A while ago, I wondered why people ever did witchcraft, or came to lonely and weird people to do it for them. If something requires the blood of a white dove, flesh of an executed murderer and other ingredients you will most likely get caught while collecting, why even bother?
But now that I am completely stuck, I more and more understand.
Although I have never believed in anything, the past year had me made wishes after seeing shooting stars and on a field at night whisper pleading words to the universe. While doing so, I had to remember the novel „Never let me go“ by Kazuo Ishiguro and how I also once had wondered about why Cathy went out to a field to wait for her friend to appear at the horizon, although she knew he never would.
I think that knowing to do so later that day made whatever was going to happen until then more bearable. While stepping onto that field and facing the horizon just provided a second of relief, before reality came back.
Under this perspective, it is easier to understand why risk being burned or hanged or something similar for something like a love potion. When nothing in life seems certain anymore, and you worry about the next harvest, the next meal, to get your daughters married off, and hope for the plague not to pass by anytime soon, everything you need or fear deeply seems as random as a shadow at the horizon.
So why not bring blood tainted sheets and an umbilical cord to the weird and lonely lady living in the forest, if it can better your odds for anything in life?
In a way, practicing witchcraft has always meant dealing with the deepest desire of people that were difficult to place in this world, while it also fed a rumor that got people who gave into these desires burned.
Mistress witch writes 