Bone Memory

Aurora on Dartmoor. Devon, England.

There is old memory in all of us. Or perhaps what I mean, is there is human animal memory in all of us. Call it ancestral, call it instinctual, call it past life. It comes from the same place. Bone memory.

I witnessed this in my daughter when friend and author, Sylvia Linsteadt took her up to the ancient bone lands of Dartmoor, where the crone mother presides over bog and changeable mists. Where young foals and lambs test their new legs.
We could not hike far. It was more of a wee ramble over stone and grass, avoiding prickly gorse, and foot-snaring holes.
Sylvia recognized the cuckoo’s call fist. Unmistakable. Just like the famous clocks. Cuckoos are good luck. To hear the first cuckoo of spring is incredibly fortunate. Indeed, other hikers stopped to listen and look for this rare blessing.
Of course we left the songbird offerings. My 2 year old daughter, understanding the magic of the moment then requested that we all take hands and dance a little fairy jig in a ring. She doesn’t know about fairies, or dancing jigs, or May Day dances, or any of the customs of her heritage, but there she was, directing us in a little dance. When she was finished, she requested we lay down on three separate stones, and close our eyes.

If you know anything about fairy lore, hearing a magic bird, dancing on the moor, and falling asleep on a rock is most certainly the beginning of an otherworldly tale.

She knew. Bone memory knew that here, in this land, as the newly born foals wobbled near their mothers, here is where you dance. Here is where you lay your mortal body against the ancient stone. Here is where some part of you remembers: yes, this. I know this. I am this. This place is in me. I recognize this land, because I am eternal, and all my grandmothers are alive within me.

Witches? Why, Thank You.

I don’t speak on Halloween. I don't write. I honour my ancestors. It’s an exercise in liminality. I’ve been doing this since I was 15. Last night, a group of female friends and I decided to dress up all in white, paint our faces white, and pass candy out to kids. All this, while seated in a semicircle, silent. See, the town that my sisters and I evacuated to during the fires happens to be THE BEST town for halloween. Over a thousand trick or treater’s passed by the house where we held our silent counsel. ⠀

When you don’t speak on halloween, people like to guess what you are. It’s become half the fun for me. ⠀

We got a lot of good guesses: zombies, ghosts, ghost-brides, but what most people called us? Witches. Oracles. “Are you going to tell me my future?” “Are you the Oracle of Delphi.” “Look at the witches!”⠀

We weren’t wearing pointy hats. We didn’t have broomsticks. For goodness sake, we were trying to be creepy. Yet deep in the human psyche there is a recognition of feminine power. How could there not be? Women were spiritual leaders, shamans, priestesses and prophetesses for much longer than the genocidal claws of Christianisation. When every aspect of our spiritual and religious authority was stripped from us, we still found a way to hide it in our weaving, our cooking, our storytelling, our songs. ⠀

Witches you say? Yes. We’ll take it. Witches. Wyrd Women. Fates. Spinners. Pythonissa. Incantrix. Fee. Hag. All the different ways to say world-weaver, healer, woman who walks the edge places. Hedge-woman. Truth-speaker. Poet-prophet. Way-finder. Midwife. Night-Farer. Shapeshifter. Banfáith. Fate-seeress. Divina. Mystery-singer. Strega. Pharmakis. Blesser. Bruja. Heathen.⠀

Five women, clad in white, holding silence on the eve of the ancient heathen new year? Witches, you decide, as you gather candy from a basket. This is because something in you, no matter how deeply buried says “This. I recognise this. I know this. She is power. She is prophecy. She is not forgotten.”⠀