Paganistan: Notes from the Secret Commonwealth

In Which One Midwest Man-in-Black Confers, Converses & Otherwise Hob-Nobs with his Fellow Hob-Men (& -Women) Concerning the Sundry Ways of the Famed but Ill-Starred Tribe of Witches.

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Reborn to the People

What do you say when someone dies?

I've been rereading Marvin Kaye and Parke Godwin's monumental The Masters of Solitude, a landmark of 20th century witch fiction. It's set 1000 years in the future, and eastern North America is largely populated by various witch tribes.

Among them, when someone dies, you express the wish—or is it a prayer?—that he (or she) be reborn to the tribe.

Reborn to the Shando. Reborn to the Suffec. Reborn to the Karli.

It's a deep witch longing: if I'm to be reborn, let it be among my own.

Me, I'm no believer in literal rebirth. My notion of the Afterlife is the Grand Sabbat of the atoms.

But say, after all, that there is rebirth. I sure know where I'd like my next go-round to be.

Reborn to the Witches.

Auntie Em, there's no place like home.

 

Marvin Kaye and Parke Godwin, The Masters of Solitude (1978). Doubleday.

 

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Poet, scholar and storyteller Steven Posch was raised in the hardwood forests of western Pennsylvania by white-tailed deer. (That's the story, anyway.) He emigrated to Paganistan in 1979 and by sheer dint of personality has become one of Lake Country's foremost men-in-black. He is current keeper of the Minnesota Ooser.

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