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mxndanemagic · 3 years ago

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Prom

"She isn't going to let me go." A lamenting sigh comes from the young woman. Hugging her legs close and leaning against the window whos ledge she's seated on, Ella glances over to her older brother. "Scarlet says they'll know exactly what kind of girl I am. That I need stay home and repent for taking to Lucifer's temptations."

William doesn't hold back a frustrated groan, going over to the other and placing a hand atop her head. "That mother of ours isn't well. I know you've been having a rough time at school and Scarlet isn't much help either. But I doubt making a friend is worth the fuss she's causing." Sweeping a brief look across his sister's arms, William spots fading blotches of bluish purple. "Did she do that?"

Or was it the bullies?

"My throat was getting dry from reading verses. I stopped for a moment and she got upset. I don't think she's ever gotten this bad." Ella admits. "I think she misses you." Their mother had always been frenzied about keeping "sin" and the "devil" out of their lives. When her brother graduated and chose to attend a college far from home, she seemed to take it personally. Accusations of taking part in witchcraft, wanting to let the devil into her life, and seducing demons began to become part of her daily life when William left.

The blonde shakes his head in disbelief - moving away to rummage through his weekend bag. "Think I got some concealer in here. You told me you got asked to the dance by one of the popular guys, right? What's he like? He isn't trying to mess with you is he?" Williams questions follow one after another. He only wanted to keep his sister safe from any further harm.

"Do you like him?"

Ella looks up confused but lets out a laugh. "No. I just know him because Moira does. If she's friends with him then he must be doing this to be nice. I'm just relieved not everyone at that school sees me as a freaky witch."

"...Come on, you should get ready. I'll make sure mom doesn't find out where you went and I know Moira snuck you out to go dress shopping." he smiles.

The younger Nowell flusters at being discovered but she thanks her brother who heads off to see where their mother is.

She hadn't been nervous earlier but once the sight of the time and realizing she was ready to go, Ella could feel her heart racing. Was her dress fine? Her hair just right and makeup fine? Would the other students mock her for attending the dance with someone so well known?

Just make them shut up for good.

The thought startles her - causing the witch to go still. Maybe she was more anxious than she thought.

"I hope this isn't too much for you, Liam." her words stumble out during the walk to the school. Ella had insisted the other didn't make a grand show when it came to taking her to prom. Now they were strolling together through the neighborhood. Liam however had been rather silent throughout the trip. "Is everything okay?" Maybe he was having second thoughts.

Liam responds as if he was caught off guard, a hand going to the back of his neck. "Y-Yeah. I just...you look nice." he mutters, keeping his eyes to the ground. "The dress too!" a rushed addition to his compliment is given.

Ella's face softens, a gentle smile taking place. "You look nice too." It seemed like the right thing to say after his kind words. Maybe her mother was all wrong about things. Not everyone she would meet was going to be cruel...

"There you two are!" Heather is first to greet them - her hands clasping Ella's close. "I told Jen you weren't gonna let her little subordinates get to you. Thought for a second Liam got lost on his way to your house." she looks over to the other, giving him a stern look. "He didn't do anything did he?"

"I was the perfect gentleman!" Liam counters, earning laughter from the two girls. "I'm getting some punch." he grumbles, breaking off from them and into the bustling crowd of prom attendees.

Heather leads Ella to an empty table away from the dancefloor, near the stage decorated for the main event of the night.

The reveal of this years Senior Prom Royalty.

"I made sure nobody would give you trouble tonight. I haven't even seen Jen or her boyfriend either after talking to her. Maybe she got bored and left." Heather sounds hopeful. It would take away some concern for the evening if that were true. "Didn't think your mom was gonna let you out, Ella. I was ready to drag Liam to your place so we could sneak you out." she grins.

Ella returns a small smile, fidgeting with the corsage on her wrist. "Will surprised us with an early visit. He wanted to make sure I could go with you guys." Being able to attend felt like the first step in concluding her unpleasant senior year on a good note.

"Testing, testing!" The sound of a stage mic being adjusted by an MC has the lively chatter in the gymnasium quiet down. "Nice to have you all here tonight! Dancing, mingling, and of course waiting for the results of our most coveted titles this years prom!"

The crowd answers with rallied cheers and impatient encouragement. Eyes watch with anticipation as a single envelope is brought over to the MC. "Let's see here~ Your King and Queen for tonight's Senior Prom are-"

"LIAM MASTERS AND ELLA NOWELL!"

The announcement surprises the woman, looking up and around as a spotlight brings attention to her and Liam - who makes his way to the stage while signaling her to follow after.

"Go on up, Nowell!" Heather gives her a light nudge.

She was voted Prom Queen?

Her footsteps towards the stage feel light, her heart beating just like before when she was getting ready.

Ella wished her mother could see - see that her fear mongering was for nothing. Everyone was smiling and clapping! They were cheering for her...

A bouquet of black dahlias is handed over to her while she and Liam stand center stage, all eyes on them as a crown is put on her head.

"Give it up for our Prom King and Queen, folks!"

Ella holds her flowers close, giving Liam and the crowd a bright smile. The crowd is so loud with their excitement that she barely hears the sound of rope snapping...

A puddle of thick wetness drapes over her, splashing to the ground and staining anything it lands on. Her cheery expression falters into one of shock - gaze staring out into the audience that reacts with a gasp. The bouquet in her grasp tumbles to the ground, stained in red paint.

At least that's what Ella thought it was until she begins to try wiping it off her arms and dress.

It was blood.

She can feel it dripping into her hair, staining her skin, and the smell of rust sticking to her.

They're all staring - some crying out for her date who's stumbled to the floor of the stage after a knock to the skull from the now empty bucket that had been leveraged above them.

Others are falling into gossip and among them she spots the one likely behind it all.

"LOOK AT THE FREAK COVERED IN BLOOD!" Jen calls out, urging other students to point, laugh, and echo insults her way.

Chaperones attempt to calm down the crowd but they're only ignored as frenzy takes over.

Ella had been wrong.

The laughter is all she can hear as she stands there like their personal fool to mock.

That's when the witch understands. . .

They were never going to change. . .

The gymnasium doors slam shut.

Windows close with a thud.

Stage lights shatter. . .and the audience panics.

Her hand raises, levitating tables nearby to send them flying into the crowd. Others are slammed into the ceiling before being dropped with ease. Many scramble for the entrance and exits - futile attempts to get out. Scream and cries fill the room as stage curtains are set ablaze.

"Stop this! Let us out!"

A snap of bones is heard and the pleading voice has gone quiet.

The fire begins to branch out to the rest of the room and Ella is calm as she descends down the stairs of the stage, strolling through the gymnasium to taken in her work.

She drowns out the sobbing and yelling of what’s left of the faculty and students. They don’t attempt to get in her way.

Taking in only the sound of flames moving rapidly, stages pieces crashing to the ground and her own soft humming while taking gentle care to remove the corsage that had been given to her.

No longer would she be their plaything.

The main entrance doors open with ease as she approaches, shutting them swiftly behind her once she's out of the building.

Outside the night breeze is cool and the gymnasium is enveloped by the fire and terror that’s sealed inside.

All of it on display just for her to savor as she watches from afar with satisfaction and the sounds of sirens are heard in the distance.

Prom hadn't been so terrible after all.

#drabble #tw blood #tw abuse #tw murder #v; carrie au #muse;ella #muse;william

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noonymoon · 4 years ago

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JUSTICE FOR JESUS — Misconceptions & Prejudices about the Faith in the Biblical Jesus Christ.

PART TWO: But why are Judaism and Christianity extremely different from one another, if they worship the same God?

The short answer is: Satan has infiltrated Christianity around 300 A.D. and turned it into something ENTIRELY else than God said, and Judaism developed to be an extremely religious system with 48942084 rules on top of the rules that YHWH originally established for Israel - like the food laws (which according to modern Science are for a very good reason and me personally, I try to eat as „kosher“ as I can as well because I know God doesn‘t say ANYTHING just to show His dominance, He ALWAYS has 100% good reason to say things and usually all these things are in OUR best interest). Also, at some point Judaism had all the oral traditions of the Rabbis, and the Kabbalah, which is 100% mysticism and magic, when God makes abundantly clear from the VERY beginning that He HATES sorcery, witchcraft, divination, all kinds of occult secrets and arts; and He has all reason to do that. Which you will probably only understand if you watch this video series

I‘m going to adress „Christian Witches“ and „Christian Mystics“ for a second directly and I pray you would listen and REPENT because God makes it abundantly clear that you can not serve two Masters, there‘s no way you can be God‘s child and dabble in occult practices. The Bible says very clearly that everyone gets judged according to their knowledge. So, knowing the Truth about God and Jesus, you still decided to turn your back on Him and mock Him and His Truth („Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.“ — Galatians 6:7) - I really don‘t want to be in your shoes when Judgment Day comes. I understand that you have been hurt by the institutional church, that you needed „more“ than „this“ and that you thought Occultism would make you more „spiritual“ and more „fulfilled“; thousands of Christians have been hurt by the church and dabble in the New Age. But there‘s NO WAY that God will forgive you for being a CHRISTIAN WITCH. It‘s. Not. Possible.

The longer answer is: From the moment Jesus was crucified and was raised to life again by his Father, the Devil knew that he has literally NO POWER anymore. Satan has held humanity in chains since practically the beginning of time, because he had the keys to Sheol since Adam and Eve fell into a linear existence in Eden and would ultimately die, and every single descendant of them (to be more specific it is the Father who bequeathes the spiritual nature of a human, that‘s the whole point of Jesus having a human virgin mother and God Himself as His Father) would be under the curse of death, and when people are afraid to die someday, well, they do all kinds of ridiculous things. The only way Satan can accomplish his goals (of ruining every single person on the planet) is to discredit, confuse and alter the work that Jesus finished on Golgotha. So basically, He can‘t change that it‘s all done, but he can change the way we perceive Jesus; he can change the way we collectively think, behave, feel, act - to take us away from God and His Truth as far as possible; he can change the way how humans „interpret“ God and Jesus and what has been done for us, he can basically distort EVERYTHING, except the fact that it is DONE. He KNOWS there‘s not much time left for Him - because Satan is a diligent student of Bible prophecy and uses literally EVERY flawed translation, every piece that could slightly be misunderstood and develops WHOLE doctrines and denominations and cults of them; in some few cases he even managed to alter the text of the Bible entirely to create a doctrine, today the CORE doctrine of Christianity - without it, you can‘t be a pastor or preacher without getting extreme backlash and will be considered a Heretic or cult leader, and that „you would lead people astray“, and this doctrine will steal your salvation and 90% of all Christians don‘t even notice it, it‘s just so sad. And when you speak up against this doctrine, the Holy Christians suddenly become nasty and call you a Heretic, like? Yes, of course that is God‘s Holy Spirit dwelling within you, and not that counterfeit one from Satan (because Satan can disguise as an angel of Light if he needs to, he once WAS the most beautiful and glorious Angel in Heaven, but his pride and arrogance ruined his heart. So basically, YES, Lucifer‘s/Satan‘s powers are VERY real and VERY powerful, but he will NEVER be as amazing as Jesus, and he most certainly will NEVER be as amazing as God, who created him!)

Basically, when Satan knew that the brilliant plan of Salvation was accomplished when Jesus was raised alive again after His crucifixion, he tried his first attack: relentless persecution of the Apostolic Church from 31 A.D. until ~320 A.D. through both the Jews and the Romans. But Christianity EXPLODED to that time, because the Gospel was pure, the Apostles and Disciples were extremely effective and the body of believers was just amazing. Then, Satan noticed that the message of Salvation in Jesus spread so hard that there was no point in persecuting every single Christian, so his new strategy was to infiltrate it and morph it from within.

“From the first moment of his accession declaring himself the protector of the church...the first emperor who publicly professed and established the Christian religion...rendered Christianity the reigning religion of the Roman empire” The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon, Vol 2 Chap 16, pg 138.

This was no other than the Roman Emperor Constantine who professed to be converted to Christianity in 323 A.D. himself, but his belief at best was a blend of paganism and Christianity for political purposes, to keep unity in his empire. This change of events was the reason why pagan and occult practices, traditions and beliefs from Ancient Babylon could infiltrate the true Gospel of Salvation, and sadly it‘s been like that EVER SINCE.

So basically, there‘s no reason at all why Christianity and Judaism should be THIS much of a difference. The faith should be the exact same with the only (major) difference, that one group accepts Jesus, the Son of God, and gains everlasting Life and the other group refuses to accept Jesus, and will not. But both groups have developed into something that God absolutely never wished for. Christians always feel like they are so high and mighty and yet they have NO IDEA that they will not make it to Heaven themselves, because they ALL teach, believe and practice doctrines and traditions (of men) that have NOTHING to do with the God of Israel and mock Him without even knowing it. God says in the Bible that people who diligently SEEK Him and who don‘t fall for man-made doctrines and traditions, THOSE people who overcome the world and overcome THINGS OF THIS WORLD with the magnificent power of Christ, will have Everlasting Life.

Satan raised up his own „Christian“ church through pagan Rome and when he made it big and strong enough, he went back to his first strategy: relentless persecution and execution of true Bible-believing Christians, which we all know as the years of Papal Supremacy or „the Dark Ages“ from 538 A.D. to 1798. And why was it dark? Because there was no spiritual light in the world: The Papacy has managed to destroy all of the ~500 different language translations of the Bible in that time, the common people had no access to the Word of God and the only language the Bible was available in was Latin, and most people could not read Latin. This was a truly dark time for humanity and believers in God. And then, thank God, the protestant Reformation started, the Bible got translated for the common people again, preachers stood up for the Truth of God‘s word, risked their own lives for spreading the true Gospel, got rid of a lot of the terrible blasphemy in those days, millions of true Bible-believing Christians got burned alive as Heretics and Witches, only because they wouldn‘t bow down to the Papal Church.

Sadly, they as well, adopted an essential doctrine from the Roman Catholic Church and so now today, only people who are not indoctrinated by Religion and discover God, Jesus and the Bible for themselves, without Church, Pastors and Creeds, have the Truth of God. I remember at the beginning of my walk with Jesus, I‘ve thought I need to find a church congregation and attend church every Sunday and so I‘ve tried it once. My local Church is a VERY beautiful church on the inside and I was moved to tears just being there, but as soon as I listened to the sermon, felt the atmosphere and saw the other people in there, i just KNEW in my spirit that God is not present at ALL. It was very disappointing and so I never went to church again. Ever since then, I‘ve learned A TON and know exactly why I had felt this way. God truly is not in the institutional Church - how could He, when all churches belong to Satan?

Up until this day the Papacy, who claims to be the Mother of ALL churches, even the protestant and evangelical ones, says things like: „Let Judaizers be anathema!“ which means that people who practice Jewish traditions rather than Catholic traditions should be accursed (!) as if the Jesus that walked the Earth 2000 years ago was a Roman European and NOT A JEW, like..????. It‘s just bewildering what Satan has accomplished to make people stray away from God and His Son.

In case you ever wondered why „Christian“ Holidays, rituals and beliefs are so similar to the ones of Pagans, why monumental church buildings have been planted on ancient sacred pagan sites, why Christianity seems like a „high and holy“ version of Paganism - it was NOT God, it was NOT Jesus, it was NOT even the Bible, simply said: it was the Roman Catholic Church (Satan) and no one else. 98% of all things that Catholicism believes, teaches AND REQUIRES is absolute blasphemy when you take God‘s Word as the highest authority (which the Scriptures says we SHOULD do, lest we be deceived, nothing will ever contradict the Bible that is true and of God) yet Catholicism is the largest, most influental and most powerful Church; how? Because the Papacy developed something that is called „Papal Infallibility“ which enables them to literally be the scum of the Earth (if you think that I am being rude, please read the following picture carefully) without facing any repercussions!

Maybe it becomes more clear now why Christianity is utterly misunderstood, hated and judged. It was not Jesus Christ, it was „MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.“ — Revelation 17:5 .... and Christians today get confronted with, for example, the Crusades and how Christianity is the worst Religion in the world and they don’t even know how to answer because they never cared to investigate their own Faith! Every evil deed that has ever happened within “Christianity” was, in fact, the Roman Catholic Papal Church who belongs to Satan himself.

According to an Ex-Jesuit (special order of Roman Catholic Priests) whose whistleblowing testimony I‘ve posted a few posts back, the Opus Deii (who disguise themselves as „Christian Democracy“ like my country pretends to be) is an arm of the Jesuit Infiltration that is responsible for the Illuminati, the Masons, the New Age Movement, the Trilateral Commission, the Club of Rome, and many more; and all of them serve just one purpose: The total control and world domination of the Roman Catholic Church (Satan).

If you love Jesus and are a Catholic brother, PLEASE LEAVE IT BEHIND.

Thank God that He not only gave us our world, our existence, and his Son Jesus, but also the Bible, which tells us EXACTLY what is going to happen and who the Enemy is, when we make the effort to study, and keep Jesus close to our hearts.

It grieves my heart that God and Jesus are so misunderstood because of Satan‘s works and that millions, the majority of all humans that ever lived and all humans that live right now, in these last days of humanity, are all deceived and will perish. And to any other generation in the past I would have said „well.. at least you had an entire human life experience, if it made you happy, then so be it“, but this generation right now, is the one that will regret their decision the most because every person under 60 will not even be close to having an entire human life experience, nor will it be happy. The worst thing is that which is going to manifest until ~2025 will not even be worth considered as a whole „human life experience“. If you think that Covid-1984 was a tough year, buckle up, because from now on it‘s going to get worse and worse.

I know I say this a lot but today I cried on my way back from the supermarket because it‘s just so devastating to see Prophecy unfolding right in front of my eyes and everyone is VAST ASLEEP. People STILL wonder why it was possible that Hitler (who, by the way, was a Catholic, not a true Christian like he claimed, no wonder he was deeply wrapped up in the Occult) rose to power, how it was possible that we Germans didn‘t notice and didn‘t do anything to stop him from the evil things he did, why we gave him power and authority ... One word: Propaganda. Germans back then were absolutely brainwashed, just like today, WE are being brainwashed globally. And I can PROMISE you 100% that you WON‘T like where our world is heading and everyone will cry „but how could this happen?“ just like they cried about Hitler.

I pray that God‘s chosen people wake up in time, that these posts can help someone to find Christ, see through the deceptions of this world and be set free from Satan‘s bondage. Life is so much more than what we think it is, and honestly, if you‘re like me; always craved for deeper connections, more support and more honest affection in your social circles but never received it, always felt like an alien to everyone else, never had anyone to talk to about meaningful things because everyone was just shallow, then please just maybe consider Jesus as your best friend, because HE LOVES YOU and you will never ever be lonely ever again and you will always, always feel loved and „at home“. Jesus is literally the BEST thing that has ever happened to me, and I truly tried to be happy in this world. You have NO IDEA what I‘ve experienced in my 30 years, I‘ve literally experienced ALL OF IT, and nothing has ever given me peace and love and sanity. Only Jesus. I will never exchange that ever again for nothing! And I wish this experience to literally everyone because it‘s the most beautiful thing ever.

TESTIMONIES

How I Know God is REAL... my encounter with Jesus

Atheist To Believer In Jesus Christ: How Jesus Cured My Eating Disorder

Ex-Muslim Conversion Story

Homosexuality Was My Identity

My Testimony for Jesus 2020- WEED, ALCOHOL, PORN, LUST, TOBACCO, PRETTY MUCH IT ALL! SET FREE!

#Jesus Christ #christian witch #jesus loves you #God is Good #spirituality #catholic #paganism

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niuniente · 5 years ago

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I’ve been curious, as you appear to be someone who practices witchcraft and holds faith in fair folk and spirits, what made you want to write a comic about a priest?

A good question! Sorry, the answer will be long as it has many things to explain.

First, you must understand my nationality and the culture or religion here; it basically doesn’t exist. This is a Lutheran-Christian country but do people go to church and live in fear of God like in the USA? Absolutely not. Only fundamentals do that, majority belonging to a subcategories of Christianity, like Pentecostals. So, my general experience and approach to priests and religion is neutral due my cultural background. I have a feeling that would you go to ask a general Lutheran-Christian priest if witchcraft is OK, depending of the priest and are they from East or West, they might just shrug like “well, possibly?” or “Witchcraft can’t exceed the power of God and thus it is not dangerous”.

We go to church only when there’s christening, marriage, funeral, end of a school year, if you participate in confirmation at age 15 and some people go on Easter and/or Christmas. Otherwise God has no presence in our lives and even priests can be very casual; we have a one priest here who is also a known stand-up comedian.

Witchcraft has always been a prominent part of Finnish culture. Church tried to shoo people like “God is the only power, stop doing this nonsense!” but people still practiced daily witchcraft in 19th and 20th centuries (unfortunately the quick rise of education and economy after WWII has erased all practices, but I do remember some “witchcraft” jinxes and worries from my childhood from 1980′s and 1990′s we had at home). Spirits, spirit animals, up in Lapland shamans, wisemen, wisewomen, witches, blood stoppers (a special Finnish form of witchcraft/spiritual ability), pet snakes, house gnomes, elves, monsters, the folklore devil, cursing, blessing etc. have been strong in this culture; stronger than the church wanted them to be,

The common American way of living regarding religion and God is seen very fundamental and wacky from Finnish standards. Actually my spirituality and belief in a higher power is also wacky in Finnish standards!

OKAY, so why priest for a main character for a comic? There are multiple reasons

Demon Sanctuary started as a reversed comic to Fuzzy; Irene seer = Ilta Demon and Fuzzy monster = Furmann priest. Now it is a story of its own and Ilta and Furmann have no connection to Fuzzy or Irene in anyway. We actually had Irene visiting the comic as herself.

If I was a man, I might have seek out to become a priest of myself. The spirituality is present in my daily life on other way now.

While I don’t follow any established religion or group myself, I value the real teachings of the founding figures of the said religion(s); Love, Honestly, Equality, Looking after others, Being One, Respecting Life, Protect weak, Honor all life, As a Man honor and protect women and kids and elderly

I wanted the priest do what he is supposed to do; helps everyone, not shun anyone out, love and cherish and protect, give shelter and support, feed the hungry. Basically be the embodiment of True God, not the religious fanboys’ own headcanon versions of Jesus.

Jeffrey Burton Russell’s books of Medieval Christianity, Catholicism and Islam have inspired me a lot and I wanted to use that knowledge to something

In early Christian times, there was a real debate; what to do with Satan and the teachings of God being unconditional love, who forgives all sinners if they only repent their sins? If Satan said; “I did a wrong thing, forgive me, Father. I have sinned” shouldn’t God be then saying “Of course, my child”? If so, where does this place all the horrible things and Satan’s personality in relation to God and the world’s horrors? Can Satan be forgiven and if not, how do you explain the Unconditional Love of God? Shouldn’t God allow Satan fail as many times as needed, as long as he asked for his sins to be forgiven the God would do that? Where does this place Satan in the scale of Unconditional Love when God tossed him out from the Heaven?

Also demons were debated in Medieval times: Are demons really fallen angels or lost just souls? Are they willingly doing what they do or are they also prisoners of Hell and Satan and suffering themselves? Is Satan suffering of the separation he has from God?

Creation of Satan was also an issue; God is ever-knowing and omnipotent. Why God creates Satan when he sees what will happen? Why would God punish Satan for something God himself created and saw coming? This leads to the premise of Demon Sanctuary; everything created comes from God and thus, as a priest, Furmann’s jobs is to unconditionally love and cherish all living things as a servant of God, as an extension of God. Even when they would be deemed as bad and wrong and horrible. That is also what Jesus teaches and what is the basis of Christianity and Catholicism.

#demon sanctuary #furmann #ask niu #alleycatking

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until-we-fall-in-love · 5 years ago

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creature-song: part two

Pairings: Wanda Maximoff x Reader, Bucky Barnes x Reader, light Steve Rogers x Reader, light Bucky Barnes x Steve Rogers, light Wanda Maximoff x Bucky Barnes

Summary: You should turn away. But you let it happen, let it happen because some dark, most trapped part of you wants to. A piece of you that you have chained like an animal, a mongrel bitch, and tried to let die. It paces inside you now, hungry and waiting and ready.

1600s America AU, Witch!AU, Possessed!Bucky, Gothic, Horror

Warnings: Smut, gore, violence, demons, possession, sacrilegious themes. This is 18+ as most of my works are.

If you are under 18 you should not be reading this!

A/N: hey guys! here is the second and last part to this fic! pls enjoy and let me know what you think!!

Here is Part One

***

You are born anew, suddenly coltish on newly powerful legs. You are flushed with color, your hair shining and eyes that can simmer into ember orange and serpent yellow. You are different from Wanda; she reveres you with new respect in equal measures that she treats you like a new, bratty princess that needs to be guided and taught and scolded.

She says she serves you, becomes so protective that you can hardly leave her sight. If anyone dares utter your name with anything but respect, they are falling ill with oozing boils and welts. She is merciless, possessive. She makes your head spin. She teaches you the ways of the witch, forces your chin up higher and calls you Dark One, Hidden One, Princess of Night, Queen of Beasts.

You do not know when the demon speaks for Bucky or when Bucky speaks for the demon. He becomes even more protective, aggravated. You feel powerful, feel free and wild and savage.

You’re no longer freezing and shivering.

You crawl into Bucky’s lap and sink down upon him, even when he is clear-eyed and gentler with you. You let him take you on your stomach like a snake when his eyes are blackened with the demon. He becomes yours. You become his.

Wanda teaches you magic, teaches you around a flickering flame before she lays you out and makes you hers, too.

More bodies appear, dripping in velvet red and a lovely shade of pink. You grow apathetic. Wanda is cursing too many.

Rumors spread like wildfire. It’s easy to target the pariahs of the village, even more so when you three have become the monsters they’ve always wanted you to be. But at least you claim it now, at least it is yours and you love it, you love your power and the rabid wolf in you that has been released in all it’s feral glory.

Wanda is accused of witchcraft, followed quickly by you. Your neighbors gawk and stare and whisper behind their ugly hands that you wish to see crushed with stone or cut cleanly off. How many times can you break a finger bone?

But you and Wanda turn wide, girlish eyes on them. You pretend to be sweet, huddle together the way they think females should cower.

Steve defends you both, scolds them for daring to think so. Your golden boy, your lion-hearted man.if he notices the change in you, he cannot speak it loud, perhaps for fear of making it true.

So good, so gracious and kind. A Godly man, if it weren’t for the bent part of him. You can feel it now, in his thoughts that you worm into. In the way his eyes linger on Bucky’s form. On yours and Wanda’s.

You don’t know how to tell him that there is something twisted inside him, too, that you can’t wait to devour him. So you lick your lips as lioness, she wolf, sharp-toothed fox, and wait for him to come to you.

***

The days are brief; darkness cradles the world at a tender hour. You and Wanda thrive in it, wander out to the woods with a candle, and roll around upon the forest floor together. She strips you bare, plays too close to the edge of town because she likes the thrill of being caught. You laugh and moan and grab at each other, sink teeth into vulnerable skin and shake and shiver like the final leaves upon the spindly, reaching trees.

And from the edges, someone watches. Eyes, impossibly blue and shining in milky starlight.

Steve crouches low, hiding in the shadows like some perverse and unsettled man. He shouldn’t, but he follows you and Wanda out into the darkness. He suspects something, in the pit of his stomach, suspects something awful and he follows in hopes of being proved wrong. He hopes it’s innocent. So he watches with wide eyes and a trembling heart as you both lose your wool dresses and shawls and underthings. He shouldn’t look, God, oh God, he knows he shouldn’t watch this—

But something inside him begs him to stay. His heart is in his throat, palms suddenly clammy and cold. He can’t quite believe what he’s seeing. The dim candlelight is made into a small bonfire and your bare, twisting bodies are illuminated for him.

He watches as your lips fall down to Wanda’s chest, makes her laughs turns into gasps as she pulls at your hair that unravels over your shoulders and back. Wanda forces you down, sinks into your lap and hooks a leg of yours over hers, fits you two together by your cores until both your hips move in tandem.

He watches you kiss the way lovers do, with a vicious tenderness, with a searing sort of love. He’s jealous, he realizes stupidly, unable to even breathe as he watches you both raptly.

His fingers dig into the bark of a tree, scratching the way you do at Wanda’s shoulders. He swallows thickly at the noises you make, knows this is sin. Knows this is damnation.

He should forsake you both. He should never look upon either of you again and go back home to say a thousand burning prayers.

But he’s shaking by the time you’re both finished, his cheeks flushed and eyes shining. He is hungry, he realizes, near desperate.

You’re witches, he thinks, you’re something evil and corrupted and twisted. He should tell a minister, he should try to make you both repent on bent knees and your eyes cast downward, the fan of your lashes against your warm and soft cheeks—

When he finally tears himself away with a half growl of frustration, his trousers are constricting, too tight and damning evidence. He aches in the most inner parts of him.

You and Wanda giggle, your laughs carrying on the twisting, cold wind that pushes at Steve as he storms away. As if you both know how he longs, as if the wind knows, too.

***

Your nights are fever dreams of hands and warm, slick mouths. Fingers between lips and legs, hands wrapped tight around your throat, your breasts, your legs. Bathed in blood or arousal or mercury moonlight. You lose count of the bodies as you grow stronger each day, able to move things with your mind. Or curse and strike someone down. You float through daylight, warm even as snow begins to fall and everyone and everything withers away into death.

You and Wanda are accused of witchcraft. They tear through the village looking for you two and when they find you both, Wanda pushes you behind her, bares her teeth and growls into the cold air so it curls upwards like smoke, like a dragon.

They near with their sludge faces and greedy, grabbing hands. They curse you as witches and suddenly seize you both with their frigid fingers that pull and prod at your soft skin.

“Don’t touch her!” Wanda snarls like a wild thing and you latch tight to her wrist, her hand, before you are being pulled away.

Others grab at Wanda and they try to separate you two. Wanda thrashes, her eyes flooding with red when you shriek in pain as others start twisting your arms, trying to wrench you away from her. It feels as if you’re being torn apart, stitching to be ripped and unwoven. You feel suddenly feral, twisting and turning to try and slip free.

“Let her go!” Wanda says again and there is a ringing to her voice, a power that surges. Her nails dig into your skin and you hold as tightly as you can as arms wrap around your middle and lift you clear off the ground. They pull at you, vicious and unforgiving.

You fight with all you have, yell and snarl, throw yourself towards Wanda but they tear you both apart kicking and screaming.

You don’t realize when you start sobbing through clenched teeth, but you do. As if they’re torturing or killing you, as if they’ve ripped out your heart. They drag you through the streets like an animal and you want to kill them all, you want to paint everything in their blood. You want to watch Bucky dismember them, you want to dance on their grave and pin Wanda to the cold stone to feel her body against yours.

The men tear at your clothes because they can, because they’re greedy and you scream. Wanda hears you, and there is a sudden pulse from her, a shriek, before some of the men around her are thrown backwards from her. She fights harder, but is overtaken again.

They haul you both to a cold and darkened prison. They throw you in separate cages, though connected. Wanda and you push against the bars to touch and speak with each other. She strokes your wet cheeks, tries to soothe you.

“I won’t let them near you,” She murmurs, “I won't let them touch you again. I’ll kill them before I let them.” She tells you with heat, her red eyes shining with tears as she holds your face through the hateful, metal bars that are rusted and rough.

When they return, they demand to check you both for devil’s marks, witch’s marks. One man nears you with outstretched hands and Wanda seethes, hisses through her teeth and jerks her head slightly to the left—

The man’s neck snaps in the same direction, cracks sickly, and he falls dead at your feet. You can sense his soul now departing. You grow chilled, the veil between your world and the next shimmering before your eyes.

You skitter back and away, into Wanda’s hands and arms as she hushes you. Her nose drips scarlet blood now, eyes fever bright in the darkness. The men stare in fear and repulsion, horror in their faces and you stare back at them with the same repulsion and terror.

They shouldn’t touch you, shouldn’t grab at you. Who are they to try and twist you and cage you both? All they’d done was cage you— your whole, smothered life. All they’d done was made you hate who you are and what you’d become or hadn’t become. They’d tried to make you grey and slack faced and cold and unfeeling. They tried to make you housewife and child of God and mother of many sons.

Your minister says you were born in sin.

So what was the point, then? You had railed, had searched and begged and prayed for answers and received none. Be quiet, they’d wanted, be silent and still and look beautiful and serene but not so beautiful that you should tempt the men and you—

You hadn’t breathed until Wanda had shown you the ways of a new life. You’d been so free with her, with Bucky. With Steve.

“We will be free once more.” Wanda promises in your ear and it slithers down between your shoulder blades and settles in the notches of your spine as you peer at the men in the darkness with their open, grasping hands.

***

A trial is had.

They want to hang you both for your crimes.

Steve defends you, swears as witness and under God that he’s only ever seen you both be angels. And if there has been discretion, he is certain your souls can be saved.

Why are they so close? It’s unnatural, is it not?

Not for two orphans, Steve says, not for two girls who only have each other.

People say that Miss Maximoff has killed with a look because someone touched the other.

Impossible, Steve counters. She is frightened, he presses, she is protective. They are all each other has.

Shouldn’t they have found husbands by now?

They’ve no mother to guide them. Take pity on them, he says, they are lost and searching.

Does our scripture not say to take in the weary and lost? Steve cries, face honest, as he says;

They have done no wrong.

He lies through his teeth for you both, the twisted part of him growing like a gnarled tree root, spreading deep into him.

And when he visits your cells, you rush towards the bars to touch him, to thank him.

Wanda is there, too, trying to press through the bars to you and him.

“Oh, Steve,” You whisper, your fingers reaching through the bars to touch his face, his pale hair. You brush over his cheeks as he gazes at you.

“You shouldn’t defend us.” You tell him, “They’ll hang you, too, if you’re not careful.”

“I won’t let them hang you.” Steve says as if he could move mountains and there is your Greek hero; going up against immeasurable odds. “You won’t.” He promises like Wanda, “I’ll set you free.”

The words are pressed into your jaw, just below your ear. You become aware of all that he’s willing to do for you both and you pull back to stare at him slightly, at all of him.

“Do not lie the way you did to the jury and the judge.” You hiss to him, nails skimming his face now.

“I-I didn’t—“

“I know you saw us in the woods that day.” You tell him lowly, your voice coaxing and soft and breathy. “I know you saw us sin.” You tell him as your own eyes suddenly shimmer into the orange of a liquid sunset.

Steve swallows harshly, cheeks aflame.

You grab at the back of his neck, pulling him close so that your lips brush his between the jagged bars.

“I know that you liked watching. And that you love me and Wanda and Bucky too much to be scared.” You nudge your nose to his cheek and sigh as if you are in love, “You’re so loyal, Steve.”

He stammers, “W-what does Bucky—“

But he knows the answer and you kiss him lightly upon the lips before he departs.

Your sweet sighs and coaxing fingers have him singing with heat, knowing that no matter how he tried, he wouldn’t have wanted it to be any other way than this. Sin or not, you awaken something inside his chest, a bird finally taking flight and he won’t lose that. He can’t. Just like he can’t lose Bucky or Wanda, either.

Bring all that you have, he thinks of the church and the minister and the town, and I will plant myself like a tree between them, and stand there forever more.

Little does he know, they will thoroughly test that; they’ll bring axes and fire and sing and dance with ugly faces and feet when he goes up as a pyre for you and Wanda to be staked upon.

***

The room smells of sick when Steve enters; it is damp and dark and sweltering for November. Bucky twists in the sheets of bed, a fire roaring and snapping gently in the fireplace. He is sweaty and shining and red in the face. He looks pale, though, stricken and weak and the heavy bags beneath his eyes seem as if they’ve gained even more weight.

Bucky grew ill early into the morning and has only gotten worse since. He’s thrown up black bile again, Steve can see it in the bucket beside his thin, lumpy bed.

Bucky’s eyes are shining when they fall on Steve and he reaches out to him like he is a boy again, sick and in bed and begging for his mother. Steve goes to sit beside him,

“There’s something horrible in me, Steve.” Bucky rasps, “I’m trying to get it out. You have to help me.”

Steve shakes his head, places his palm upon Bucky’s forehead, “It’s just a fever.” He says dismissively and Bucky grabs his wrist, holds his hand to his clammy and hot face. He presses his forehead into Steve’s palm, squeezes his eyes shut.

“Steve,” He says, low and desperate, his voice ragged, “Steve, it’s not just a fever.”

And then Bucky’s body seizes, his eyes rolling into the back of his head as he goes straight and tight as an arrow, ready to be shot. Steve’s eyes widen, concern flooding him as Bucky’s body seizes sharply.

“Bucky,” He hisses, just as Bucky begins shaking violently, body twisting. Steve tries to hold him still, but his tremors grow too strong, too brutal and hysterical. “Buck!”

Steve grapples for his shoulders, to hold him down hard against the bed, leaning down and using all his strength and weight to try and pin him down. He fears he’ll hurt himself, fears the worst—

Bucky’s hand- the false, metal one- shoots out to grab Steve around the back of his neck and when his eyes snap open, they are blazing, coal black.

Black as night. A starless sky.

Steve’s heart jumps as if it might leap from the nest between his ribs.

“Oh, Stevie,” He says in a higher, breathy voice, “You’re so loyal, Steve.” He says in the same way that you had and Steve tries to lurch away, suddenly shocked and frightened.

But Bucky holds tighter, unnatural strength in that metal limb that keeps Steve from bolting to the other side of the room. Steve’s breaths grow ragged, his chest rising and falling quickly, fluttering in a way that he is not familiar with.

“You lied for them in front of the court. Swore to your God that you’d never seen them sin.” Bucky says in a slithering, inky voice. It reverberates inside of Steve’s mind, sinks down his throat and into his chest and core—

“But you saw them.” He says slowly, “You saw the way they touched and rolled around on the ground like animals in heat.”

Steve is shaking, breathing hard through his nose.

“And you liked it,” Bucky growls, his voice infinite and pushing at him, “You thought about it. You think of their naked bodies—“

“Bucky—“ Steve tries to stop him, before his heart falls out through his stomach.

“Not quite,” the black-eyed creature hums lowly, twisting slightly beneath Steve’s hands so that their chests may touch. “But I am a catalyst for his desires. I set him free. I set them free.” He tilts his head at an odd angle, a serpent about to strike, “And I can set you free, too.”

“No.” Steve tries to jerk away again but the grip on him is bruising, inhuman.

He leans towards him, “I know how you look at him.” He hisses through teeth that seem sharper, too close to his vulnerable neck, “I know how he looks at you.”

“I don’t—“

He jerks Steve closer, so their lips almost brush. “Don’t deny yourself,” He breathes and this time, it seems like Bucky, the voice rough and soft and pulling at tendons in Steve’s soul. “You can have him. And them.” And Bucky finally releases him, strokes the back of his neck like a lover, twists his hands in the blond of his hair.

Steve longs to relax into it, to settle into Bucky’s bones. But—

Bucky sags against the bed, eyes rolling again, until they flutter back into the blue that Steve knows in the depths of his person. Like the blue of early evening, of stone and winter.

Steve shifts off of him, hands going to his face, his neck, “Are you okay?”

Bucky pales, suddenly twists out of Steve’s grasp and spews black blood and bile into the bucket beside the bed. He wretches, whole body shuddering and seizing.

And Steve runs his broad palm along his flank, brushes hair from his face the way a parent would, the way a lover would.

When he’s finished spilling his guts and blood into the bucket- black rust and gore, he wipes his mouth, turns back into the bed and tries to hide from Steve.

“You’re right, it’s not just a fever.” Steve says dryly and allows the room to fall into stiff, unforgiving silence.

After a moment, after the silence becomes overbearing for him, a weight upon his shoulders and throat, as if it wants him to feel the weight of his sins, Bucky speaks;

“I did horrible things.”

His voice is shredded and somber as he waits for Steve, so golden and bright and good, to leave him in horror.

“It wasn’t you.” Steve hushes, touches his neck.

Bucky goes still as stone.

“Yes, it was.” Bucky squeezes out, “I was present. I let Wanda lead her to me like a lamb to slaughter.” His eyes flutter up to Steve as he breathes, “I took her. Not the demon. I woke to her in my arms, desperate and soft, and I—“

Steve can’t breathe.

“I was the first to take her.” He releases the truth like a wind that suddenly rushes forth, a dam broken. His voice breaks, too, “She was so sweet, Steve—“

Steve inhales sharply, settles back, surprised and unsure. His mind whirls, body flushing with heat and something it shouldn’t. Guilt then, for anything other than repulsion. He shouldn’t be curious, shouldn’t want to hear Bucky’s rough, low voice tell him about what you two did when the moon was high and the only witness. He shouldn’t want to know, he shouldn’t think of you and Wanda and you soft, curving bodies; your desperate groans and hungry, seeking lips.

He shouldn’t think about the way his chest had touched Bucky’s, how his heart had beaten a new tune. A damned song. He exhales harshly, and bitterly, wishes he knew how sweet you were, too.

Bucky is sick for three days and three nights as he tries to purge the demon from him, the soldier of a devil. His eyes will roll into winter black and spew vile, twisting words, or soft, enchanting words. Steve doesn’t leave his side, holds his shaking body when the blue returns. He feeds him and undresses him only to redress him. He bloodlets, cuts a mark to let sizzling blood rush out of Bucky in hopes of purging him. The demon tests Steve, purrs about his desires or hisses his sins. But it’s Bucky’s earnest face, his eyes that water and soften on Steve when they return blue, that really devour all of Steve’s resolve.

Especially when Bucky hides in the crook of his neck, shuddering breaths against his shoulder, holding fast and tight to him as if Steve is the very last thing keeping him tethered to this realm. He holds him when his body seizes, holds him until he doesn’t know what sin is or isn’t anymore.

***

You and Wanda are to be hanged the following day at dawn.

The court has decided so and when Steve had disappeared for several days, there is no man to defend you. There is no one their pale, blurry faces will listen to besides Steve. Besides, when someone tries to take you from Wanda again, they seize up and are twisted into a strange angle.

Their bones break like brittle branches under Wanda’s power. She crushes their skull with nothing but her mind; it bursts like a berry and splatters against you both. Against all the grey, slack faces that persecute you. Wanda grows feral and fearsome, she grows anxious and possessive of you.

And now, you both wait for your deaths. She holds you through the bars as best as she can, stroking your hair. She is strangely calm now, soothed with you near and safe for now.

Perhaps you should be more fearful; fearful of death, of what may come after for all your sins.

But you can only settle further into Wanda and wonder who decided it was a sin to love her. To love being touched and to live simple and wild and free. You’d die with your soul spread wide, like a flock of crows, in the least.

Perhaps, you are also calm because you do not feel death upon you. He is not near you or Wanda. The rats do not scuttle towards you, the insects do not linger. No ravens to caw.

So you both wait.

Wait until there is a thump and rushed footsteps against the stones of the prison. You tense, half expecting someone to burst forth and drag you both from your cells kicking and screaming. You worry you were wrong, you worry that you know nothing about death or when he lurks--

Gold light of flame spills forth from the darkness, bursting forth from the corner.

It is Steve who rounds the corner, holding a lantern with a burning flame at its center. Bucky follows after. You and Wanda shift up, your eyes narrowing slightly upon the two. For a terrifying moment you wonder if they’ve been caught, too. Will they swing beside you and Wanda?

But no-- no, Steve lifts the flaming lantern to see you both. You scuttle away from the light like a creature born of the shadows.

“Hurry,” Steve says, handing Bucky the jangling keys. “We don’t have much time.”

Bucky works quickly as you stare in slight astonishment on him, now without the demon that had been clinging to him for so long. However, something remains, something tormented inside of him that will never rest easy.

When the metal creaks open, you lurch forward, towards Steve. “You’re freeing us?”

“I promised I would.” Steve responds, honest and simple.

“What do we do now?” You ask, staring up into his face.

“We run.” He says with a slight, wry smile at his lips. You want to taste it, you think. You want to tackle him, to crawl into his arms and show you how grateful you are for him.

“And then?” You breathe.

“I don’t know,” He says, peering into golden, dancing flame of the lantern, but there’s hope traced on the edges. As if maybe there could be something peaceful after all of this, as if maybe you all deserved more than the fires of hell.

But there is no time to talk, there is nothing to be done except become fugitives, spirits stealing away in the night. You walk lightly, Wanda’s small hand in yours, pulling you along the way she always has. You cling to the back of Bucky’s shirt, sometimes he eases you and Wanda in front of him, touches your shoulders and your backs to know that you’re real and still his.

Steve guides, the lantern in his hand swinging, trying to banish the darkness with the light. He wades into the forest, where he doesn’t know, with his burning flame a bloom against the night.

The light is obvious, though, and there is a commotion when you are all spotted.

Shouts, curses, declarations are shouted at you. They ready weapons, ready their hounds, and set them loose upon the four of you. The ugly, open mouths of the towns people try to devour you all. They shout and sway, as if they are possessed with their need to kill you all.

“Go!” Steve shouts, pushing you and Wanda onward with a rough hand, the light swinging in the darkness like a beacon.

“Drop the lantern.” You suddenly say, your eyes sparking in the flames with the idea, “Drop the lantern and run!”

He opens his mouth to question you, to force you onward. But you jolt forward, grab the lantern and knock it from his grasp. It falls from his hands, shatters upon the earth and the flame eagerly leaps out onto the dry, dead grass of the forest.

Steve jumps out of the way as the smoke begins to curl.

“Let it burn.” You say, grabbing his forearm, trying to pull him along. It takes Bucky shoving at him, before Steve relents and you all take off into the forest like wolves, like foxes being hunted for sport.

The flame grows tall and quick, burning bright and hot against the black, bruised sky. The stars glimmer gold, shine down upon you all as you crash through the forest. The townspeople shout and shriek with the rising flames.

Wanda laughs suddenly, bright and sharp and wicked and you can’t help but feel a smile creep upon your lips, too. You don’t look back as the fire hungrily eats at the grey bleakness of the town, burns it with blood red and furious orange and rust and the diamond-blue and bright part of the flame that glows like the moon. The town smolders in red now and your lungs burn as you run further from all its atrocities.

You don’t stop running until the sun peeks through the trees, glowing of gold and robin’s egg blue. You look out at the clearing of a meadow, at the lake that shimmers under the sun, all peach and pearl and honey with the light.

Your feet are weary, your head heavy and foggy, but Wanda is pressing into your side and Bucky is at your back and you are clinging to Steve’s shirt as you look out at the world.

And finally, you think, with smoke in the distance behind you, the wake of all your destruction, that this new world is filled with color and light you have been hungry for your entire, unforgiving life.

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x female reader #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky barnes x you #wanda maximoff x reader #wanda maximoff x female reader #wanda maximoff x you #wanda maximoff x y/n #steve rogers x reader #steve rogers x female reader #steve rogers x y/n #steve rogers x you #bucky barnes fanfiction #wanda maximoff fanfiction #steve rogers fanfiction #AYAOTDchallenge

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buenoes7 · 4 years ago

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WHEN THE WORLD SAY: THE MASK 😷 LIMIT THE PLAGUE... OR... THE SCIENTIST THAT GOD MADE, RIGHT? CATCH THAT?!? “GOD MADE, ARE GOING TO GO AROUND GODS WILL AND DO ANYTHING OUT OF THE WILL OF GOD... ALL YOU #prayingfortheworld #prayers #motivationalquotes #motivationalmeme #ilovethelord #hallelujah for money and the economy, #justify sin, and #blasphemy against the #holyspirit #crack #meth #angeldust ... #sherm #loop smoking... AT THE #samedamntime acting... LIKE SCIENTIST ARE GOING TO WORK AROUND AND THROUGH GODS WILL... AND YOU ARE SINNING, PRAYING IN SIN? #praying practicing #idolatry #supporting #abominable crimes... AND YOU REALLY THINK GOD IS LISTENING? THAT IS NOT #faith ... #someonelikeyou , 🤡... LOOK AT THE FIRST AMMENDMENT... YOU THINK GOD IS GOING TO COME HEAL ANY NATION THAT ALLOWS WITCHES AND DEVIL WORSHIP? AND YOU CRYING TO AN IDOL, TO COME SAVE YOU, WHO COULDN’T SAVE HIMSELF... 🛑! YOU NEED TO #repent , first off, THEN? #tell congress to pass a counter law that forces all the witchcraft and satanic worship completely out! IF YOU STUPID TO REALIZE WHAT I AM SAYING IS #facts ... IMA MAKE ELIJAH LOOK LIKE A LITTLE INNOCENT CHILD WHEN I CHIDE, REBUKE AND SLAP YOU SEVERAL TIMES DAILY. WITH A GOD THAT DOES JOT AND IS NOT GOING FIR ANY OF THAT.... #buenocorderoadventurasdeèl ... BYE SOME FOLLOWER... GOD IS NOT GOING FOR NONE OF THE SIN WHERE YOU LIVE... 1st ammendment, BIH PLEASE! NOT MY DADDY! 🤡’s ... 😎 THIS 😂!! https://www.instagram.com/p/CCJosbRB9ez/?igshid=yc966j0vjc1g

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childofthecunningfolk · 5 years ago

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From Wise Women to Witches

Before there were witches, we were the Cunning Folk. We were the Wise Ones. Whenever something went wrong, our neighbors came to us. What changed? Why did they stop? Why did they begin to hate and fear us? Why did we stop being their Wise Ones and become something to be destroyed? It’s a bit of a long story and I’m going to have to take it in several parts, but here goes: In early modern England, supernatural power was not limited to the church. It was a part of day to day life. This wasn’t about concepts such as salvation or sin. Witchcraft was medicine. Witchcraft was science. Witchcraft was the solution to the day to day problems that the people truly faced. Troubles with health, relationships, finances. If someone needed guidance or assistance, the wise woman was the one to go to. She had her “spell book”. It had the magick of her mother and her grandmother. Reading, and therefore magick, tended to run in families. In those days, so few could read that it was considered magick in and of itself. Hence spells and spelling. Because they had been taught to read, these women could draw on the wisdom and magick of their ancestors to help those who needed it. They had solutions to the problems presented, even if they were problems or illnesses they’d never seen before. This was not in line with what the Church taught, however. The Church taught that all trials and hardships came from God. If something bad happened to you, it was either a trial of faith or a punishment for sin. The only solution was prayer and repentance. A remedy from your wise woman challenged that. How could the Church claim that an almighty diety’s punishments could be thwarted by a tonic from an elderly woman? The only explanation was that she must be using a power that could contend with God’s. She must be using the power of the devil.

#Witches #history #witch #witch trials #middle ages #england #wise women #cunning folk #magic #magick #to be continued #educational

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lazulimaya · 6 years ago

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French Canadian Witchcraft: Symbols, Guardians and Divination

(forgive the long post, but this is information I’ve been collecting through personal experience and Beltane Lowen’s book, along with lectures and other scholarly articles I’ve read.)

Symbols

Le fleur-de-lys: Can be used as a symbol for the Trinity, the triple worlds. The flower, the lily, is a symbol of purity and was often placed with the Virgin Mary (hence, a Goddess symbol). It of course also displays the sacred number 3.

(Oh, this is my favourite painting done of Madeleine by Georges de la Tour, she just looks so pensive and looks like she’s learning lots of things, and the skull is just such a nice touch, a very witchy painting for me. ooh and fun fact: this painting was the one Ariel had in the Little Mermaid!)

Deities and Spirits

Saint Anne: The mother of the Virgin Mary, this saint was very popular among the French Canadians and Acadians living near the sea. Her feast day is July 26. She is matron saint of carpenters, single women, orphans, children, equestrians, grand-parents, housewives, lace workers, lost things, seamstresses, miners, clothes sellers, poverty, pregnancy, birthing, people who work in stables, teachers, sterility, and sailors (she protected against sea storms). I look up to her when I sew and keep my home clean and fresh. Her symbols are the threshold or a door, and books. She’s the matron saint of Brittany, and therefore, has Celtic connections. Her colours are green and red.

Saint Marie Magdeleine: She is the matron saint of the Magdalen Islands (where my great-grandma came from). She was one of the female disciples of Jesus. She’s matron saint of women, spiritual revelations, of those that love to ponder and study, and discoverers of sacred mysteries, visions, apothecaries, jewellers, perfume makers, and pharmacists. I look up to her for vision quests and when I study witchcraft. She’s also someone I associate with sex, love, and the true meaning of loving someone for who they are. She’s been in religious debates among scholars if she was Jesus’s wife or not, but the mere implications that she could be are very appealing to me Pagan-wise, so there). I know, she’s been written as a repentent prostitute, but that was an addition made to the Bible long ago by a Pope so she’s not that for me. She’s witnessed Jesus’s crucifixion, burial and ressurection, so for me, she is a figure with which to work with spirits and death and rebirth. So I call on her for scrying and divination.

Virgin Mary: One of the prominent mother goddess figures, her symbols are cerulean blue, white and the lily, She protects women and children. I look up to her for learning love and compassion.

The Devil: while the Church has painted a horrid image of the Devil in their structures, the Devil appears a lot in French Canadian folklore. He’s often there as a figure of temptation and getting seduced to act out of socially accepted norms (Church, right?), but, one could argue that there’s a primal wildness to this figure, as the French Canadian habitants were often very fearful of the forests when they came here. Some stories have heroes meet him in the forest, sometimes accompanied by little spirits and elves. He can transform into different beings, and sometimes, he appears as a fellow Voyageur (hence the liminal and sometimes dangerous aspects of the wilderness). He brings young women to dance wildly (something the Church frowned upon heavily, so let’s dance!!) In some stories, he helps build churches (I know, what the heck?) but the structure never ends up finished or it gets destroyed repeatedly. He’s basically a figure of mischief and wildness, of total chaos in the natural landscape, much like the Horned God.

The Fée (from the Lecture: Erik Lacharity and Morrigane Feu “Les Dames Fées: Ladies Fae in French-Canadian Traditional Witchcraft”, Raven’s Knoll Workshop, 2018.) There were rules of engagement with dealing with the Fée. Stories of the Fée were roadmaps for people. When someone meets them, it’s because they’re embarking on a life-changing journey. Stories with “Ti-Jean” are like this. Crossing a road, stream, forest, or taking a right turn at the crossroads, they meet a Fée. In French Canadian tradition, Fée doesn’t mean belle fée. Fée meant something that is enchanted with the means of affecting fate. This is no ordinary stick, it can do something. The Fée would give them something to help them, usually in sets of three. The exchange that took place, the hero had a quest but usually, there’s something in it for the Fée. An example of this is a talking horse previously being a stable boy, and at the completion of the journey, they turn back to their forms. Depending on the setting of the storyteller, ex: Acadia, there were lots of stories with the ocean, boats, nets etc. In the interior, there’d be forests and valleys, barley and cakes. The geographical context matters. The Raconteur makes it so that you yourself are in the myth because of your geographical location. Trou des Fées: a little cave or a little crack in a rock and leave an offering of cream or milk. Normandy, Gasgogne, Picardie, Belgians, they came here, and they had fairies called les lutins. Little red-bonneted fairies, really good blacksmiths, more dwarf-like. They’d sharpen tools too. When Ti-Jean is on his quest, the Fée can give him a knife to defend himself or to deliver someone from imprisonment. Three main classes and areas of affinity for the Fée: those that take on aspects of the woodlands (the Queen of all the Animals/Birds etc) they were very straight-to-the-point peoples. The Fée as protectors, about 30-40 stories of those. Others were sorcerers or magicians. Some Fée would give advice and help the hero. Stories where lost loved ones were some of those. Many of these stories featured Princes and Princesses, kingdoms, etc. because the settlers came here before the Revolution, so it was still important to them. French Canadians, almost all their divination and magic was centred around their love, sex and family life. These are reflected in the stories. For magical objects that the hero would have, sometimes it’s a stick, sometimes a napkin (when you set it on the table a whole feast would show up), little pieces of iron, and if you set it down it becomes a cookstove. Animals of the Fée would help you: Eagles and Horses, they were the big deal. Eagles and Horses were passenger animals in and out of the Fée land. Hero is coming out of subterranean kingdom and there’s this giant Eagle there and offers him passage out of the Fée lands, but he needs sustenance. Use your magical knife and cut off a chunk of your thigh and feed it to me. Ok… but he got a passage. It’s about sacrifice. Little lessons are all hidden in there. Formulas came with using these implements. Ex: This stick can beat people up. If robbers come and take my stuff, I’d take my stick and say “Joue mon gourdin!” and the stick would beat everybody up. “Napkin, give me food!” and poof, food. It’s not about the big magical words, you already have a tool that you know is Fée and it’s a simple command. Every animal that is white is Fée. “Adieu Aigle” and you’d turn into the Eagle. Whoops. The French Canadians were super practical people, just do the thing. They had no time for frilly stuff. Archetypes are super fluid in this tradition. Never pigeon-hole the Fée. Ladies Fée is a type of Fée. Dames Amorphosées: shape shifters, ex: The White Cat, usually very very beautiful, the cat hops into the pail with four toads and she turns into a Princess. Another form of transformation is the whole aspect of going from the pauper to the Prince/Princess. Sometimes it was a curse, but other times it was to disguise themselves. Woodland Ladies Fée: you’d encounter them in the forest, and they had dominion over something, like Birds (super connected to the Fée). With the male aspect, there were beings like the Eagle King or the Ant King (they’d be more specific with their animal dominions). Elemental Ladies: personifying fire and water. Both those elements were big deals. Blue Bonnet Lady: she’s frustrating for the hero, sometimes blowing out his match when he’s cooking pea soup. The Lady comes in on a cloud in the fog. Fog is a big deal. There are Courtly Ladies, like Fée Princesses, and lots of items she offers are scissors, twine, thread, things that are tied to female weaving magic. Sometimes the pauper and the princess switch roles, sometimes they’re the same person. The Witch is another figure. They can have Fée Witches. These were not the type of witches you want to meet. Some stories have the hero stumbling over this thatched hut, and you can stay for lodging, just feed the good oats to the black horse, and beat the white horse to a pulp. The white horse is actually a Prince that she transformed. So he takes the white horse away. The Three Sisters, they come up often in French Canadian folklore and healing traditions. In stories with giants that want to eat humans, replace them with pork and barley bouillon, make a type of beer with raw dough makes the water boil without it boiling. When superintendents of New France were coming here, wine became less available, so French Canadians often made spruce beer, given the lack of hops. There’s a reason why in France they go “We love our wine!” and we go like “we love our beer”. A year and a day and forgetfulness is a big motif in stories. Gifts: magic weapons, animals, objects, transportation, social status (pauper to princess), riches, love (gets a bit non-consent, but in those days there was not a whole lot of consent in marriage, that’s why they were so preoccupied about who they’re going to marry, so they can psychologically prepare).Go to the threshold of the woods, where the Fée usually are, sit down, and offer your offerings. Clearings are good too, the beings you encounter can surprise you. White animals, characters from stories, etc. Following the steps of the story can allow you to write your own story with that formulaic narrative of the old tales. If you read the tales and use them as guides and embark on the hero’s journey, lots of wisdom can be attained. Stories became mixed with Irish folklore, because when the Catholic Irish came over, we bonded with them and created new stories.

Historical Archetypes and Associations

The Voyageur: The liminal figure in its own right, voyageurs were known to shift and adapt endlessly to their environment and cultures they found themselves in, whether in French Canada or among Indigenous peoples. Can be linked to the Wild Man. They combined their Catholic rituals with the mythologies and cosmologies of Indigenous cultures. They’re temperamental figures, but knowledgeable off the beaten path to keep you alive.

The Raconteur: The storyteller had an important place in French Canada, telling stories as old as the first settlers in North America and sometimes from the old country. Some of them were itinerant, asking for food and lodging in exchange for a story. They were known to stretch stories for multiple nights, ending on cliff-hangers. They weaved tales together, and had vast repertoires. They’re learned figures, with silver tongues and enchanting qualities.

The Violoneux: The violinist or fiddler, a key figure in French Canadian culture. They had an innate sense of rhythm and song, and could bring a whole room to dance. The jigs and reels are also inspired from traditional Irish and Scottish music, as the two cultures mingled.

The Bewitched Canoe: It’s a popular story of French Canada. It’s a variant of the Wild Hunt. One version, written by Honoré Beaugrand in 1892, tells it like this: some loggers get lonely in their winter camp on New Year’s Eve, and wish to go home to visit their families. The Devil appears to them to offer them an easy and fast way to go back to their homes through a flying canoe, as long as they get back before dawn, otherwise, their souls would belong to him and they’d go to Hell. The embark, and they arrive home, partying the night away. They almost arrive to the camp by the skin of their teeth, but the Devil lets them go, mysteriously. This legend comes from the Poitou region of France, where an english nobleman named Gallery loved hunting. He loved it so much, he skipped mass. As punishment, he was cursed to ride in the skies for eternity, chased by horses and wolves, like a Wild Hunt. When the French arrived in North America, they combined this Wild Hunt variation with the Indigenous realities of using canoes as modes of transportation. Some stories have the voyageurs or loggers ride the skies every New Year’s Eve for all eternity, and in some versions they escape Hell. Consequently, New Year’s Eve is an important day for French Canadians, and is very liminal in its aspects.

Divination

Most French Canadian divination traditions revolve around the family, love, and sex. Back in the day, they were very concerned with whom they’d end up marrying, if their child would carry through an illness, or how their family and love life was fairing.

Lowen described some divination methods that can be applicable to a French Canadian practice, namely: playing cards, dice, reading tea leaves, mirrors and crystal balls, dream interpretation.

#spirits #deities #french canada #traditions

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cathrineteague · 6 years ago

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Condo by the Lake of Fire

A personal essay - originally written in 2012

God help me, but I think I want to talk about religion. Christianity, specifically, but not Christianity as it’s written in the Holy Bible itself. The Bible is hardly the root of the problem.

There is a place down South called the Bible Belt, where Church is the wheel on which everything turns. You know as soon as you’ve crossed into this strange, alternate world because suddenly one church per town won’t suffice, and Sunday morning just isn’t enough time for preaching.

You’ll see billboards in the big cities (Don’t make me come down there. – God). And on those otherwise beautiful stretches of highway through miles of green farmland, you’ll come upon the occasional massive, ominous white cross, looming over the highway as if to remind all who pass through whose country they’re traversing.

Don’t stop. Don’t get out of the car, not even to take a picture. Everyone you meet will be vying for a chance at your soul. Evangelical Christians—terrifying creatures bred on generations of threats of hellfire and brimstone—don’t know how to meet a living thing without inquiring about its status with regards to God.

“Hi! Nice to meetcha. Where ya come from? Where ya headed? Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior and if not, would you like to do so this very day? For we are living in the End Times! None of us is promised tomorrow, brothers and sisters, and God is not willing that any one of His children should be lost, say amen.”

More frightening for an outside observer than the prospect of crossing this land—to get to some more desirable locale where they don’t try to walk you into such a long-term commitment right away—is the idea of what it must be like to grow up in it.

Don’t weep for the little children, though, you heathen Yankees! They do just fine. They learn all the lessons they need to know at school, at Church and at home. And if one of these places tends to bleed into the others, well…hallelujah, that’s consistency! Sometimes it’s hard and painful of course, but what good, worthy things are there in life that don’t require some work? We have to purge our children of their sins before the Devil gets a foothold!

It’s violence, really. Emotional terrorism, praise the Lord and give God the glory. See the little girl sitting in the third pew, in an itchy pink dress she had to be wrestled into earlier that morning? Teach her Your ways, O Lord.

Teach her that when she gets older holding hands with the little blonde girl next to her won’t be okay anymore, to say nothing of all the other things she’s going to want to do. Teach her that her body and her mind are great betrayers, teach her to shut them down and ignore what they tell her. She must suffer as Christ suffered.

When Jesus was a little kid, did he want to hold hands with the other boys? Teach her not to ask such sacrilegious questions.

Teach her to be ashamed of having questions at all. A good Christian with a healthy relationship with God doesn’t have doubts or questions, and never-you-mind that Jeremiah prophet. He was a prophet, after all, and you’re just a girl. The Bible says women ought not to speak in Church.

Send your children to summer “youth camps” and winter “retreats.” Let them spend all day at the water park in some perpetually sunny Southern city, shrieking with laughter and not a care in the world. Send them, sunburned and still smelling like chlorine and the sunscreen they put on in the morning, to the dimly-lit interior of a hotel conference room. Show them how to raise their hands and sing at the top of their lungs to God, all the more joyful abandon, so the rocks don’t cry out.

Sit them down and bring out a fat, happy guest preacher who says he is their friend. He dresses like they do. He talks the way they do. He knows who their favorite musicians are, knows how to play the saxophone. They are all in agreement: he’s a pretty cool guy, and in the space of half an hour they trust him like they’ve known him all their lives.

Let him talk to them for another sixty minutes. By the end of it they’ll all be on their knees in the altar, sobbing. They’ll cling to each other as they gasp out those prayers, begging God to forgive them for those seconds of the day when they forget themselves and are human. For that single unkind thought, for that dirty joke at lunch three weeks ago, for these offenses and a million more. They will beg forgiveness for everything they’ve done in their lives between Monday mornings and Saturday nights.

And no matter how hard they try, there will always be new seconds of imperfection to cry over come next Wednesday, when their young, handsome youth pastor gets up to remind them of the commitment that he’s sure “some of y’all have already forgotten.”

The battle begins on the first day of school, after all. When you’re walking through the overcrowded hallways, trying to get to your locker across the building in the five-minute break, trying to absorb useless details about ancient Mesopotamia that you’re sure you covered last year, and the year before, trying to understand what’s so great about A House on Mango Street anyway…don’t forget the commitment you made at winter retreat, and renewed on Wednesday night, and Sunday morning, and again on Sunday night.

They all forget, of course. Maybe not habitually, maybe only for a second, but it’s enough. Every single second out of the day they don’t spend in awe of Almighty God is fodder for their guilt-ridden prayers at the Sunday evening service.

The bass-voiced, solemn-faced preachers all says that Christianity is more than fire insurance, but I’ll be damned if they don’t use the eternal torment of Hell--and a shot at skipping it--as a selling point at every turn.

“Do you have a relationship with God? Are you ready? If you died this very minute, where would you go?”

“You with the heavy eyeliner, the black bondage pants and the heavy metal t-shirt, repent of your sins and come back next week in jeans and this hoodie with the youth group’s logo on it, only $25.”

“You in the low-cut blouse, stop tempting your Brothers in Christ to sinful thoughts. Cover yourself from neck to ankles and be forgiven for the sin of being a pretty girl.”

Your body is a temple; your body is a temptation. Your body is the place all sins originate, so divorce yourself from it as much as possible, praise Jesus.

It starts almost at birth and it never really ends. Even if you escape, drag yourself across the invisible border into a place where towns with populations under a thousand only have one church and no one defaces the highway with terrifying symbols of pre-medieval execution methods…even if you manage to run from the voices all around you telling you that you’re Lost, you’re a Sinner, you’re Backslidden, you’re Going To Hell...you’re not really safe. You can’t escape the voices in your head that tell you the exact same things.

So what if logic says it’s crazy? So what if every rational thought you have screams against the majority of what you’ve been taught since before you could talk? Those teachings took root long before some high school English teacher or college professor took pity and taught you to think, before some song on the radio ignited the tiny fire of rebellion that grew and eventually prompted you to run in the first place.

Your mama says rebellion is like witchcraft in the eyes of God. You shall not suffer a witch to live; it says so in the Bible.

Spend every day for the rest of your life telling yourself that God is love, that God forgives, that God shows mercy to His children. Read the Bible if you want to, highlight all those passages that prove your point. Live your life by day as if you believe it, but say your prayers at night the way you always have: searching frantically in your mind for that one damning little sin, some slip-up that you forgot to beg forgiveness for that’s going to plunge you into Hell if you die in your sleep.

Call home; listen to the voices of your past in a chorus of agreement.

“I’m praying for you, child,” says the elderly aunt before you hang up, every time. You feel her prayers; they prickle the back of your neck every time you pass a church, make you walk a little faster and keep your eyes to the ground.

And what if they’re right? That’s the question you can’t get away from, the one that logic can’t dispel because it’s not a logical adult asking it, but that scared, brow-beaten little girl in the itchy dress.

What if they’re right about everything?

You had a friend once, an anomaly living fun and fancy free among his religious brethren, a jolly-faced man you met at the community theatre who served on the deacon’s board at his church and went home every night to Jerry, his sweet-smiling house husband of more than a dozen years. They threw Christmas parties and pool parties, and welcomed you at the door with warmth and joy and homemade lemonade.

He used to joke that in Hell he’d be a VIP.

“When we all get there, you guys can just join me in my luxury condo, right beside the lake of fire.”

A small, sacrilegious voice inside you hopes that if they’re right, then he is, too.

#writing #writeblr #personal essay #christianity #bible belt #christian fundamentalism

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fulcrarocksblog · 3 years ago

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We should be doing what is right, not what is wrong. Wrong key, wrong note. If we keep doing the wrong things, wont it show we don't actually know the requirements, what we should be doing? What is required of you and me is that we do the right thing at all times, not sometimes only. We all make mistakes but we still want to do the right things. We still get tempted from the sinful nature of the Devil in us but our resolve should be to put it to death. The right thing to do here is seek the whole divine nature of Christ to be formed in us, instead. This helps in all our relationships with others. Nothing, absolutely nothing from the sinful nature of the Devil in man is useful for others. Somehow, it will show its uselessness along the way. A sheer waste of time and effort and will eventually go up in smoke. Selfish pursuits finally will crumble the whole system. Music is indivual talent but combined multi-talented individuals produce the right notes, hence right music. Everyone must be filled with the whole divine nature of Christ and then only can we expect the world to produce the right sounds. Until then, sinful living will continue and attempt to take the world into destruction, now and forever. Promoting sinful living must stop among man. We cannot continue to sin and yet expect the world to sing the right song with the wrong music. We are all trying to sing the right song with the wrong music. We can never live peacefully, righteously, equally, uprightly, and justly, if we continue to live by the sinful nature of the Devil in us. That's impossible! In fact, many of us are expecting just that but that will never happen. Only the divine nature of Christ formed in man, can produce the right results. Right notes, right music. Wrong notes, wrong music. If people are taught to be selfish, it will be silly to expect peace on earth. It is like playing the wrong note and expecting the right music. Silly, isn't it?

Wipe out idolatry, witchcraft, false beliefs, false notions, greed, selfishness, envy, jealousy, strife, evil rivalry, factions and divisions among man because these are causing all the violence, unfairness, injustices, hatred, drunkenness and wickedness of sexual misbehavior among man. People are misusing one another to destroy the other to make themselves look good when they aren't good at all. How can good come from something bad? How can good come from the sinful nature of the Devil in man? Good can only come from the divine nature of Christ formed in man. Stop promoting the sinful nature of the Devil in man. Start promoting the divine nature of Christ to be formed in man. You can never do this by yourself. You need God the Holy Spirit in you to do this. In fact, you will only do this when you have God the Holy Spirit in you. You can never pretend like you have God the Holy Spirit in you. This will never happen because you will only be blaspheming Him in the end. You will be punished eternally for this. You can never have God the Holy Spirit in you and yet be on the side of idolatry, witchcraft, greed, sexual immorality, violence, wars, gangsterism and hooliganism, thugism, pride and arrogance of sinful living. What we are rampantly witnessing today is pride and arrogance of sinful living which comes in the evil disguises of all the isms of the world like materialism, giving the glory to 'money' and worshipping it as god. You not only practice this evil and wicked thing but you promote it to others, stubbornly and rebelliously towards the LORD GOD of heaven and earth. If you promote the sinful nature of the Devil in you, God the Holy Spirit is not in you. You need to repent of your sins first, meaning turn away from pleasing the sinful nature of the Devil in you. GOD will bring you to a situation where you will surrender to Him completely. He will show you clearly that what you are eagerly promoting among man is still the sinful nature of the Devil in man. He will teach you how to live and promote the divine nature of Christ in you but you must obey His leading and guidance in your life, and not stubbornly walk in your own self-will.

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tipsycad147 · 3 years ago

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Local Clergy

The local Church was instrumental in securing permission to conduct an investigation into witchcraft in the local area. Once the witch hunt had begun in earnest, various local presbyteries throughout Renfrewshire and beyond offered support. This took the form of prayerful fast days, and the supply of ministers who would either attend to the needs of the Commission, support the Shaw family during their spiritual ordeal, or assist in the supervision and interrogation of suspects.

Religion in 1697 Renfrewshire

By 1697 the Presbyterian form of Protestantism was in the ascendancy in much of Scotland, secure as the authoritative form of religious governance. It had been keen to flex its muscles over recent years, and would become characterised by an overbearing attempt to control the lives of ordinary worshipers, and discipline those who were deemed to be backsliders in a moral sense.

Belief in the devil, as a real and vital force in the world, was taken very seriously by many clergy. The devil not only threatened the psychological experience of the individual believer on a daily basis. He could recruit witches in order to attack the Godly community. The devil, it was believed, was especially angered by the very existence of the Godly, and desired nothing more than to address this affront to his mission on earth.

Many clergy believed that the devil was angry with Paisley, and wider Renfrewshire. This was a backhanded compliment, a reflection of the spiritual purity of the area, and the good work being carried out by the Lord's ministers. The experience of the young girl, Christian Shaw, was itself written up as a spiritual battle between the forces of Good and Evil. Of course, the young girl, through the grace of God imparted to her and those who supported her, won through in the end.

Andrew Turner

Andrew Turner was a church minister in the parish of Erskine. He was twenty nine years old, and a close witness to the trials endured by Christian Shaw in Bargarran. He would testify that he witnessed her being bitten on the arms by invisible forces, bites that left marks that he could inspect closely. He also declared that he saw the young girl produce hair and pins from her mouth, with nobody close by who could deliver them to her, while she complained that Katherine Campbell, the household maid, was thrusting them down her throat.

Turner testified that he saw Christian Shaw display unnatural physical symptoms, including her head twisting about towards her shoulders, her stomach swell to incredible proportions, and bruises appear on her leg despite no individual being close enough to deliver any blows to her. Turner stated that the young girl named all of the seven accused as being directly responsible for her physical symptoms, while at the same time acknowledging that some of them had longstanding reputations in the community for witchcraft.

He also declared that when Katherine Campbell was apprehended, she said that she hoped the devil would never let Christian Shaw get better. Turner was also present at Bargarran House when Margaret Lang arrived in order to defend herself against the girl's accusations. He confirmed the story that Christian Shaw had been spellbound into silence by Lang. Turner's evidence is all the more telling given that it was said that he was of the opinion that Margaret Lang was "under good repute, and not the least suspected for witchcraft, or any ill, but esteemed a great Christian." This was before she had been accused by the laird's daughter.

Patrick Simson

Patrick Simson was a minister in the parish of Renfrew. He was an experienced clergyman, aged sixty nine years old. He would have lived through some of the more intense witch hunts of the past, and would have had strong memories of the religious strife experienced in Scotland during the preceding decades. Like Andrew Turner from Erskine, he too was present during many of Christian Shaw's episodes of physical torment and spiritual challenge. Simson testified that he was in the room when Margaret Lang had challenged Christian Shaw in her bedroom at Bargarran House. Simson confirmed that the young girl had suffered an extremely violent fit, and that Margaret Lang had subsequently declared "Lord God bless thee and ding the devil out of thee."

Simson confirmed that when Lang left the room, Christian Shaw revealed that a charm had made her unable to accuse the midwife to her face, but now that Lang had left the room, and she had been made aware of the charm's presence, she could see to its disposal and reaffirm her accusation.

James Brisbane

James Brisbane was a minister in Kilmalcolm, aged twenty seven. He was new to the parish when the accusations of witchcraft emerged, and left for Stirling not long after the witch hunt had ended. He testified that he witnessed Christian Shaw exhibit the most extreme physical symptoms, where her eyes rolled, her tongue was drawn first down her throat, and then over her nose. At other times he said she uttered violent shrieks, before entering into a trance-like state. This would be contrasted by her leaping around the room singing traditional country tunes and songs, while those present struggle to restrain her.

Brisbane confirmed that the girl accused both Katherine Campbell and Agnes Naismith as being responsible for her physical symptoms and her erratic, some would say playful, behaviour. He also declared that the young girl claimed that the devil was going to devour her, while acknowledging that John and James Lindsay, Bishop and Curat respectively, had reputations in the area for being witches. Brisbane was also one of the witnesses who was present while the witch pricker carried out his duties. He confirmed that all of the accused were in possession of insensible marks on their bodies.

James Hutchison

James Hutchison was a minister in the parish of Killallan. He was known for his evangelical zeal, and would be spoken of fondly by later divines who admired the powers of conversion and awakening he inspired in his flock. Hutchison was also widely known as a firm believer in the threat posed by witches in Scotland, and he was famed for his evangelical approach to rooting out these servants of the devil.

Duly, Hutchison was offered centre stage in April 1697, shortly before the commencement of the trial. He mounted the pulpit in Paisley Abbey in front of an expectant congregation that included the vast majority of those who would soon convene to decide the fate of the accused. Hutchison proceeded to exhort those present to be very aware of the real presence of the devil's servants in the local area, and the means by which it was possible to safely identify them. It was a powerful sermon, and undoubtedly influenced all who heard it.

David Brown

David Brown was a minister in the parish of Neilston, a relatively prolific writer and publisher of sermons and theological tracts. He would officiate at the execution of the condemned at the Gallow Green, continuing to plead with the accused to repent right to the very end. Brown also preached a very powerful sermon in Paisley the day before the execution. During this sermon, at which the condemned were present, he reminded them of God's mercy, beseeching them to admit their guilt, and throw themselves upon God's saving grace.

Brown's sermon went on to state quite clearly that the seven had been found guilty by solid evidence and competent legal process. Appealing to their conscience, he simultaneously reminded them all that the devil would be at the foot of the scaffold on the following day, "ready to harle you down to hell." He also took time to remind some of them of their advancing years, and asked them what they had to show for their compact with the devil. In amongst the genuine sense of ministry lies a sliver of frustration that no confessions had been obtained.

https://www.paisleysenchantedthreads.co.uk/the-story/the-people/local-clergy/david-brown/

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