Nicholas Stuart Gray’s witch: Huddle

Nicholas Stuart Gray wrote a wonderful fantasy book for children called Over the Hills to Fabylon. I remember reading it when I was very young. It is out of print now; I have tried to find a copy from time to time without success. Even if it did come on the market, I probably wouldn’t be able to afford it.

I searched for it again recently just in case and found another of Stuart Gray’s books, one that I hadn’t read. The price was reasonable so I bought The Edge of Evening, which is a book of short stories. 

It begins with The Sky-blue Whistling Spark, in which the main character is a witch called Huddle. The story is very light and only 13 pages long, but it contains and confirms some interesting and important points about witches.

The demons arrive

Huddle is a typical fairy tale witch, a skinny old woman with grey hair who lives in a damp, squalid cottage in a wood. She is bad tempered, proud and conceited. Most of her time is spent trying to bring off strong, black, interesting, successful magic: she wants to be a great and evil witch, one that people are afraid of. 

Unfortunately, although she has enough innate ability to work small spells that bring minor misfortunes to her neighbours, she has not got what it takes to perform the really big stuff i.e. strong Black Magic. This level of spell casting is beyond her powers: her best efforts bring unexpected or no results. 

Her failures make her crosser and crosser; she eventually decides that she needs a demon to be her slave and instruct her in the performance of sorcery. Then she will be able to take her rightful place in the world. 

What do Noel Streatfeild and Isaac Asimov have in common?

Many years ago, I read about two very similar incidents in the autobiographies of two very different people.

The first incident was recounted by Noel Streatfeild in her autobiographical work A Vicarage Family. It comes from her school days.

The glamorous, exotic Russian Ballet visited London in the summer of 1911; everyone was talking about them; everyone longed to see them. A teacher took those older girls who could afford it to London for three nights to see some performances. 

Noel (Victoria in the book) was not in the party, despite being obsessed with ballet. She was enthralled by what she heard about the company and was desperate to learn, even if it was only at second hand, all she could about the dancers and the ballets. She listened eagerly when she heard some of the starry-eyed girls discussing the outing with the teacher on their return, trying to catch some of the magic from what they said. 

Noel meant only to listen, but there was so much she wanted to know. She asked some questions that, she later realised, might well have sounded puerile to a teacher who had actually seen the Russians and who was probably tired after the exhausting trip. The teacher reacted strongly and negatively, telling her that if she had nothing more sensible to ask she should say nothing at all. 

Noel felt snubbed and deeply hurt.  Tears came into her eyes. How could anyone be so mean after three lovely days of seeing ballets in London as to refuse to describe them to someone who was too poor to go and see them for herself?

Noel decided that she was not going to forgive her teacher.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator - MBTI

I lived much of my life without ever hearing of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), which is a form of personality assessment. 

I had always assumed that personality tests were superficial, generalised and irrelevant; I had never taken any interest in them. Someone mentioned the MBTI to me a few years ago: she asked me what my MB type was. I was interested, and decided to give it a go after finding some free tests online. 

In all cases, I came out very strongly as INTJ: introversion, intuition, thinking, judgement.  

I read some good-quality material describing the characteristics of this type and listing possible career options: it all seemed spot on. It explained a hell of a lot. It confirmed some things that I had always known or suspected. I have always said, “Does it work?” and expected things to make sense, and this is exactly what the descriptions say INTJs do! 

Long before I took the test, I had come to realise that certain missed opportunities that I had regretted very much, both at the time and for many years afterwards, would not after all have been right for me.  Some of the material I read provided an objective confirmation of my insights; these cases could now be closed for good.  

The material also confirmed my theory that the life I was forced to lead in my formative years might have been deliberately designed to ruin my prospects and cause maximum suffering. 

It was not just that my education was grossly deficient and that the work I had been forced to do could not have been more unsuitable, it was not just that my abilities, aptitudes, interests and personality had been completely ignored, it was as if someone had read the details of INTJ people and created the worst possible life for someone of this type. 

Dion Fortune on energy vampires

The occultist Dion Fortune made some interesting statements about energy vampires that are worth discussing.  I can’t remember which of her books they came from; I have paraphrased her words from memory and some scribbled notes.

She likened an energy vampire and victim to a bullfrog and sucked-out orange.

This is a very memorable image. I think it must apply mainly to powerful, driven and glamorous energy vampires, those who need and obtain excessive amounts of extra energy. Many energy vampires are being vampirised themselves - possibly by other people, possibly by some internal parasitic obsession or idea - so they appear shrivelled, diminished and sucked out too.

I am reminded of Petra Kelly, one of the founders of the German Green Party, who is reported to have got through seventeen secretaries in eight years:

“I loved her dearly,” said Heinz Suhr, a Green Party spokesman, “but some hated her. They called her a vampire, sucking the energy out of those around her. She was too big a star.”

Joan Aiken’s witch: Mrs Lubbage

Mrs Lubbage is a character in one of the books from Joan Aiken’s wonderful alternative history series for children, the first of which is The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. 

Mrs Lubbage appears in The Cuckoo Tree. She is not exactly a modern-day witch, but she has some interesting characteristics in common with other fictional witches I have discussed.

Mrs Lubbage is the local nurse and wise woman; she has the gift of healing and knows about herbs. The doctor says that many of his patients would not have recovered without her intervention – and adds under his breath that many of them would not have fallen ill in the first place!

Mrs Lubbage is in many ways a stereotype. She is a large lady and wears grubby clothes. Her manner is hostile, threatening, surly and unpleasant. Her home is filthy and squalid; the chickens she keeps are in bad condition. She has a huge rat living with her who helps her cast spells. She also has a child living with her whom she treats very badly.

She is greatly feared. Some people call her a witch and are reluctant to go near her in case she puts a curse on them. She also has powerful allies: she is lending her powers to various plotters.

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.