I kinda love witches. Well, I love them to the extent I know anything about them. Which I don’t. Not really.

I really liked the three good witches in Disney’s Sleeping Beauty: Flora, Fauna and Merryweather. They were kind of like maiden aunts who always had Sleeping Beauty’s back and her best interests at heart.

I could have used a couple of them when I was a girl. Maybe I had them but they were all in my grandmother.

Witchcraft always seemed to be a fairly limited career choice. I mean, there was all that mystery and spell casting and multiple spiritual dimensions to get a handle on. And the danger of spell blowback haunting you. Like Mickey Mouse’s curious, if hapless, novice magician in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Sounds dangerous and exhausting.

And then there has always been the very real danger to witches of being beaten or banished or burned or basically, disrespected.

Wait. That still sounds vaguely similar to the risk of any woman lives with. 

The world of spirits and the occult have largely gone out of fashion in the secular world. Well, except for today, of course. Halloween is the one day of the year when we can all express our inner witch by sporting pointy black hats and corn brooms and painting on shrieking blood red lipstick.

I got a particularly stunning shade of red Mac lipstick as a gift from my daughter’s girlfriend. Fashion forward and high marks for good taste. I still pull it out when I need an instant power boost.

I deliberately mixed up my witch costume one year by taking a Rocket stick vacuum cleaner with me as my ersatz transportation. A modern upgrade from the trusty corn broom. People looked at me funny.

Witches have had a real and traumatic, if compelling, history. I recently read on a self-identified witch’s website that the beauty of the “craft” (so-called by its practitioners) is in its simplicity. Many spells and potions can be concocted with readily available kitchen ingredients and implements, like a variety of spices and essential oils.

The allure of witchcraft to women in days of yore was understandable. Constrained by biology and narrow-minded society to dreary lives of minding the hearth and repetitive childbearing, it is easy to imagine women who would have been up for a good time dancing around a roaring campfire in their birthday suits.

Exuding a hint of witchery (aka mystery) was a useful tool for women whose power in other spheres was excruciatingly limited. My mother was a storyteller and would recount tales of backwoods provincial witches.

She may have been a tad more personally familiar with their witchy ways than she let on publicly. Just a guess. She was certainly drawn to the craft.

I remember the story Mom told of Granny Bubar, in particular. She was a “widder” (widow) woman of wide reknown in the 100 mile circumference of the Nashwaak River in backwoods New Brunswick.

In other locales, she might have been seen as crazy. In her circle, was feared. No one dared cross Granny Bubar for it was a known fact she was the real deal. A genuine witch. There was proof.

Local farmers recounted stories about Granny Bubar planting herself on a gatepost where the cattle had to go through. Each night, they were herded in from the fields to the barn for the night. But the cows wouldn’t pass by if Granny was near.

They bolted and mooed and generally made a fuss. Granny just sat there, quietly, and unmoved with her arms folded across her concave chest. It was reported she took much delight in the frustration and fear oozing from the farmers.

After a time, and much pleading by the farmers, Granny came down from her perch and sauntered slowly home. Once she was out of sight, the reluctant cows hightailed it through the gate and into the barn, leaving the farmers perplexed and shaken.

My mother would recount the story of Granny Bubar with unabashed glee. The story had more interesting roots as we discovered years later. Mom happened upon a PBS documentary about witches. The script explored some women’s deliberate attempts to curry respect and fear in their communities.

The deflection of cows and other livestock by certain women was a common tale. It turned out, women would smear their bodies with bear grease under their clothing or roll about in a bear or polecat den.

There wasn’t a right-thinking cow out there who didn’t know that odor. Granny Bubar likely sauntered slowly home chuckling to herself from her fence-post vigil to wash and freshen up.

Serious spiritual traditions swirl around the night of Halloween in the Celtic traditions, or Samhain as it is called. And while I come from that cultural stock, I still don’t know much about it.

This is the one night of the year, I gather, when the veil between the spirit and material worlds is most transparent and permeable. It is the night when offerings and thanks should be freely given to our ancestors.

Honoring ancestors has disintegrated to practically nothing in our material world awash in superficial bling and Grey Goose vodka and fast cars and money. This lost contact with other dimensions out there seems a profound loss to our culture and to us, as individuals.

So tonight I think I’ll give my ancestors a sacred shoutout. Many dear relatives have passed and I wish to honor and reflect on them tonight as I occasionally do during the year. I will give thanks for the gifts they gave me while they were here. I will forgive their trespasses.

The only difference I might expect tonight, I’m told,  is that on this one night, my ancestors may very well hear me. They may even respond in some way or another with a signal or a sign.

In any case, I’ll be watching and listening.

If they do reach back, I’ll be sure to let you know.