The Role of the Witch at the End of the World

Witchcraft has something to do with wisdom, and something to do with skill. It is both practice and orientation. It is traditionally women’s magic although any body can weave these spells. Dig deep enough, some stories say, and you’ll find that the wise women were healers. Dig deeper than that, I’ll tell you, and you’ll find the ones who wait, and witness, when healing is impossible.

To make something better is a natural response. To let something labor itself into or out of being, to honor the sacred autonomy of the processes of endings and beginnings without moving to intervene when those processes tug at and wring and finally break your heart wide open? That is wisdom.

It is the Wisdom of Cycles, gifted from our Home/Mother Earth to whoever will humble themselves to learn it from Her.

It is the Wisdom of the Witch.

I am a witch, and I have sat at birth-beds and I have sat at deathbeds and I assure you my work at both is the same. There are people there to help, as much helping as can be done. Doctors and nurses, doulas and midwives, coaches and clergy. There are people there who are working to comfort the body, and soothe the soul. But that is not my job. I’m there because the Fear is.

Fear is very present, in both of those rooms, whether it hides behind the joy or behind the grief. Fear is a reasonable response when the veil between the worlds is thin, and so Fear has a place there.

But so do I.

When your wisdom calls you to the thresholds, the crossroads and the portals between one state and another, Fear will always meet you there. You and Fear become, if not quite friendly, well, collegial. Like litigators who argue against each other all day in court, but might get a beer together later, when the hurly-burly’s done.

My job at the deathbed is to be the energy of No Fear in a room that is so full of it. Fearlessness stands by right, too, at the crossing places. Because no matter how wrong things may go, everything will be, from a certain perspective anyway, as it should be. There is no supernatural. Nothing exists outside of Nature, and Nature’s cycles turn on with precision and implacability regardless of how we struggle, individually, within them.

Our world may end, but the World won’t.

Which is bitter medicine, and meager comfort, when the world that we know is ending. Which happens every minute of every day. We tend to give the name of Death only to the cessation of brain function in sentient beings. But what about when the heart of a dream stops beating? When a relationship exhales that long, last breath? What about every time we leave a job, or a house, or a city, or a country? Get married? Get divorced? Become a parent? See the changes in the mirror?

Every time you step across a threshold, visible or invisible, something dies. Another word for that is Change.

The world (our world) is ending all the time. We shed beliefs and opinions and self-images and comfortable routines behind us like trails of skin cells and lost hair. As Shakespeare says, “… in this life lie hid mo’ thousand deaths, yet Death we fear?”

We push all our fear of change into one big bogey waiting out there at the end of everything, and then we try to live a life pretending there isn’t a heavy sword swaying over us. The price we pay for closing our eyes to that obvious, universal truth is that we get good at lying to ourselves. Our denial of death enables and empowers all the ways we deny life… and the future. And what is happening right in front of us:

The Earth is not getting warmer. Resources are not getting scarcer. Power is not being consolidated in a few, compassionless hands. Hatred is not being weaponized for political gain. The stakes are not getting higher.

The Witch stands at our side, whispers “Yes. Some knowledge is terrible to hold. It is natural to be afraid but don’t be afraid of Fear. Fear says ‘this is important’. Fear says ‘Pay attention.’ Fear says ‘There may be a mystery here.’” The Witch stands at our side and shows us how to be Fearless in a place of great Fear (and, to be honest, isn’t that almost all of our lives?)

“Yes, this is Death,” the Witch says. “But it is not just Death. Be brave. Keep your eyes open. You may see wonders.”

The work of listening to the Witch when the World is ending is what I call Deathwork. It is the work of coming into healthier relationship with the reality of Death – our own and that of the things and beings that we love – so that we can show up more fully – with more joy, more presence, more connection and more clarity – in our lives.

The theme of this issue of Coreopsis – an issue that I am honored to be co-Editor of, is, therefore, one that I believe to be strong, necessary medicine. This issue is a memento mori. It says, like so many things do, “Remember, you will die.” It invokes, perhaps, that Fear, and invites us to call upon the Witch – the one whose dedication to the Wisdom of Cycles had made them Fearless in the face of all that is Natural – to remind us that yes, we will die. But also…

Worlds are ending every moment. Within and without us. Be Fearless in the face of these mo’ thousand deaths so that you can live, fiercely and responsibly, right up until the very last minute.

Here. I will stand with you.

Laurie Dietrich (Mnemosyne) is a New Orleans-based artist (text, image & performance), a co-conspirator at Expanding Inward (expandinginward.com), a Witch, a Buddhist, a Ritualist and a Deathworker.  www.lauriedietrich.com