attic the first thing I discovered was a large diary and ancient photos of women dressed as witches from the 17th century.

Witches! One of the most persecuted, least understood groups of people on the planet. Blending their ideas of occult magic with Wiccan and pagan traditions, practitioners of witchcraft have been labelled everything from demonic to court jesters. For most of their history, witches were treated with savagery and contempt, they were frequently run from towns during “witch hunts” and worse, burned at the stake for their heretical beliefs in spirituality and magic. Sometimes, they didn’t even practice magic, according to my great grandmothers diary. Sometimes, merely eccentric women or artists or alchemists that seemed peculiar to the hierarchical townsmen were cast out as witches.

I found myself staring at the mysterious images of witches from a time long forgotten, some had to be most likely costumes, but many look to be glimpses of strange ceremonies. One of the photo taken in 1662 looked just like my great grandmother. Those images of witches have appeared in various forms throughout history from evil, wart-nosed women huddling over a cauldron of boiling liquid to hag-faced, cackling beings riding through the sky on brooms wearing pointy hats.

In pop culture, the witch has been portrayed as a benevolent, nose-twitching suburban housewife; an awkward teenager learning to control her powers and a trio of charmed sisters battling the forces of evil.

The real history of witches, however, is dark and often for the witches, deadly.

On a shelf in the rare of the attic were over 200 volumes of Witch books. The single bulb light flicked on and off as I began to read the titles of the many witchcraft dusty books.  The Black Toad: West Country Witchcraft and Magic by Gemma Gary, Treading the Mill: Workings in Traditional Witchcraft by Nigel G Pearson, Traditional Witchcraft: A Cornish Book of Ways by Gemma Gary, A Deed Without a Name: Unearthing the Legacy of Traditional Witchcraft by Lee Morgan, The Devil’s Dozen: Thirteen Craft Rites of the Old One by Gemma Gary, Besom, Stang & Sword: A Guide to Traditional Witchcraft the Six-fold Path & the Hidden Landscape by Christopher Orapello, Weave the Liminal: Living Modern Traditional Witchcraft by Laura Tempest Zakroff, Liber Nox: A Traditional Witch’s Gramarye by Michael Howard and Gemma Gary, Craft of the Untamed: An inspired vision of traditional witchcraft by Nicholaj de Mattos Frisvold, Children of Cain: A Study of Modern Traditional Witches, Letters from the Devil’s Forest: An Anthology of Writings on Traditional Witchcraft, Spiritual Ecology and Provenance Traditionalism by Robin Artisson, To Fly By Night: Craft of the Hedgewitch by Veronica Cummer, Anne Carow Gwyn: Sorcery and the Ancient Fayerie Faith by Robin Artisson, The Robert Cochrane Letters: An Insight Into Modern Traditional Witchcraft by Robert Cochrane and Evan John Jones.

When I got to the title Folk Witchcraft: A Guide to Lore, Land and the Familiar Spirit by Roger J. Horne the light went out completely. I had to go back downstairs to find a bulb or a giant flashlight.

When I returned the light was back on and all the books had disappeared. Suddenly, my cell phone buzzed. I had thought that I turned it completely off because when I pulled down the attic door the cell phone started heating up my leg in my front right slacks pocket. Something deep inside of my confused mind was saying don’t answer Gloria. Run for your life.

I said hello and this is what I heard: Gloria in a faraway sounding voice said, fret not if you’re on the shier and more on the solitary side. The diary you now possess will prepare you for your heritage. I know that you weren’t aware that you are a witch. There have been witches in our family for over 400 years. Have you ever wondered why you find yourself constantly watching tv shows such as Charms, Bewitched, The Worse Witch, Sabrina: The Teenage Witch, Hex, Good Witch, Dark Shadows, Bitten, Eastwick, Emerald City, The Secret Circle, Midnight Texas, Witches of East End, True Blood, Shadow Hunters, Sleepy Hollow, Once Upon a Time, Salem and A Discovery of Witches. The called ended at that point with a weird laugh like the one by Elphaba the wicked witch from the west from the movie The Wizard of OZ.

Shaken, bewildered and somewhat terrified I left that attic and never returned.

I carried the very large tomb Diary back to my one room apartment. Five days later I got a call from my mother. She said that we needed to talk. We agreed to meet for lunch at the Witches Brew of all places. That night before what my mother had to share in person I had one of the most surreal dreams of my young life.

I’m on an isolated island in the South Pacific staring at the tattoo of a witch riding a half moon surrounded by cauldrons and crystal balls and a boiling pot on my right and left legs.

Then suddenly the dream shifted and I’m watching my great grandmother being burned at the stake. She smiling at me as I read her lips. I’ll see you in the future.

I tried in vain to wake but this dream wasn’t finished with me yet. I’m looking in a Salem Village in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

My mother who strongly resembles my great grandmother and grandmother, were the first colonist to be tried in the Salem witch trials, they were being hanged after being found guilty of the practice of witchcraft. More than two hundred people were accused. Thirty were found guilty, nineteen of whom were executed by hanging.

One of the strangest part of watching my Great Grandmother, Grandmother and Mothers demise from this earth were the people I seen cheering as if they were at a sporting event or watching cars run into a concrete wall at 220 miles and hour at Daytona 500.

I awoke to discover that very same tattoos were now on my right and left thigh.

I had slept until 11:11am. I had just enough time to meet my mother for lunch. When I got to the restaurant she was not there. A waitress I never seen before handed me a note that read: Dear Gloria you’re a witch!