Witches are usually depicted as wart-ridden, bitter old ladies in black that boil children in cauldrons. The one who picked me up hitchhiking didn’t fit the bill. Methuselah, as she formally introduced herself, was a self-proclaimed witch. She possessed the face and body of a beauty queen, the infectious smile and happy glow of a leprechaun, and the vocal quality of a dulcimer. This was one very sweet woman.
Her bumper sticker read, “My other car is a broom.”
Her vehicle smelled like an herb garden and resembled an altar. Dried plants and assorted amulets hung everywhere they could do so without blocking sight of the road. There were too many to count. Fragrances of lavender and rose owned the atmosphere. Christian crosses, Mother Mary amulets, Jewish stars, Buddhist and Hindu deities, and Pentagrams galore wove themselves between the plant matter as best they could. The ceiling and walls of the automobile were completely covered.
We had an immediate kinship and no trouble getting into a conversation. Anyone good enough to let a stranger into his or her car is usually pleasant and friendly. She was even more so. The atmosphere felt comfortable enough for me to ask a question. It was a question that had always puzzled me. Maybe she had the answer.
“Since you know a lot about this kind of thing, maybe you can help clear something up for me.”
Meta’s (her nickname) incredible body was covered by a raggedly hemmed gypsy dress. A lock of gorgeous blonde hair swung away from her eyes as she turned to respond. A radiant smile lit up her already beautiful face. It was a perfectly innocent movement. She wasn’t trying to be sexy. But it was the most sensual movement, from the neck up, that I have ever seen a woman make. In an unaffected and perfectly natural manner, young Meta generated more heat than a fully-clothed person should be able to produce. It took a few seconds before my distraction repaired itself enough for me to remember my question.
“Christians say that Jesus walked on water, healed lepers, turned water into wine, rose from the dead, and performed all sorts of other obvious acts of what most folks would call magic and miracle. So how come there are so many people today who (whether they believe all that or not!) have no fear of and even some respect for all those magic-flavored ideas but are either scared of or disrespectful toward other ideas about magic, miracles, witches, and the like?”
The young lady screwed up one side of her face and gave her head a few somber nods as she began to answer. “There is a very sad and true piece of history that will answer your question, perhaps more thoroughly than you’d like. You’ve heard the old expression, ‘God is Love, but some of His followers scare the shit out of me’…right?”
My nod told her that I had heard several versions of that statement.
“Well, this is a case where that expression applies very strongly. Pre-Christian Europe was filled with peaceful, tribal, matriarchal societies of natural beauty for a thousand years. Much of that period of history is addressed as the Dark Ages only because history is a liar. The winners write history. “Winners,” in this case, refers to conquest. In the conquest of territory, all too often it is the most barbaric elements of humanity that succeed. That barbarism needs to justify itself to posterity in order to preserve social order and public compliance, and so they distort history to support their actions.
“This dishonesty always turns out to be as shortsighted an approach as the barbarism that spawned it. A society (just like a house or any structure), if built on a foundation of bullshit, always faces inevitable collapse in the long run. Good people were slaughtered throughout Europe and their land stolen behind the banner statement that they were godless, evil savages. This was done as brutally to the tribal people of Pre-Christian Europe as it was to the indigenous residents of what we call the Pre-Columbian Americas. Many people are now coming to realize the great spiritual gravity, beauty, and comparative sanity of the Pre-Christian European and Pre-Columbian American cultures that were destroyed. We are now scrambling to regain the ancient knowledge that we spent several centuries and so much effort destroying!”
My enchanting hostess took a deep breath to gather her composure and continued. “Had Hitler won World War Two there would not be any holocaust museums and remembrances. Nazis would have written the history books and their foul deeds would have been made out to resemble an act of God’s will to rid the world of Jew-demons—or something just as sick.
“Such was the case in the age of Pre-Christian Europe. For centuries, tribal cultures with a religious respect for nature had flourished on their own terms. In the years between 1000 and 1500, long after the Romans had beaten the Christ out of Christianity, the invasion took place. Judged by the percentage of the population that was murdered, it was arguably one of the two most severe cases of genocidal holocaust in all of human history (along with the Native American holocaust). Had he been present at the time, The Christ himself would have had a lot more in common with the victims of these massacres than he would have had in common with the marauders who were using his name. Maybe that’s true of all holocausts. Jesus was certainly a Jew. Hitler’s Christian nation’s crusade would most certainly have baked Him. It is also pretty obvious that any son of God would have had a lot more in common with the Native American peoples, Pre-Christian European tribes, and European Jews than he would have in common with murderers, no matter what they called themselves.”
Meta being such a devout Christian and such a devout Witch at the same time was stretching my brain a little bit. The potency and conviction of her speech stretched it even further. With moistening eyes and a slight quiver developing in her lower lip, she spoke on. Meta didn’t sound like a person who was just passing the time by telling a random story. She broadcast the tone and emotion of a brutalized crime victim testifying in court.
“On present-day Earth we have the most Christ-like nation in human history, a civilization built on loving-kindness and demilitarization. They are being wiped off the face of their homeland. Well, at least the Chinese government isn’t blaming Christ or Buddha for their actions against Tibet!
But savage pillagers throughout the past two thousand years have misused the names of saints for their own ghoulish purposes, and the so-called Holy Roman Empire of a thousand years ago falls into that category. Within a few hundred years, they and their minions erased nearly all the nature-based, matriarchal tribes in what we now know as Europe. The invaders falsified history in order to justify their greed. Harmless facts and beautiful rituals were twisted to appear Satanic. Love of the environment and its animals and plants; love of healing modalities that modern day health professionals are now searching frantically to recover were spin-doctored into demented superstition and turned outlaw.”
At this point my lovely hostess turned her eyes away from the road just long enough to catch the expression on my face. For some reason, Meta’s historical information was having a much deeper effect on me than it should have. A very uncomfortable heat was painfully rising from my feet and rapidly traveling up my body. It felt like someone had set me on fire from below and was fanning the flames. My face must have made my discomfort obvious to her.
Meta quickly shifted to a more compassionate tone. She put a soft hand on my face that brought an instant smile as she said, “That’s enough of history. Let me give you some Herstory instead. The term wizard is simply a Germanic-based word that defines someone who is knowledgeable of herbs and growing things. Most of the bastardized legends about Pre-Christian Europe have to do with naturally occurring plants that were used as healing medicines. Almost all the talk of potions, spells, and brewing things up in cauldrons had to do, in fact, with making natural medicines. The propaganda notwithstanding, ancient Europe had an organic pharmacopoeia that was incredible. Modern drug companies have mutated and artificially manufactured dangerous, addictive, and expensive chemical compounds from what were originally naturally occurring, harmless, effective, non-addictive healing substances.”
My hand shot in the air as if asking a question in elementary school.
Meta laughed. “Pardon me. I have been rambling on. You wanted to ask something?”
“Yes, this is all shock to my system so I just want to check to see if I’ve got this right. Are you saying that all this scary spook, goblin, and cauldron stuff we’ve been fed all our lives is, more than anything else, a historical cover-up? Are you saying that a peaceful, spiritually and medicinally astute society governed mostly by women was decimated by plunderers disguising their purpose as the liberation of souls through the spread of Christianity? But in fact the invaders were acting much like their brutal ancestors—the very legions that killed Christ a thousand years earlier and commercially co-opted his flock?”
Meta nodded yes. “Does this surprise you? If you think about the other historical examples of similar situations, this shouldn’t be so difficult to understand.
“The part that folks find most confusing is trying to figure out where Christ comes in to all of this. That’s because he doesn’t! The hijackers of Christianity during these massacres had nothing to do with Christ or anything he stood for. They simply used His name and the church structure they built around it to organize a religious culture that was more political and economic than spiritual. They then duped or threatened people into compliance with their vehicle, and killed millions of resisters to prove their threats weren’t idle. They claimed to represent Jesus as they proceeded to do the opposite of everything He actually spoke about and stood for. These bastards had as little to do with the actual Christ-Spirit as the bastards who “saved the souls” of the “Godless” Native Americans in the name of Christianity. They are no different than the Chinese gangsters who seized all of Tibet’s natural resources and murdered a large percentage of the Tibetan population under the guise of “liberating” the culture. They were possessed by the same twisted spirit as the modern advertising vipers who sell useless and often dangerous products to an unsuspecting public, using rock music to add power to commercials made with the exact opposite intent of the original non-commercial and revolutionary spirit of rock and roll.
“Powerful, nasty people steal spiritual images in order to dupe the public into pillaging and plundering (or in our modern case, purchasing) in the name of something much more meaningful than the evil purpose or worthless product that is actually being hawked. The only things holy to marauders are greed, selfishness, and power-lust.”
I had to nod in unwilling agreement. “It’s not that far-fetched a notion, given history’s examples.”
Meta gave me a nod. She had maintained her sweetness and beauty during our whole conversation, but her leprechaun smile had diminished.
“All this Herstory has given me an appetite. Good timing! We have arrived at our destination.”
The conversation was so intense that we hadn’t noticed how much road progress had been made. We drove past a sign that said Welcome to Burlington, Vermont as Meta extended her kindness to me further. “There’s an excellent Jamaican restaurant a few blocks from here on Winooski Street. Let me buy you lunch and then I’ll drop you off at the hostel.”
“No, no, no,” I insisted. “You’ve given me a ride, an education, and been very pleasant and beautiful company. I’m buying.”
We were still arguing about who would pay for lunch as she was parking. I opened the car door and put my foot flat on a twenty dollar bill that was on the sidewalk. My laugh was probably a little too loud. Meta, still in the driver’s seat, asked, “What’s so funny?”
My index finger pointed at the bill under my foot. She put a hand on my knee and leaned over the rest of me to see what the finger was pointing at. The sweet leprechaun glow returned to her face as she said, “Goddess must have liked our defense of Her son. She’s buying us lunch. There’s magic afoot! Let’s eat!”
After a wonderful lunch, the good witch deposited me at the hostel. Meta returned to her job as a massage therapist and herbalist. Within a half hour, I was heading toward my first work stop in town. I was a happy man. Life looks good when a Goddess buys you lunch with a ravishing witch and you some how, some way know that the next stop will be even more fun than that one!
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