A special night for witches

This night is a special one for witches.

It holds all the secrets of their mysterious existence among the normal humans. It is a night to determine their fate. Some witches might have wondered for the (mostly short) rest of their lives what the hell might have happened while they were asleep.
Asleep? Yes, that‘s right.

It is a debate of its own kind how real things actually had to be to accuse someone of witchcraft.

While writing these words down, I see my witch getting ready for another attempt to turn my hair purple. While spreading a towel and the floor and arranging some candles, she would say:“You know, in a way I dreamed of things that everyone was scared of.“
„Such as?“
„Living without the pain that everyone else had accepted.
Loving someone else.“

Witches were known to spend walpurgis night on a hilltop with the devil, demons and all the other witches. The celebration was a reward for the deal the witch had made with the devil and the tasks it performed for him, and it was known to include wine, good sex or even eternal youth. People in Europe at the end of the medieval and during the early modern days were believing in secret organization being responsible for everything evil. Doesn’t that seem familiar?

But how to prove that a person had joined the celebration at all?
That had proven so difficult that very soon a proof was not need anymore.
There were cases of women being accused of witchcraft that had their husband state that they had been sleeping next to them all night, but the women were sentenced anyway, because their soul could have attended the devils party in a dream.
Witching dreams were known to be vivid and break all the rules of, reality, remember?

„A demonic wine tasting in a dream“, Layla now giggled. „That‘s almost worth burning for.“

So, this night, Walpurgisnacht, St. Walpurga‘s eve, burn the witch, or whatever you may call it, is the night of a hypothetical crime? A death sentence for a dream?
That makes the long and rose shaded spring sunset look much mor unnerving, but also has me thinking back of a walpurgis night shortly after my 18th birthday some years ago, which was the first one that I had spent dancing until a dawn …

All in all, was there ver any truth in all of this? Or were all of these witches just victims of a world haven fallen into panic?

I see my witch smile sadly.
„It just adds up“, she would explain. „You lose a baby, or sleep with someone else and walk the dark alley that everyone had warned you of … And then when they question you, they out names into your mouth.“ Now she laughed hysterically. „I have had someone twisting my thumps while desperately asking me to name his mother in law. So urgently that he had me to try different versions of her name Elisabeth. Elizabeth. Elrzbetta …“

This night has a dark tradition of burning someone for something that might have never happened and seeing them equal to the plague, or the end of the word.

I certainly miss nights that had me dancing until dawn for the first time, and also those with bonfires among the stars, and I am glad that no one tried to burn me, yet.