Defence Against the Dark Arts Part IV: Colin Turner’s Born to Succeed

Some years ago, while poking around in a charity shop I noticed an old paperback book. Something made me pick it up, and I saw one or two things inside that made me decide to buy it despite the fact that it was a book about succeeding in business and was not very clean - it had obviously been read many times.

The book was Born to Succeed: Releasing Your Business Potential by Colin Turner.

I am not interested in building a business, and I am very doubtful about the worth of much of the material available on the subject. However, my radar was quite right: the book did contain some useful information; it also confirmed some of my ideas about unseen influences. The advice given may sometimes be obvious and not always original; I found the book neither illuminating nor life-changing, but well worth reading.

One of the previous readers had highlighted some paragraphs and made comments – in Turkish! Most of the highlighted parts were of no particular interest to me as they were business-related, but I made notes of some of the material that resonated the most.

“Reading more than anything else stimulates the mind: use it or lose it.”

This is telling me exactly what I want to hear! Reading stimulates the imagination too, whereas watching television short circuits the imaginative process.

“Books/others are teachers not masters, agencies not sources.”

I agree with this. “Call No Man Master”, and do not treat any book as a bible.

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 that I remembered as containing modern-day witches and wanted to re-read. It is out of print; when I first 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 online once again just in case; I found a copy on Amazon at a very reasonable price. When the book 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 for herself. She knits during the journey and keeps jabbing the boy beside her with her elbow. 

Miss Heckatty is a learned lady; just like Dr. Melanie Powers in L. M. Boston’s An Enemy at Green Knowe, she is the scholarly type of witch. She too is hunting something – an extremely rare flower with magic properties as opposed to occult papers. Also just like Melanie Powers, Miss Heckatty goes to tea with a family because it gives her 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.

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

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 the various types of unseen influences.

I remembered some books I read long ago that feature modern-day witches and have been re-reading 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 or 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 revisited. 

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.”