Tags
Great Yarmouth, pagan, paganism, Wicca, witch, witchcraft, witches, witchhunts
Dear Women, Dear Witches
This blue plaque is at the entrance to the Old and New Cemeteries of Great Yarmouth. The Cemeteries are in the Northgate area; stretching behind Great Yarmouth Minster, near Northgate High Street and Wrights Art Shop in Stanley Road.
I had taken an afternoon off, time owed from work. I always try to do something with that time, to appreciate it.
I walked from my house to Wrights Art Shop, with a picture to be framed, I rang first: I had limited time before they closed. I put the picture in a bag, the top poking out a little; black clouds were coming, would I get there before it started raining?
I did. The picture, ‘Zen cutting through the chaos,’ an enso, the artist found on Instagram, every piece with such meaning and amazing titles. A recent piece, about finding your true self, is called ‘We are not the same… And that’s okay.’
I walked through the cemetery, full of squirrels. I regretted not having nuts and decided to buy some for the way home. I dropped the picture off at Wrights a wonderful independent art shop which also sells eco refills and products, and now, vintage ornaments, and then headed to the petrol station for nuts. It was closed, and I chided myself for being so unimaginative and was grateful that now I had to do better. I was glad to see a big Portuguese supermarket shop, with a small café area, selling coffee and the most amazing looking brightly coloured cakes. I bought an unfamiliar soft drink and some plain nuts.
Feeding the squirrels, finding the Portuguese shop, such a joy, that day, and more future joy stored up, that I could go back there for coffee and cake, take my husband to show him. I am so grateful for this life I have, for a life I can appreciate, and for being able to appreciate it.
I had started Wild Women by then, we started at Beltane (early May), and this reflective walk was just after the Summer Solstice.
I thought about you a lot that day.
On the way back I saw the Witch plaque again. What would they be like, if they were here now, these witches? Would they, as I do, seek and tune into, connect with and absorb, nature at any opportunity? Although it’s so built, the world now, here in GY we have the cemeteries, the sea. So I can always get there.
Or were some just women, maybe just women who were single, or who had a cat. They may well not have identified as or want to or certainly not want to now having been executed, identify as witches now if they came back. Like all witches and all women everywhere, there’s a million different answers for who they’d be or what they’d do. But I felt a closeness, to them, to my own true nature. I looked at the trees, the bushes, the old gravestones. I enjoyed the place.
I walked back by the sea and sat down at the end of the little concrete jetty near the recycling ship of plastic bottles and looked out. The sea blue with a stripe of dark blue at the horizon, the air that perfect temperature and combination, bare arms, a strong enough breeze to feel but not be cold. This, yes, this is me, recharging, and me being me.
A development is starting, near a big piece of land with many big old trees. I daydreamed about spells to protect them and thought that people would probably be more scared of someone tying ribbons around trees thinking it was a witch’s spell than they would about trees being cut down, grass paved over, and a world of concrete and no oxygen… ‘Contrary to popular belief, not everyone has an affinity with nature or needs a connection with the natural world,’ was something I read recently.
In my little group, meeting online, from Norfolk, London and Tokyo. We meditate together, explore signs and synchronicities, ask for healing, honour our connection with the natural world, and support each other. ‘Autumn has finally arrived in Tokyo and I have never been happier about a new season!’ B wrote joyfully from Japan. I feel the same, here in GY.
It’s still described as a mass hysteria of peasants, a panic about black magic, with the women often described as ordinary women, who had dementia, or knew about herbs. Yes, terrible to be an ordinary woman and be accused of witchcraft; also terrible that someone who was practising witchcraft was killed; paganism and wicca are religions, that people were persecuted for practising. Not all, and we won’t ever know, but instead of saying they aren’t witches, or implying that such a thing is completely made up, could we also add in, that it was a concerted campaign against women, women healers, women who were medicine women, women who were single, women who chose not to conform to norms, a systematic plan by church and state to kill women and their knowledge.
Consider even now how spinster is still used- actual meaning- a woman who spun thread and yarn with a spinning wheel, earning her own money and not needing to marry for financial support- and crazy cat lady used as a slur against the suffragettes (and still now!); from the witch hunts, women who were killed for owning a cat, so many cats killed, possibly contributing to spread of rats and the plague; the descriptions of witches in children’s story books: moles, hairs on face- that’s just being old! Old woman, old women, old wives tales, all terms of dismissal or insult. Demeaning women, particularly older women, their power and knowledge.
Estimates range from 30,000-100,00 killed during the Witch hunt period, to up to 9 million killed when counted over eleven centuries; mainly women and girls but also men.
Wishing you peace
Love from Rachel in Great Yarmouth