From: Raven <JSINGLE@MUSIC.LIB.MATC.EDU>
Newsgroups: alt.pagan
Subject: Terry Pratchett (was: Laurie Cabot)
Date: 21 APR 95 06:24:27 EST

ian@doc2prod.demon.co.uk ("C:WINSOCKKA9QSPOOLMAIL") writes:

|Personally I think a lot more can be learned about witchcraft
|from the discworld novels of Terry Pratchett than many of
|the "how to be a witch" books I have seen...

From Terry Pratchett's WITCHES ABROAD, a fantasy set on the Discworld,
where of course things don't work at ALL the way they do on Earth....:

        Artists and writers have always had a rather exaggerated idea about
   what goes on at a witches' sabbat.  This comes from spending too much
   time in small rooms with the curtains drawn, instead of getting out in
   the healthy fresh air.

        For example, there's the dancing around naked.  In the average
   temperate climate there are very few nights when anyone would dance
   around at midnight with no clothes on, quite apart from the question
   of stones, thistles, and sudden hedgehogs.

        Then there's all that business with goat-headed gods.  Most witches
   don't believe in gods.  They know that the gods exist, of course.  They
   even deal with them occasionally.  But they don't believe in them.  They
   know them too well.  It would be like believing in the postman.  ...

        And finally there's sabbats themselves.  Your average witch is
   not, by nature, a social animal as far as other witches are concerned.
   There's a conflict of dominant personalities.  There's a group of
   ringleaders without a ring.  There's the basic unwritten rule of
   witchcraft, which is "Don't do what you will, do what I say."
   The natural size of a coven is one.  Witches only get together
   when they can't avoid it.

                     Excerpt copyright (c) 1991 by Terry and Lyn Pratchett.


-- Raven (JSingle@Music.Lib.MATC.Edu).  [All standard disclaimers apply]