The Witches Sabbat
“The Sabbat arose as a conspiracy to destroy the rotten edifice of Church and State, meeting on the heath to avoid the gaze of authority, guised in anonymity and foreboding. This revolutionized the nature of witchcraft, regardless of the pre-existence of the Sabbat form.
~Peter Grey, Apocalyptic Witchcraft
The moon is full.
It hangs in a black sky, dominates it so that the stars seem muted in comparison. Does it always glow so bright? Is it me, or does it seem closer than usual? Questions I cannot answer, there’s nobody else to answer, tell me I’m wrong, am only imagining it. And besides, it doesn’t matter. I am distracting myself, I know. It’s always the same. I used to fight, you know. In the ring. Boxing and kickboxing, and though I chose to do so, enjoyed it even, there was always that feeling when stepping into the ring to stare down my opponent, always that voice whispering it’s not too late. You can turn back. You can say no. Why put yourself through this? It’s the same feeling I have now. It’s that voice that questions the moon, tries to talk me into returning to what is known, what is safe. The first battle is ignoring it.
At this hour, the garden has a dreamlike quality to it. The light from the moon casts the garden in silver and black and a thousand shades in between. Even the shadows have shadows in this, the night garden.
At first it’s frightening. The night garden is different to the garden in the daytime, when the noise of children playing, dogs barking and the roar and stink of traffic mask the magic of this place. The humdrum of mundane life pulls our attention to other places, other occurrences. You can sense some otherness at the periphery, but the reality of life distracts, so that it is a fleeting feeling, this sense of otherness, easily dismissed in the bright sunlit garden. Yet here in the night garden, the distractions are no more. The street is empty. The houses dark as their inhabitants slumber. It’s easy to imagine that nothing else exists beyond the bounds of the garden. There’s only me, the night garden and the moon.
I used to be afraid, and even now there is a sense of anticipation.
I leave the path behind and move further into the garden. The grass is cool and damp underfoot. I relish it. I’ve almost forgotten how good it feels. With each step, I become more feral. With each step, the memory of what it is to be wild grows stronger. With each step I discard the many masks I wear: mother; wife; teacher; neighbour; friend; worker. With each step they seem less real, less important. I am all of those things, yes, but in the daytime, I step in and out of those roles at will, wear whichever mask the situation demands until they take root and twist and merge with one another until the real me is overgrown.
Here though, I am just me. I just am.
I used to fear this process of becoming wild, the dismantling of myself and the revelation that follows, so fiercely do we cling to those roles that have come to define us. Like climbing into the ring, but this time the opponent is myself, the fight, untangling myself. Freedom is the trophy to be won.
The night air is cool, enough to raise goose pimples on my bare arms, make my nipples harden and strain against the thin cotton of my nightdress. This I discard too. Just another step to my own rewilding but perhaps the hardest. Nakedness, the final barrier between myself and nature. Here in the night garden, it doesn’t matter that my thighs are big, nor that my stomach is not as flat as it once was, that my breasts hang a little lower. There is no shame here, no self pity either. This is me, as I am, the costumes of my daytime self discarded along with the masks. I unbraid my hair, the final step in reclaiming my wildness. My plait, symbolic of order, of restraint and self control, a symbol of my tamed nature. At last the plait is undone and the wildness of curls reform themselves, mirroring the reformation of the wild within. The night breeze catches at my hair and I close my eyes, turn my face skywards and relish the feeling of being utterly naked, totally free, before moving onwards, the wildness of the night garden calling to the wildness within me.
Undomesticated and free, my spirit soars and mingles with the spirits of this place, the genius loci. This is why we enter the night garden. This is why we shed the layers of ourselves, the masks and costumes of our workaday lives, the shedding a ritual held once a month with only the moon as witness. The fear and pain of transformation, of becoming feral, returning to the wild, are worth it. This is freedom. It cannot be bought with riches, can only be gained through relinquishing.
This is how we meet him. Unashamed and free.
The night garden is alive. I walk beneath the canopy of the cherry tree, the last of the blossoms loosen their petals so that they catch the breeze and fall slowly, the creamy whiteness transforms in the moonlight so that it seems as though the stars are falling from the sky. The branches catch at my hair, but I pay no mind. Instead, I run my hands up and down the trunk in welcoming. This is an old friend, I know it well. I embrace the tree, pressing my body against the rough bark, feel myself melting into it, feel its energy flow into me, slow and steady but strong and vibrant. I stay like this, for how long I don’t know, until it is time to move on. There are others I must greet, and so I walk the same circuit I have walked many moons over, familiar but new. Spirit is ever-changing and yet always the same.
Each time is familiar and yet new, ever-changing and yet always the same. I know what comes next, can feel the anticipation rising within me.
I sit in the centre of the garden. I can feel the spirits of this place, have become one of them. I look up at the moon once more before closing my eyes. I lose myself in the sounds of the night garden. It is like the spirits are singing, and I feel my body begin to sway, following the rhythm of the spirit song. I hum along and beat out the rhythm upon the earth with my hands. The song rises in tempo and volume until the rhythm grows rougher, more wild, and the anticipation felt earlier becomes something else, a needful yearning of him. It grows stronger until it feels as though it will consume me.
I let it. Only then does he come.
I open my eyes when I feel his rough hand on my bare skin. He moves behind me. I can feel him. I don’t know how he appears to the others but for me, this is him, a wild thing, part man, all wild. His scent fills my nostrils. He smells of the earth and of the night breeze, of green grass and damp wood spice. He moves my hair to the side and I can feel his hot breath on my neck. He whispers in my ear and I say yes in reply. My voice doesn’t sound like my own. It rasps and cracks, sounds like the rasp of wood on wood, like the creaking of trees in high wind. My tongue darts between my dry lips and I can taste the night air. His hands on my skin, the merging of spirit.
The moon is heavy and full. It dominates the sky so that even the stars are diminished in its presence. I lose myself in its silver glow, feel the ground beneath me, him between my legs. This is the way it ever is, has been since the first time, many moons ago. This is my sabbat, with only the moon and the night garden as witness to this secret coupling, the merging of spirit. The utterings of magic. This is me. My truest self. Wild and untamed, ecstatic. As we reach our climax, I feel myself open. To him. To the night garden. To the secrets of the universe. The spirit song of the night garden reaches a crescendo and I cry out, unable to keep it inside. I close my eyes and see the moon, its image burned onto the back of my closed lids. I feel him lay beside me on the ground.
Trance comes next, almost like slumber, but not quite. Still, it is a deep state and I do not feel him as he moves away, do not see him as he slips away, perhaps through the wall of thick ivy, the wildest part of the garden where critters live and sparrows sleep.
When I open my eyes, the moon has moved further across the sky. It seems dimmer than it did before, though perhaps this is an illusion, for the sky seems less dark. I sit up, cold and stiff and yet reluctant to move. But move I must. I retrace my steps, gathering once more the costumes and masks of my life. All too soon it will be time to dress in them, to re-braid my plait and put on my nightdress. But I linger a while longer, until the sparrows begin to chatter and the blackbird breaks the dawn with his loud, melodic song.
The witch's sabbat is over, and yet it never ends.
EMMA KATHRYN
Emma Kathryn, practises traditional British witchcraft, Vodou and Obeah, a mixture representing her heritage. She lives in the sticks with her family where she reads tarot, practises witchcraft and drink copious amounts of coffee.
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