maeve

Maeves Book of Shadows

This book is given to my incandescent one, my fire fairy, Bradhadair, on her fourteenth birthday. Welcome to Belwicket. With love from Mathair.
This book is private. Keep out.
Imbolc, 1976
Here’s an easy spell to start my Book Shadows. I got from Betts Towson, except I use black candles and she uses blue.

To get rid of a bad habit

1. Light atlar candles.
2. Light black candle. Say: “This holds me back. No more will I do it. No more is it part of me.”
3. Light white candle. Say: “This is my might and my courage and my victory. This battle is already won.”
4. Picture in your mind the bad habit you want to break. Picture yourself free from it. After a few minutes of imagining victory, put out the black candle, then the white candle.
5. Repeat a week later if necessary. Best done during a waning moon.
I did this last Thursday as part of my initiation. I haven’t bitten my nails since. –Bradhadair

December 14, 1976.
Circle last night at the currachdag on the west cliffs. Fifteen of us in all, including me, Angus, Mannannan, the rest of Belwicket, and two students, Tara and Cliff. It was cold, and a fine rain fell. Standing around the great heap of peat, we did some healing for old Mrs. Paxham, down to the village, who’s been ailing. I felt the cumhachd, the power, in my fingers, in my arms, and I was happy and danced for hours. -Bradhadair

May 14, 1977
Going to school is more a bother these days than anything else. It’s spring, everything’s blooming. I’m out gathering luibh- plants-for my spells, and then I have to get to school and learn English. What for? I live in Ireland. Anyway, I’m fifteen now, old enough to quit. Tonight’s a full moon, so I’ll do a scrying spell to see the future. I hope it will tell me whether I should stay in school or no. Scrying is hard to control, though.
There’s something else I want to scry for: Angus. Is he my muirn beatha dan? On Beltane he pulled me behind the straw man and kissed me and said he loves me. I don’t know how I feel about him. I thought I liked David O’Hearn. But he’s not one of us-not a blood witch-and Angus is. For each of us there’s only one other they should be with: their muirn beatha dan. For Ma, it was Da. Who is mine? Angus says it’s him. If it’s him, I have no choice, do I?
To scry: I don’t use water overmuch-water is the easiest also the least reliable. You know, a shallow bowl of clear water, gaze at it under the open sky or near a window. You’ll see things easily enough, but it’s wrong so often, I think it’s just asking for trouble.
The best way to scry is with an enchanted leug, like bloodstone or hematite, or a crystal, but these are hard to lay your hands on. They give the most truth, but brace yourself for things you might not want to see or know. Stone scrying is good for seeing things as they are happening someplace else, like checking on a loved one or an enemy in battle.
I scry with fire, usually. Fire is unpredictable. But I’m made of fire, we are one, and so she speaks to me. With fire scrying, if I see something, it can be past, present, or future. Of course the future stuff is only one possible future. But what I see in fire is true, as true as can be.
I love the fire.
-Bradhadair

February 7, 1978
Two nights ago someone sprayed “Blood Witch” on the side of Morag Sheehan’s shop. We’ve moved our circle to meeting out by the cliffs, down the coast a ways.
Last night, late, Mathair and I went out to Morag’s. Lucky it was a new moon-no light and a good time for spells.
Rite of Healing, Protection from Evil, Cleansing
1. Cast a circle completely around what you want to protect. (I had to include old Burdock’s sweetshop since the two buildings are joined.)
2. Purify the circle with salt. We used no lights or incense but salt, water, and earth.
3. Call on the Goddess. I wore my copper bracelets and held a chunk of sulfur, a chuck of marble from the garden, a chunk of petrified wood, and a bit of shell.
Then Ma and I said (quietly): “Goddess, hear us where we stand, with your protection bless this land, Morag is a servant true, protect her from those who mischief do.” Then we invoked the Goddess and the God and walked around the shop three times.
No one saw us, that I could tell. Ma and I went home, feeling strong. That should help protect Morag. –Bradhadair

Samhain, October 31, 1978
Ma and Da just went over this Book of Shadows and said it was a poor one indeed. I need to write more often; I need to explain spells more; I need to explain the workings of the moon, the sun, the tides, the stars. I said, why? Everybody knows that stuff. Ma said it’s for my children, the witches who come after me. Like how she and Da show me their books –they’ve got five of them now, those big thick black books by the fireplace. When I was little, I thought they were photo albums. It makes me laugh now –photos of witches.
But you know, my spells and stuff are in my head. There’s time to put them down later. Plenty of time. Mostly I want to write about my feelings and thoughts. But then, I don’t want my folks to read that –when they got to the parts when I was kissing Angus, they blew up! But they know Angus, and they like him. They see him often enough, know that I’ve settled on him. Angus is good, and who else is there for me here? It’s not like I can be with just anyone, not if I want to live my life and have kids and all. Lucky for me Angus is as sweet as he is.
Here’s a good spell for making love fade: During a waning moon, gather four hairs from a black cat, a cat that has no white anywhere on her. Take a white candle, the dried petals of three red roses, and a piece of string. Write your name and the name of the person you want to push away on two pieces of paper, and tie one to each end of the string.
Go outside. (This works best under a new moon or a moon the day before a new moon.) Set up your altar; purify your circle; invoke the Goddess. Set up your white candle. Sprinkle the rose petals around the candle. Take each of the cat’s hairs and set them at the four points of the compass: N, S, E, and W. (Hold them down with rocks if the night’s windy.) Light the candle and hold the middle of the string taut over the candle, about five inches up. Then say:
As the moon wanes, so wanes your love;
I am an eagle, no more your dove.
Another face, more fair than mine,
Will surely win your love in time.

Say that over and over until the string burns through and the two names are separated forever. Don’t do this in anger because your love will no more be yours. You have to want to truly get rid of someone forever.
P.S. The cat hairs don’t do anything. I just put them in to sound mysterious.
-Bradhadair

January 9, 1980
They found Morag Sheehan’s body last evening. Down at the bottom of the cliffs, by old Towson’s farm. The tide would have taken her way and none of us the wiser, but it was a low tide because of the moon. And so she was found by young Billy Martin and Hugh Beecham. At first they thought she was the charred, rotted mast of a ship. But she wasn’t. She was only a burned witch.
Of course Belwicket met before dawn. We hung blankets over the shutters inside and gathered around my folks’ kitchen table. The thing is, Ma and I had put that powerful protection on Morag last year, and since then nothing had gone amiss with her. All was right as rain.
“You know what this means,” said Paddy McTavish. “No human could have got close to her, not with that spell on her and all the ward –evil spells she was doing herself.”
“What are you saying?” Ma asked.
“I’m saying she was killed by a witch,” Paddy answered.
When he said that, of course it seemed obvious. Morag was killed by a witch. One of us? Surely not. Then is there someone in the neighborhood, someone we don’t know about? Someone from a different coven?
It makes me cold to think of such evil. Next circle we’re going to scry. Until then I’m keeping a weather eye on everybody and everything. –Bradhadair

May 8, 1980
Angus asked me to marry him at Beltane. I told him no. I’m only eighteen and have hardly ever been out of Ballynigel. I was thinking of doing on of those tours, you know, with a bus and going through Europe for a month. I do love Angus. And I know he’s good. He might even be my muirn beatha dan, my soul mate, but who knows? He might not! Sometimes I feel like he is, sometimes I don’t. The thing is: How would I know? I’ve met precious few witches in my life that I’m not related to. I need to be sure. I need to know more before I can decide to stay with him forever.
“Where will you go?” he asks me. “Who will you be with? Someone not your kind, like David O’Hearn? A human?”
Of course not. If I want children, I can’t be with a human. But maybe I don’t want children. I don’t know. There aren’t that many of our clan. To go outside our clan to another would be disloyal. But to seal my fate at eighteen seems disloyal too –disloyal to me. And after all that’s been happening –Morag’s murder, the bad luck spells, the bespelled runes (Mathair calls them sigils) we’ve found –I just don’t know. I want to get away. Only three more weeks and I’ll take my A levels and be done with school. I can’t wait.
Now it’s late, and I have to do a warding spell before I sleep, to keep away evil. We all do, nowadays. –Bradhadair

November 1, 1980
What a glorious Samhain we had last night! After a powerful circle that Ma let me lead, we danced, played music, watched the stars, and hoped for better times ahead. It was a night full of cider, laughter, and hope. Things have been so quiet lately –has the evil moved on? Has it found another home? Goddess, I pray not, for I don’t wish others to suffer as we have. But I’m thankful that we no longer have to jump at every noise.
Angus gave me a darling kitten –a tiny white tom I’ve named Dagda. He has a lot to live up to with that name! He’s a wee thing and sweet. I love him, and it was just like Angus to come up with the idea. Today my world is blessed and full of peace.
Praise be to the Goddess for keeping us safe another year.
Praise be to Mother Earth for sharing her bounty far and near.
Praise be to magick, from which all blessings flow.
Praise be to my heart; I will follow where it goes.
Blessed be.
-Bradhadair
Now Dagda is mewing to go out!

St. Patrick’s Day, 1981
Oh, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I’m so drunk, I can hardly write. Ballynigel just put on a St. Paddy’s party to end all parties. All the townspeople, everyone, gathered together to have a good time in the village. Human or witch, we all agree on St. Paddy’s Day, the wearing of the green.
Pat O’Hearn dyed all his beer green, and it was sloshing into mugs, into pails, into shoes, anything. Old Towson gave some to his donkey, and that donkey has never been so tame or good –natured! I laughed until I had to hold my sides in.
The Irish Cowboys played their music all afternoon right in the town green, and we all danced and pinched each other, and the kids were throwing cabbages and potatoes. We had a good day, and our dark time seems to be well and truly over.
Now I’m home, and I lit three green candles to the Goddess for prosperity and happiness, There’s a full moon tonight, so I have to sober up, dress warm, and go gather my luibh. The dock root down at the pond is ready for taking in, and there’s early violets, dandelions, and cattails, too, ready. I can’t drink any more beer until then, or they’ll find me facedown in the marsh, to drunk to pick myself up! What a day! –Bradhadair

August 14, 1981
The coven over at Much Bencham has three new students, they tell us. We have none. Tara and Cliff were the last to join Belwicket as students, and that was three years ago. Until Lizzie Sims turns fourteen in four years, we have no one. Of course, at Much Bencham they take almost anyone who wants to study.
I say we should do the same –if we could even convince anyone to join us. Belwicket chose its own path long ago, and it is not for everyone. But we must expand. If we stick to only blood-born, clan-born witches, we will surely die out. We must seek out others of our kind, mingle clans. But Ma and the elders have shot me down time and again. They want us to remain pure. They refuse to let outsiders in.
Maybe some in Belwicket would rather die. –Bradhadair

January 3, 1982
Old Towson lost three more sheep last night. This is after all the ward –evil spells we’ve been doing for the past month. Now most of his flock is gone, and he’s not the only one. He said today in the Eagle and Hare that he’s wiped out –doesn’t have enough ewes left to start over. There’s nothing for him to do except sell out.
I feel like all I do is go around doing warding spells. We’re all paranoid and living under a dark shadow. For the past week I’ve been spelling Ma’s leg after she broke it, bicycling to the village. But even with my spells she says it’s hurting, not healing properly.
I want to get out of here. Being a witch is doing no one good nowadays and is doing a bushel of harm. It’s like a film is over us, lessening our powers. I don’t know what to do. Angus doesn’t either. He’s worried, to, but he tried not to show it. Damnation! I thought the evil was behind us! Now it looks like it was only sleeping, sleeping among us, in our beds. Winter has awoken it. –Bradhadair

Imbolc, 1982
Oh, Goddess, Goddess, please help me. Please help me. Mathair, her hand rising up black from the smoking ashes. My little Dagda. My own da.
Oh, Goddess, I’m going to be ill; my soul is breaking. I cannot bear this pain. –Bradhadair

March 17, 1982
St. Paddy’s day in New York City. Below, the city is celebrating a holiday they imported from my home, but I cannot join in. Angus is out looking for work. I sit here by the window, crying, though the Goddess knows I have no more tears left.
Everything I knew and loved is gone. My village is burned to the ground. My ma and da are dead, though it’s still hard for me to believe it. My little cat Dagda. My friends. Belwicket has been wiped out, our cauldrons broken, our brooms burned, our herbs turned to smoke above our heads.
How did this happen? Why didn’t I fall victim as so many others did? Why did Angus and I alone survive?
I hate New York, hate everything about it. The noise blunts my ears. I can’t smell any living thing. I can’t smell the sea or hear it in the background like a lullaby. There are people everywhere, packed in tight, like sardines. The city is filthy; the people are rude and common. I ache for my home.
There is no magick in this place.
And yet if there is no magick, surely there is no true evil, either? –M.R.

May 7, 1982
We’re leaving this soulless place. I’ve been working as a cashier in a diner, and Angus has been down in the meat district, unloading huge Amercian cows and putting their carcasses on hooks. I feel my soul dying, and so does Angus. We’re saving every penny so we can leave, go anywhere else.
Not much news from home. Now of Belwicket is left to tell us what happened, and what little bits and pieces we get aren’t enough to figure out anything. I don’t even know why I write in this book anymore, except as a diary. It is no longer a Book of Shadows. It hasn’t been since my birthday, when my world was destroyed. I haven’t done any magick since being here, nor has Angus. No more will I. It has done nothing but wreak destruction.
I am only twenty, and yet I feel ready for death’s embrace.
-M.R.

I have been staring at this gold watch for hours, as though it were a gift from the Goddess herself. I never should have brought it with me from Ireland. Oh, it’s a beautiful object, passed down through the ages from one lover to another. Were I to cast my senses, I know I could feel generations of love and desire radiating from it. But it was given to me by Ciaran. If Angus ever saw it, it would break him.
Ciaran gave it to me the night we pledged ourselves to each other. He said that if you place it beneath the house, the tick of the watch will keep the hearts beating within steady and faithful. Is my holding on to it a selfish hope that Ciaran somehow will find his way back into my life? I must not even think such thoughts. I’ve chosen to live my life with Angus, and that’s all there is to it.
Next month Angus and I will leave this dreadful city for a new home upstate. I must end this heartsick madness now. I can’t bring myself to destroy the watch, but I won’t take it, either. Angus and I will move on. The watch will stay here.

September 1, 1982
Today we’re moving out of this hellhole, to a town about three hours north of here. It’s call Meshomah Falls. I think Meshomah is an Indian word. They have Indian words all over the place around here. The town is small and very pretty, kind of like home.
We already have jobs –I’m going to waitress at the little café in town, and Angus will be helping a local carpenter. We saw people dressed in queer old –fashioned clothes there last week. I asked a local man about them, and he said they were Amish.
Last week Angus got back from Ireland. I didn’t want him to go, and I couldn’t write about it until now. He went to Ireland, and he went to Ballynigel. Not much of the town is left. Every house where a witch lived was burned to the ground and now has been razed flat for rebuilding. He said none of our kind are left there, none he could find. Over in Much Bencham he got a story that people have been telling about a huge dark wave that wiped out the town, a wave without water. I don’t know what could cause or create something so big, so powerful. Maybe many covens working together.
I was terrified for him to go, thought I’d never see him again.
He wanted to get married before he left, and I said no. I can’t marry anyone. Nothing is permanent, and I don’t want to fool myself. Anyway, he took the money, went home, and found a bunch of charred, empty fields.
Now he’s here, and we’re moving, and in this new town, I’m hoping a new life can begin. –M.R.

December 15, 1982
We’re getting ready to celebrate Christmas for the first time ever. We’re going to the Catholic Church in town, The people are very nice. It’s funny, all the Christmas stuff –it’s so close to Yule. The Yule log, the colors red and green, the mistletoe. Those things have always been a part of my life. It feels strange to be practicing Catholics instead of what we were.
This town is nice, much greener than New York City. I can see nature here; I can smell rain. It’s not a bunch of ugly gray boxes full of unhappy people racing around.
Over and over I find myself wanting to say a little spell for this or that –to get rid of slugs in the garden, to bring more sunshine, to help my bread rise. But I don’t. My whole life is in black and white, and that’s the way it has to be now. No spells, no magick, no rituals, no rhymes. Not here, Not ever.
Anyway, I love our wee house. It’s lovely and easy for me to keep clean. We’re saving up to buy our own washing machine. Imagine! Everyone in America has their own.
I can’t forget the horror of this year. It is seared on my soul forever. But I am glad to be in this new place, safe with Angus.
-M.R.

April 14, 1983
My peas are coming up nicely –I thought I might have put them in too early. They’re a symbol of my new life: I can’t believe they’re growing on their own so strongly, without magickal help. Sometimes the urge to get in touch with the Goddess is so strong, I ache with it –it’s like a pain, something trying to get out. But that part of my life is over, and all I have from that time is my name. And Angus.
We have a new addition to our household: a gray–and–white kitten. I’ve named her Bridget. She’s a funny little thing, with extra toes on each paw and the biggest purr you ever heard. I’m glad to have her.
-M.R.

September 20, 1983
Angus and I sat home glumly tonight, thinking about what we would be doing if we were at home and everything was as it had been. I can’t believe no one here celebrates the harvest, the richness of the Autumn. The closest thing they have is Thanksgiving in November, but that seems to be more about pilgrims and Indians and turkey.
The summer was blessed: hot, quiet, full of long slow days and nights filled with the sound of frogs and crickets. My garden grew magnificently, and I was so proud. The sun and earth and rain worked their magick without my helping or asking.
Bridget is fine and fat. She’s a champion mouser and can even catch crickets.
My job is dull but fine. Angus is learning some beautiful woodworking. We have little money, but we’re safe here.
-M.R.

March 11, 1984
We have conceived a child. We were not trying to, but it happened, anyway. For the last two weeks I have been trying to find the strength to have an abortion so this child will never know the pain that we have seen in this life. But I cannot. I am not strong enough. So the child rests in my womb, and I will give birth sometime in November.
It will be a girl, and she will be a witch, but I will not teach her the craft. It is no longer a part of my life, nor will it be a part of my child’s. We will name her Morgan, for Angus’s mother. It is a strong name.
-M.R.

September 9, 1984
The child moves inside me all the time now. It is the most magickal thing. I can feel her quicken and grow, and it is unlike any other feeling. I sense that her powers will be strong.
Angus is after me to get married so the child will bear his name, but something in me is reluctant. I love Angus, but I feel separate from him. The people here think we are married already, and that is fine with me.
-M.R.
Angus just came in. He found a sigil on the fence post by our driveway. Goddess, what evil has followed us here?