Linwood Sleigh’s witches: Miss Heckatty, Mother Withershins and Winnie Jago

The Boy in the Ivy by Linwood Sleigh is yet another very good book I remembered as containing modern-day witches and wanted to re-read. It is out of print; when I saw how much was being charged for the few copies available, I decided to forget it. After a long time, I felt a sudden impulse to search once again just in case, and found a copy on Amazon at a very reasonable price. When it arrived, I found that it had been signed by the author!

Three of the witches it contains are of especial interest to me.

Miss Heckatty

When she first appears, Miss Heckatty is presented as a selfish, inconsiderate, annoying character, a ‘horrid old lady’. She moves some items a boy left on a window seat on the train to reserve it, and takes the seat herself. She knits during the journey and keeps jabbing the boy beside her with her elbow. 

Miss Heckatty is a learned lady: she is the scholarly type of witch, like Dr. Melanie Powers in L. M. Boston’s An Enemy at Green Knowe. She too is hunting something – an extremely rare flower with magic properties as opposed to occult papers - and just like Melanie Powers, goes to tea with a family because it provides a pretext to get into a place where she hopes to find what she is looking for. The visit provides opportunities to look around and do some investigating. Witches often have ulterior motives for what they do.

She is greedy: she takes the biggest cakes, but unlike Dr. Powers she does this openly. She is unkind to her worn, miserable, downtrodden students. 

Unseen influences: sugar and factory food are our enemies

Dick Sutphen in his book Unseen Influences lists sugar and the cumulative effects of food additives such as artificial flavourings, colourings and preservatives among the unseen influences that adversely affect our lives. 

I strongly agree with him: cutting down on these things has resulted in an improvement in the way I feel. 

I was made addicted to sweets from an early age: I was not always given enough food, and what I got was mostly not very nutritious, but I was always given plenty of sweets. 

Without realising it, I suffered from low blood sugar for much of my life. 

It is interesting that the astrologer and esoteric philosopher Dr Douglas Baker said something about low blood sugar being an occupational hazard for people who are involved with esoteric subjects.

I have a vague memory of reading something about some people who contacted the spirit world via an Ouija board and were told by discarnate entities to eat a lot of sugar. This sounds sinister; it would lower people’s resistance and make them more open to malign influences.

A time came when I tried to improve my health. I lived for a while on plain, mostly unprocessed, food, partly in an attempt to simplify my life and partly to save money. 

Karen Kingston: De-cluttering as a Defence Against the Dark Parts

I vaguely remember a scene from one of Dennis Wheatley’s occult novels in which some people spend the night inside a protective circle (or perhaps it was a pentacle). They have bathed and are wearing clean pyjamas:  complete cleanliness is an essential part of their psychic defence operation. The evil entities arrive and attack as expected.  One actually manifests inside the circle, which was designed to ward it off. The cause is soon discovered: a member of the group had found some papers and, forgetting the rules, brought them into the circle with him to examine, thus providing the entity with some ‘impurities’ that it could fasten onto and use to materialise.

What are we holding onto that enables destructive influences to invade and sabotage our lives? 

While psychic garbage in our energy fields and psychological garbage in our subconscious minds may attract trouble and victimisers, garbage in our external surroundings may also be responsible for reducing our quality of life. Skeletons in our mental closets may attract energy vampires; such things as never-worn clothes and items in bad states of repair in our physical closets may also be drawing unwanted people and experiences into our lives.

Keeping our home environment clean, tidy, attractive, organised and in a good state of repair is an important aspect of psychic self-defence; cleanliness and orderliness may help to attract good influences and deter ‘astral bacteria’, ‘hungry ghosts’ and other undesirable entities. 

Three fictional modern-day witches

I have always liked reading stories about witches, especially modern-day witches.

I no longer read such fiction just for enjoyment and escape: I am looking for examples of and information about various types of unseen influence.

I remembered some books I read long ago that feature modern-day witches and have been rereading them in the hope of finding relevant material. I already have enough for several articles: there are many connections to be made between some fictional modern-day witches and people I have encountered, and there are scenes in these books that remind me of incidents I have experienced myself. 

It is interesting that some of these witches were created by men, although on the basis of their first names one or two of them are often assumed to be women.

I will start with three very different modern-day witches of interest created by three very different authors. 

John Masefield’s witch: Sylvia Daisy Pouncer
The Midnight Folk and The Box of Delights, two children’s classic fantasy novels written by John Masefield, contain a character called Sylvia Daisy Pouncer, who is publicly a governess and secretly a witch.

She is said to have been modelled on Masefield's aunt, who raised him and his siblings after their parents died. She disapproved of his love of reading: she sent him as a teenager to live on a naval training ship to cure him of the filthy habit! She is also said to have been inspired by a hated governess who taught Masefield and his siblings.

Obedience and the truth: some illuminating observations

One characteristic often found in energy vampires and manipulators is that they habitually ignore essential points, central issues and fundamental truths. They are out of touch with reality.

Even if someone is able to confront them by telling them some home truths, hell will freeze over before they admit that they have done anything wrong, never mind apologising. 

They are like vampires: they cannot or will not see themselves in mirrors; the truth is like garlic to them; they avoid daylight and operate in the darkness. It is best to leave them behind in the remedial school and move ourselves on by learning some lessons that our victimisers will never learn. 

Anyone who has been controlled or preyed upon by such people may need to spend some time aligning their ideas with reality, which involves learning some new words and concepts along the way and investing some time in mastering the rudiments of critical thinking. 

One of the best ways to start is by getting back to basics. 

There are some people who tell it like it is: their insights are weapons that disperse smokescreens and expose the underlying dynamics of sick relationships. 

The following statements about obedience from Anna Valerious’s blog Narcissists Suck are good examples of what I mean:

A forced obedience is no obedience at all, but rather it is slavery.

A manipulated obedience is no obedience at all, but deception.

A purchased obedience is no obedience at all, but bribery.

An obedience rendered in fear of adverse consequences is no obedience at all, but self-preservation.

I found the above observations very true and very inspiring, so much so that I came up with some similar ones about the truth:

Believing something to be true does not make it true.

Wanting to believe that something is true does not make it true.

Desperately needing to believe that something is true does not make it true.

Loudly and/or repeatedly insisting that something is true does not make it true.

Avoiding, ridiculing, attacking, persecuting or destroying anyone who questions the truth of something does not make it true.

When these sets of observations make sense and we accept that they are correct, the victimiser’s evil spell will start to dissolve.

Defence Against the Dark Arts Part III: More from Vernon Howard

If there are any energy vampires and emotional blackmailers in your life, you may find the following defences useful:

• Don’t dump your trash on my desk.

• Who said I had to explain myself to you?

• If you want to fight, find another enemy.

• What if I made the demands on you that you make
        on me?

• I won’t lift a finger to solve the problem you have 
        caused.   

• I was not born to be the ear to your chattering
        mouth.    

• No, I don’t owe you a thing.     

• You are several years too late to play that trick on 
        me.

• How evil of you to try to drag me down to your low 
        level.

I think that nos. 4 and 8 are particularly effective: if only I had been able to say this to the victimisers in my life…it is too late for me but perhaps other people will find this list useful.

White magic and black magic and the books of Stella Gibbons

My first encounter with the books of Stella Gibbons
It was my stepmother who introduced me to many of the works of Stella Gibbons. I have never much liked romance novels nor books that are primarily about personal relationships, but my stepmother was so enthusiastic about the books that I decided to give them a try.  

I felt an attraction that I could not have put into words at the time. I found them civilised, elegant, witty and interesting; I liked the glimpses they gave me into other people’s lives: this expanded my horizons. I liked the descriptions of London and the natural world. I was only ten years old at the time, so I was too young to understand the undercurrents and subtle references to dark topics. This was the stage when a foundation was laid and seeds were sown for the future. 

My second encounter with the books of Stella Gibbons
A time came much later in my life when I decided to return to the past and salvage some good things I remembered. This operation included renewing my acquaintance with books I had enjoyed reading many years earlier.  I re-read many of Stella Gibbons’s novels and short stories. I also found some of her books that I had never read before in second-hand bookshops.

I got much more out of reading them as an adult with some experience of life than I had in the past as a child – the reverse was true for some of the other authors I re-visited. 

Curse or coincidence? Two more cases from real life

A few years ago, I picked up a discarded copy of a free newspaper called Metro just to have something to read while making a short train journey. There was not much of interest to me in it, so I just skimmed the pages until I suddenly came to an article about something that was very much on my mind: putting curses on people.

It was a copy of an interview with a crime writer called James Ellroy. I had never heard of him, perhaps because I am not a fan of most crime novels. This extract speaks for itself:

“James Ellroy, 62, is an American author whose crime novels include The Black Dahlia and LA Confidential, both made into films. His mother was murdered when he was 10 years old, three months after he put a curse on her. It remains an unsolved case.”

Defence Against the Dark Arts Part II: Terry Pratchett’s books

I have found that Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books brighten the atmosphere: they are ideal for driving away black moods and dispersing the dark clouds of depression. 

I particularly like the books that feature his three main witch characters, Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg and Magrat Garlick. The three witches in Macbeth were the inspiration for these ladies. He said that three is a natural number for witches. It is just a coincidence that when I was at school, someone likened me and my two sisters to the three witches in Macbeth!

Not only do these books entertain, amuse and raise one’s spirits, they also contain material that seems to me to be relevant to some topics on this blog. I have already made a connection between the effects that Terry Pratchett’s illusion-creating elves have on humans and the effects that some glamorous energy vampires have on their victims.

Some of what Pratchett says about magic and how it attracts undesirable entities could apply to unconscious or psychological black magic and how it attracts – or is even caused by - forces that sabotage the lives of the practitioners. 

Kathleen Raine and Gavin Maxwell: curse or coincidence?

The poet Kathleen Raine was involved in an unsatisfactory and tempestuous relationship with Gavin Maxwell, the naturalist who later became famous for his books about otters. She cursed him after he pushed her to the limits of endurance; he suffered a series of misfortunes then he died.

I would like to believe that the misfortunes would have happened anyway, but after learning about the effect that some creative people had on those close to them I think that her ill-wishing actually worked. Poets are closer to the subconscious – or unconscious – and she was pushed right to the edge at the time. 

One difference between this example and others I have written about from personal experience is that both of the people involved were aware that a curse had been launched, and one at least believed that it had been effective.

From articles I found online:

“Their relationship burnt itself out, however. Banished from the house during a raging storm in 1956, a weeping Kathleen Raine cursed Maxwell under a rowan tree: 

‘Let Gavin suffer in this place as I am suffering now.’

Within the next few years his pet otter was killed by a workman, his house was destroyed by fire, and he himself was diagnosed with terminal cancer.”
From an obituary.