“a deadly system doesn’t have to seem like it’s targeting you directly to kill you consistently.”
—Alexis Pauline Grumbs
The roots of the word, “witch,” also mean “to be strong, lively.” Which is why the ruling order tries to consistently strip us away. Witches are living bridges to desire so in keeping with the surrounding landscape that Papa Culture doesn’t notice he treads our backs to cross chasms he’d otherwise fall into. When he spots us, he strips the tree-bridge and burns us—but only after he’s safely crossed. Strip away enough leaves, and he’ll kill the plant.
Yet, ultimately, he can’t finish the job without destroying himself.
He also can’t sum us in any equation, philosophy, definition, dogma, or description. We’re consciousness pausing to say, “It is good.”
Leaves Can Also Be Stone
“Death and seeing clearly are fraternal twins. They are also the two, mysteriously curved, faces of the ancestral knapped stone leaf blade that is myth.”
—Caroline Ross
Myth is not some collection of tales sequestered in the basement of a college library. Myth is how witches speak of ourselves to be aware of ourselves. Papa Culture tries to pulverize the stone and leaves that form the bridge under his feet.
He is not aware.
Myth is us being aware of ourselves … without having to know it to death.
Because it’s playful. We’re having too much fun to worry about the bridges we tread, the leaves we brush. And that is good.
As Caroline Ross sagely notes, the tendrils issuing from every living thing do not bind, but reunite. “They are the ‘be’ of be-longing, be-loved, be-side, be-lief, be-reft, be-come.”
The Stone Leaf Bridge
UNknowing is the stone leaf bridge. Unknowing doesn’t mean making ourselves insensate. Rather, in play, in journey, in contact with the living consciousness in every stone, leaf, and root, we cease the slavery of insisting on our own identity. I mean, if I am, as Papa Culture incessantly goads us into reminding ourselves Every, Single, Moment, why do I have to think to know that I am? Methinks my Papa-warped psyche doth protest much.
In being, in am-ing, I’m already unknowing. I don’t have to constantly think of my arms or my liver for them to be there. They are. I am. I don’t call myself into being. We never have. We are called into being by the leaves, stones, and roots that are our partners in consciousness.
To be is to be called into being~in~connexion. If you do not attend to this connection then one must rely on insisting on one’s identity with a forceful mind. If I allow myself to be called into being, contingent on the caller, different every moment, then no effort is needed to be my so-called self. Like the lilies of the field, relying on the loam, responding to the sun.
—Caroline Ross
It’s Not A Battle
We don’t have to battle Papa Culture. Orcas playfully and strategically smashing only the rudders of billionaires’ yachts sink them without making a statement. We see and sum that statement into lifegiving myth.
White Gladis the Orca isn’t starting the revolution. She’s an orca witch, bridging us to unknow our place in “the Big Scheme.”
It’s not about billionaires or paupers or the so-called “average” lot of us. In brushing the leaf, we become the leaf and feel that we are always the leaf. In treading the stone, our feet are the stone.
The Spell of Play
Papa Culture burns witches because those he singles out for the stake are living bridges to all of us being who we are. I call us witches. You can alternatively call us humankind.
The myth is the living of who we are. A magikal story that says root-deep and moon-high profundities about the universe.
With every step we take, every leaf we brush, we teach ourselves the spell.
Are You A Good Witch or A Bad Witch?