Does size matter?
Does the size of a pumpkin measure up to its creator's potential? Is its potency proportionate to its witch's power? According to what we've been taught by our Hecate Grand Mistress, how much space a pumpkin takes up is equivocal to the successful spell it took to get it there, cast by the witch with the well of power within themself.
What I never understood is, is it conjuring, enchanting, bewitching, charm casting, or hexing a fruit? (Or is it a vegetable? No, pumpkins are flowering plants and contains seeds, so they're a fruit.) Why use a pumpkin as a conduit for inner power at all? Why a fruit or a vegetable? Why not something else, like a cake or a pie? A pumpkin pie? Wait, why this pumpkin obsession? Is it just another form of big orange power play and navel-gazing, that in fact has nothing to do with the craft? How much is spellcasting to do with innate magic, ley lines, and praying to your goddess?
Oop, getting sidetracked again.
I blink. My cat Cress is rubbing against my ankle, bringing me back to earth.
Back to my pumpkin in my hands, amidst the giant pumpkins in the patch. In the autumn harvest under the harvest moon.
Some of the squashes around me are absolutely enormous. I try not to sigh, but it's hard.
A witch from the Demeter Coven is going to win again, aren't they? They always do, every year, largely thanks to their divine advantage. It's not fair, really. The Wheel of the Year - of the eight sabbat seasons, of birth and growth and death and rebirth - is a repetitive, unchanging cycle. A curse.
Well, if someone's power potential can be measured by their growth and size, I must be multiple tarots' worth. I am a big girl, a big witch. A broad, chubby charm caster, tall even without my pointy hat, and I'll say I'm proud of it, without having to show off my magic to anyone to validate my existence.
My pumpkin is the smallest out of everyone else's.
I have nothing to prove. I'm proud of my pumpkin.
Why should I not be? My dinky jack-o'-lantern, that fits cosily in-between my palms. In a field full of orange and ignis fatuus, of flinting and glinting and twinkling, my squash barely shines to accompany the moonlight, but I cradle it like a kitten.
Oh, kittens. I bend down and pick up Cress with one arm, and hold my little pumpkin with the other. Time to turn on the charm.
If you look closely, you'll see that carved into the pumpkin is the shape of Hecate, Goddess of Witchcraft and Necromancy and Undeath, of breaking the mould, as the Triple Moon Goddess, with her hound. The tiny candle gleaming within is pink, because it's mine and mine alone.
I stand just like her.
I'll stand proud. Proud of my cat. Proud of my creation. Proud of my magic that helped it grow and glow, no matter how loud the cackling and crowing of other witches might be; no matter how loud their babbling, and the bubbling in their oversized cauldrons. Some are orange instead of black to fit the occasion.
Quaint.
Who cares who wins, in this Grandest Witch's Pumpkin Patch competition? Not me. What does it mean to win anything, anyway? Who truly wins in the end, at the dawn of a new day, everyday, in this never-ending Wheel we live in?
For once, I'm not daydreaming and losing my train of thought. I'm lucid, my eyes forward and aware of the lights, the stars and the moon, Cress purring on my right arm and my gourd warming my left.
Whatever happens tonight, I'll love myself. And I'll have a tasty treat as a reward to myself afterwards, too. Nothing going to waste at this harvest.
I care not for contests. Only for anyone and anything, no matter their size.
No magic is small.
Big witch, big heart.
No comments:
Post a Comment