Shining Silver

 

Is it something about being a witch? For my jewellery, I have always preferred silver to gold. I notice many witches do. After all, it goes so well with black! (That’s a joke. Witches don’t really dress only in black.)

We do all love the silvery moon. (Gold is the colour of the sun.)

 

My favourite silver earrings are odd – a pentacle in one ear, a Scorpio sign in the other. They were meant to be pendants, but I replaced the chains with hooks. (A pentacle is a five-pointed star within a circle. In America – I found out when I was there – they call that a pentagram. No-one knew what I meant when I said ‘pentacle’! We’re not exactly in disagreement, but elsewhere we say ‘pentagram’ to mean only the five-pointed star with no surrounding circle.)

I used to wear many rings. Since COVID, with all that hand sanitising, I mostly wear only two, one on each forefinger. They are silver rings with no stones. They sit quite flat, you see. (They bind me to two pantheons. One is a Celtic knot, the other a scarab.)

‘Gold glows,’ says my friend who is not a witch, to explain why she prefers it. I tell her, ‘Silver shines.’

winter dark –

the waning moon

a silver sliver

Written for dVerse Haibun Monday: Silver

Also sharing with Poets and Storytellers United for FridayWritings #190: Summerween! Summerween is a summer version of Halloween. I didn't write to this optional prompt, but I'm at least sharing something witchy. (Smile.)

Gifts Bestowed

 Gifts Bestowed

Penny phoned, regarding bad energy and things breaking down.

‘Can you help in a house clearing? Today?’

My guides spoke in my mind: 

‘Full regalia.’

I was new to formal magic. (Natural magic, with me all my life, was a different matter.) I owned no regalia as such, but chose a long dress and crystal necklaces.

I suddenly felt I needed a special ring for my right forefinger, but had nothing to fit.

‘It will be given,’ I was told.

At Penny’s, almost the first thing I saw was a silver ring on her windowsill, shaped as a Celtic knot. Aha!

‘Can I borrow this?’ I asked. 

‘Oh, you can have it,’ she said. A client had given her a box of trinkets, she’d picked what she wanted and the rest were lying around for any takers. It fitted my forefinger perfectly. Since then – over 20 years ago – it’s hardly been off.  

We smudged the house, going widdershins around it. (Anti-sunwise, which is clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere.) We went around again, drumming. I pointed my newly-ringed finger in a dramatic ‘Begone!’ gesture, putting intense willpower behind it. Then I filled the whole space with Reiki. Thereafter, she reported, the troublesome incidents stopped.

A few years later, while I was decluttering papers, a cut-out of the printed word, ‘Master’, stuck to my left forefinger. A friend said jokingly,

‘That must be your Master finger!’

(She knew that, as a Reiki Master, while I use both hands, one is my ‘power hand’.)

Then one Sunday I got a big hit to go to the local market and find a scarab ring for that finger.

I 'just knew' the right stall, but after they showed me all their scarab rings and none suited, I began to wonder. Finally they pulled a box from under the counter.

There was my silver scarab ring, underside shaped to the contours of my left forefinger: a perfect fit. It too has seldom left that finger since.

Two strands: past-life Egyptian recollections; this-life Scottish ancestry.

Today, with so much hand sanitising, these flat rings are the only two I still wear.

When I direct energy, they add their power to mine.

For Weekly Scribblings #91 at Poets and Storytellers United, Magaly invited us to write poetry or prose inspired by personal symbols. Not a symbol that holds the same meaning for everyone, but something special to you'.  

The rings are of course shown here larger than life-size,  for the detail.