October Theme: "Something Wicked This Way Comes"

At the beginning of Act IV of the Scottish Play, three witches hover over a cauldron, brewing a potion that symbolizes their influence on the titular character. The Weird Sisters - a nod to the three Fates, Greek goddesses who managed the destiny of all, with only one eye between them - predict his ascent to the Scottish throne and then later, foretell of his downfall. In both situations, he overhears them and tragedy follows. That's the funny thing about predictions and prophesies - the more you know about them, the more likely they are to come true, often in disastrous ways. The Weird Sisters are an ominous force in the play, in spite of only appearing in a few scenes, because of the perceived power of the women. A few words - which Shakespeare uses trochaic tetrameter, a verse form he only uses for supernatural creatures, such as witches and fairies (mere mortals will use iambic pentameter) - result in so much death and destruction but, had they remain unheard, would have been just meaningless chanting by three crazy old ladies.

The theme for October is Witchcraft, in all its vagaries and forms (but music in particular). I'll be sharing some of my favorite songs performed by artists who identify as witches and/or pagans, as well as discussing/processing a little of what I've learned in the past decade in my search for meaning, which inexplicably always brings me back to the occult and esoteric. The field of pagan music is surprising diverse - it's not all heavy metal and folk music - and I hope to showcase that adequately. This particular genre of music tends to remain hidden until you go looking for it. I think that's appropriate, given that the content is often about the unspoken parts of reality that we pretend don't exist for society's sake. But that's the point of October and Halloween - we go looking to uncover things we've tried to forget about. Abandoned projects. Hidden desires. Losses we haven't yet grieved. Ancestors who've long since past. We begin October in Libra, which brings to light all the things we desire and all the ways we've become unbalanced. It starts with a drive for neatness and order, an almost obsessive need for everything to turn out "pretty," but eventually gives way to the chaotic energy of Scorpio season. And Scorpio is about all about the Transformation. It knows best that, in order to put things the way need to be to move forward, you might need to destroy the things that don't belong. Which may be things you didn't expect. One important thing to remember though - a little "Witch" wisdom, if you will - Chaos is not synonymous with random. Just because you can't see the pattern doesn't mean it isn't there. As someone who has struggled with control issues - everything has to happen right when I say it will, exactly how I say it should - it may come as a surprise that I find this truism exceedingly comforting. That's another thing about being, to quote Constantine, a "petty dabbler in the Dark Arts" - you have to learn to trust things you can't see and may only just barely understand. Leap and the net shall appear. I've been doing a lot of that lately. It's probably good for me. Happy October!