Category: Speaking of Wytch

1. Word Found in the Fog ~ Liminance

   Posted on 11:15pm Tuesday 30th Sep 2025

   

   On the threshold between September and October, a word rose through the mist.

   The world itself feels strange this year. The air sharp with static, nostaglia thinned, everything too plastic, too surface. Misdirection everywhere, very much like the fog. We are living in the upside down.

   The word was Liminance.

   What is Liminance?

   

   Liminance (noun): the dim glow carried through liminal spaces. Not a light that banishes the dark, but one that shows only the steps meant for you.

   It is the lantern you hold when the path is fogged, a faint shimmer that carries you forward, not with certainty, but never without aim.

   The Two Faces of Liminance

   Seasonal ~ Most keenly felt on October evenings and November nights, lanterns on porches, fog curling low, footsteps crunching on damp leaves.  Liminance is that in-between light ~ not full day, not full night, just enough glow to guide a wytch through the thresholds of the season.

   Emotional ~ Liminance also belongs to the soul. It names that survival state when grief, change or neurodivergence leaves you raw. Not enough fire to light the World, but enough to take the next step. A fragile glow that proves you are still moving, never aimless.

   October Whisper

   The season does not soften for me,

   nor do i for it,

   We meet in silence,

   Shadow to shadow.

   October does not ask for smiles,

   I move like a ghost in her fog,

   A dim lantern in hand, 

   its light enough to find

   the echo of footsteps from the past

   or trace of those i choose to follow.

   This is my October Liminance,

   A glow that does not banish the dark,

   but guides me through it.

   

    

   Keeper's Note

   I half blame Liadan ~ Poet, Ancestor, Guide, for slipping this word into my mouth. Or perhaps it was October itself, breathing through the dark. Either way, the word stayed.

   Now it is here. Not as an old word, but as one found in the fog.

   Closing Whisper

   Liminance is not mine to hoard. If it speaks to you, take it. Write it into your pages. Whisper it when the fog is heavy. It belongs to the thresholds, not to me. 

   First spoken into being at The Hallowed Nook, October Eve 2025

2. Walpurgisnacht

   Posted on 12:00pm Saturday 29th Apr 2023

   April 30th ~ Walpurgisnacht or Hexennacht ~ Witches Night

   The air is full of the promise of Spring, however, you can feel that Winter wants to hang on just that little bit longer, with its overcast skies and clouds full of ice cold tears. Quite appropriate then really for Walpurgisnacht, or the alternate name, Hexennacht (Witches night). 

   The transition between Winter and Summer, a liminal point, a time between times where veils between worlds thin, and supernatural forces come out to play or cause havoc!  Beltane sits opposite the wheel to Samhain, where the veil between the living and the dead becomes thin. At Beltane, it is between the human world and the faerie and nature spirits that thins. 

   In Celtic traditions, It was believed that witches and evil supernatural forces took to the skies to scare folk, spreading malevolence throughout the land. The evil, cold and shadowy (therefore bad) winter spirits make one last ditch attempt to stop the good summer spirits claiming the land for summer completely.

   So townsfolk rang church bells and made all the noise they could to scare off the dark forces moving through the air.  They lit bonfires and torches, hung rowan, primrose and red thread crosses on the barns to protect their animals. Vigils were kept throughout the night until the rise of the Sun at dawn. When Winter would be defeated and Summer was on the way.

   In Germany on April 30th, people believed that Witches and demons all met up on the highest peak of Harz mountain, where two rock formations known as The Devils Pulpit and The Witches Altar eeriely sit, and at the stroke of midnight, would fly on their broomsticks, pitchforks and goats to prevent the Queen of Spring from entering the country. Thus began a battle of Winter, that was seen as evil, and Spring, which was seen as good.  All the goats and brooms got hidden, and loud noises such as whip cracking and door slamming were said to keep the spirits at bay, and large fires would be lit to scare off the demons. 

   Blessings from our Covenstead