The Motherwalk

By Richard Tweedle

On the twelfthnight, when the moonstone columns are bathed in Selene's lambent glow, we will gather for my daughter's serene blessing. An air of fragile hope attends the ceremony, because we are few now, and and each is very precious. Nonetheless, we revel while we may, leaving the uncertainties of future time to Her care.

The Coven is twelve, every one a witch--bred or born, as the case may be. I am Aurora, and with noble Vanya and slender Elspeth I guide the rituals, and set the pace of the path we tread. We live on this world's fringes, but none complain of loneliness, for of necessity we create our own world--our own image of reality.

Spinning, weaving, entrancing,
witch where have you been?
I have been
in that other place,
in woman's grace,
germinating the power.

When God was born in the minds of men, the Goddess did not resist. To do so would have been a hypocrisy of the spirit, an action foreign to her nature. As She is a child of our human minds, so too are we a reflection of Her divine essence, and do not war with God. Instead we step to the side, and wait for He and His sons to come to their senses. This is the way of things, though it be a path of great frustration and sacrifice.

When a daughter is born to the coven, it is the custom for her birth-mother to undertake the Motherwalk. It is the Mother, in all her splendid aspects, we worship; we have been doing so for many eons.

When Cotton Mather was still a youngling we were an ancient assembly. When the Inquisition swept across Europe, our order fled, and was reduced. When Constantinople was raised up, we watched through eyes already accustomed to the vagaries of the peckish world. Before the birth of the Christian Messiah, the coven watched the stars, kissed the wind, inhaled the scent of the trees in the forest, maintained the ways of those who would preserve the ascendancy of nature.

I myself shall undergo the Motherwalk tonight. With Phantom at my side I will take to the dark and potent ways of the Mother's land; this is not mysticism I indulge in--rather, it is the recapitulation of ontogeny. The only mysticism in our world--that is, the only power we perceive and do not traffic in--is that of the industrial civilization with which we must occasionally have contact. This is a realm we avoid.

Vanya came to me last night, as I lay in my bed, and told me of the disquiet she had sensed growing within me as the time of the Motherwalk grew nigh. "Your fear and apprehension are wasted, sister. Rather, you should be joyous. Consider--fear is the mind stalker, the slow death--and you are beyond all that, are you not?" Because she comforted me, and held my hand, I leaned forward and kissed my sister. I felt her squeeze my bottom. "We will all be with you tomorrow: You will find what you may. We will all be there with you." Just before she closed the door behind her, Vanya turned and uncovered the Labrys of the Amazon dependent upon her chest, and smiled a secret smile, so my heart was quieted.

A quiet heart is needed for what I do now. My daughter deserves a tranquil nascency. In the Way of the Witch it is written that beginnings are a fragile time, a time of utmost care and reflection.

So shall it be.

Her name will be Coral, for the rainbow waters which are our purity, and I will love her deeply, protect her fiercely, and raise her up as a witch, that she may carry on the work of a witch. There is, after all, a great deal to be done.

The first duty of a witch is to give reverence to the natural world. The second duty of a witch is to end the reign of man.

It has become a dirty world to live in, so we must see it cleansed. When I look out of my window I see dirt in the sky. When I taste the scent of the air, I smell dirt and grime. When I walk in the woods at night, I find the sky already made light by the cities' glow, as though they would eradicate sweet Selene from sight. There is scum in the river at the end of the path, and the very rain from above carries acidic death.

In carrying out our duties, we will make all of this but a memory in the wind of certain change.