Seance for the Sacrifices

“Margery’s wingspan’s all feathers and coke cans, and
TV dinners and letters she won’t send, and
Every race night is shot through with sunlight,
trying to hit the big one, one last time tonight for
drunken fathers and stupid mother and
boys who can’t tell one girl from another.
So she takes her pills,
careful and round,
One of these days she’s gonna throw the whole bottle down.
She’s trying to be a good girl
and give ‘em what they want,
But Margery’s dreaming of horses.”
Another horsedreamer’s blues: Counting Crows.

The cottage rustled under nightlight. Mary Petener used a tinderbox to light the candles around her bedroom. Plain and gypsy-skinned, she was alone in her home, tonight and every night. No husband made his home with her, no sweet baby’s cry and gurgle pierced the night. She was thirty, long past the briefness of her bloom. She picked up her sowing and started to fasten the lace on another woman’s dress. Her nut-brown eyes shone in the darkness.

It was at that time that he was preaching to his congregation: “Even if the witch has never killed or done evil to man, beast, or fruits, and even if she has always cured bewitched people, or driven away tempests, it is because she has renounced God and treated with Satan that she deserves to be burned alive.” He was only dully aware of the gasps. “Even if there is no more than obligation to the Devil, having denied God, this deserves the cruelest death that can be imagined.”
Mary tolerated the solitude. She had grown used to it through the years, an unnoticed woman of placid ways. But in the year of her thirtieth birthday, something subtle had started to happen from within that silence. At first, she thought she only imagined it. But her curiosity had grown. She had allowed it to fill the dull hours of her mind-numbing work.
Now it spoke to her. She knew its lilting voice, next to her heartbeat. And though she could not understand everything that it was saying, she recognized a kinship in those wispy words beyond the ties she held with her neighbors and the people of her village. She lifted a pile of mottled fern-like plants in the cup of her hands. Gently she placed them in a bowl and started to burn them. The air was soon lit up with their aromatic scent. Rosemary and Jasmine. The dance of two flower-princesses. The perfume she inhaled in her home reminded Mary of balls and banquets in the nicer cities, the gift of a handsome gentleman in a velvet coat to a lady with a powdered face. All, but for birth and education, it could have been her.

He also said: “To educate a woman is to do a thing that is against nature and against God. A woman that is educated will try to master her husband and she will bring curses on him as Eve brought curses on all mankind. The woman’s domain is the household and children – the man’s domain is the world.”

But instead, Mary makes herbal remedies, experimenting in dark bowls and bottles. Her delicious discoveries of a summer’s forest scavenging are now released: fennel and coriander and poppies. She is enchanted by the stories she has heard of the great physicians, the century’s discoveries and the feats of their stumbling medicine. Mary goes to the market, where she has struck up an unlikely acquaintance with some of the boarding house boys. She looks at their weighty textbooks with hungry eyes. But they laugh at her and say: “We will read from it for you for a silver coin.” So she buys her fairytales from children. She feels her illiteracy like few women of her village feel it, the tangible weight of its irons. But she treasures her own small discoveries, the magic healing sprung from her own uneducated hands.

She isn’t lonely. Michael is her cure, steadfast as oak. He is her angel and he delights in her.
“Two weeks ago old Mrs. Cale’s baby calf was ill, and they thought that it would not see the morning. And she-calves are hard to come by and the family not too rich to feel the loss of it. Mrs. Cale came to me for some cloths, but I did more than that, Michael, do you remember?”

Did you dance naked beneath the full-moon? Did your sky-clad body char the air with myrrh? I hope you laughed and danced at your own escaping sensuality. I hope you were drunk as on wine on a beautiful night in the forest. This memory would be a gem to your heart at the time when your heart was ripped from its casing.

“Yes, Mary. You went with our potions and spent the whole night with the sick calf. We spoke to the calf, applied our remedies, and in the morning it was certain as the sunrise that it would live and be well.”

“What a triumph for us Michael! What a feat! But I need to learn more, and I need you to teach it to me. Mrs. Cale was forever grateful for the saving of her calf.”

Letting out a soft giggle into the night, she covers her hair in jasmine flowers and in the rusty, candle-lit mirror imagines herself halfway-beautiful. Slowly she slips one shoulder out of her gray, long-sleeved frock. Her skin is dark, dark as a field hand, even though she is a seamstress by profession. The moles on her shoulders and back light up like black diamonds. She moves her hands out before her, stretching her fingers into the sky. Now just thinking about it, her heavy feet become light, light as feathers dancing in the dawn. She feels her toes barely touching the wooden floor. She twirls around, allowing her other arm to drop free of its constricting sleeve. She spins around merrily as if spinning would transform her into the essence of her imaginings. This intoxicating vision grows each time she visitis it: She is training others in her craft, Michael training them through her. The women of the village move out of the way to let her pass, let her choose only the choicest ingredients, saying with reverence: “Mary, do you think I should plant on Wednesday…” “Mary, my husband is ill.. Can you..?” And she marries a beautiful young man with the face of an angel.

For the accusation of witchcraft to be made plausible the suspected witch had to be in a socially or economically inferior position to the accuser or victim because only then would she be presumed to be likely to have used magical methods of retaliation. Had she been the stronger party more direct and legal methods of retaliation would have been available to her. The retaliation of the rich was not subject to punishment.

Mary does not notice the persistent knocking at her door. Only when the door swings open does it free her of her delicious trance. She flings herself to the ground. The eyes of her neighbor, Mr. Cale follow her exposed form.
He says: “Miss Petener!”
She mumbles: “Mr Cale.”

The flowers drop from her hair. She holds a fistful of sticks and leaves against her chest. Mr Cale’s eyes widen and shut. He makes a sound like a dying mouse. Then he turns around, mumbles, trips over his own two feet and runs back into the darkness.

Another ironic kiss from the twenty-first century to yours: The man stands up and declares: She is a sorceress! She comes in spirit to a sleeping Christian man and sucks away his vitality! No connection between erotic dreams about the witch and nocturnal emissions is ever considered.

Oh Michael!
Mary tries to clothe herself again but her hands are shaking too much. She is still busy fastening the back of her frock when the reverend and deacons arrive. These are the leaders of her community; strong men of discipline and virtue.

“You have not been to our service in two months, Mary.”
“I have nothing to wear that is suitable for a church.”
“God does not look at the external, but judges what is within.”
She thinks: But I hear the women from the second row, their stinging comments as I enter in my drab seamstress dress, my flat black hat without decorations. If God doesn’t judge my clothing, there are others who do. I cannot worship when I am surrounded by this artificial good religion. Reverend, have you ever tried to worship clothed only in the forest?

But Mary, now your face looks cold blue except for your eyes, and they carry the Devil’s fire! They say you destroy cattle, crops and people with a look, you fly to unholy Sabbaths, you ate meals of excrement and newborn babies’ flesh, then pleased with your work, you kissed the Devil’s anus.
Church-court and testimony opens and closes like a psalm book in a stiff grandmother’s hand.
“Your honour, she made our calf ill! She showed her dark magic by first afflicting it and then being able to heal it. The Devil has given her diabolical power which masquerades as saintly healing, but she is a wolf pretending to be a lamb!”
Mrs. Cale’s high trembling monologue fills the courtroom with horror.

They rip the frock from her back and find what they are looking for, the mole which has taken the shape of the Devil’s mark. The sign that she has been nursing her own baby demon.
“Bitter, childless woman! That you would corrupt your natural mothering instinct into this debased re-birthing of the devil!”

There is something particularly suspicious about a man – often a monk, a celibate, someone denied or denying himself any pleasure which a woman might provide within the confines of marriage, being in almost every case, the witch’s persecutor. Each non-conformist was seen as a threat to future generations of order between the sexes. And the gallows shouted: You cannot be other! Different! Apart! You are girl, mother, and crone! So they burnt Joan of Arc and the saints. And threatened through some form of silencing every other girl who persistently questioned the ‘You are’ of things.

Michael’s voice is so dim, beneath the demands of the torturers. Having found that Mary denies her sins, the court has tied her, with legs and feet dangling above a small but threatening fire. Mary realizes how few friends she has in this village. No family connections, no one who would stand by her and have their name tainted along with hers.
The soles of her feet start to itch, then sting and blacken. She can feel the heat shooting up her leg in repeated encounters of raw pain. She can smell her own flesh starting to burn.

“Did you give yourself over to the Devil?” The tender-eyed cleric shouts with ferocity.
“No!” Still more heat and blackening flesh.
“Did you make a pact with Lucifer?” Her voice is hoarse from the screams.
She sobs and shakes her head. Everything loses perspective against the big ugly faces of the Deaconate.
“Are you a witch?”

She nods her head and waits for a quick death. There is nothing now, not even eternity to look forward to with hope.

Orgies, Satanism, murder, the worst of evils that grips our heart, squeezing it, making us lash out in blind defense! Out of body experiences, flying, mind-control. Once a plaything of evil entities, these powers, true to form, desert their hosts as soon as they are captured.

But death is not quick. The interval is just long enough to hire the executioner, construct the execution site and gather the wood and fuel. Mary has seen it all before, from a safe distance so that her horror would not be witnessed by others. She could not think that there was an evil against God worthy of such an end. The whole village turns out to watch the witch-burning. Three hundred villagers gather around her stake. Mary is tied in the center of it, with more attention than her whole life has commanded from her neighborhood. Her herbs, her trinkets, every private thing is burnt with her. She is glad for that. Glad to smell rosemary and jasmine above the chocking smoke. Mr. and Mrs. Cole stand near the front of the crowd, their faces soured around prim edges. They will help shove her back into the fire, if she manages to escape the flames. Thus she does not cry out to them, or to the others to whom she had shown a little kindness in her life. The quiet decency of her life counts nothing against rank, creed and superstition. This was the father, the son and the holy ghost of their religion.
The gentle Reverend prays that no such evil might come to their village again. Suddenly all is quiet, almost spiritual. Mary places her hope in that peace; she prays that it might save her. Michael is silent. But she does not turn to him again for comfort.

The Devil promised witches simply that "they should never want" and this was enough for the seventeenth century woman on the margins of society. She expected and desired no more than to exist in a not uncomfortable manner.

A small flame is brought forward carried by the head Elder. Mary is captivated by it, for its light is so tiny and fragile. She does not imagine that any harm could come of such a soft, delicate flame. But around her, hundreds of pieces of wood have been carefully arranged. Her clothes and skin have been soaked in a yellowish liquid. She rubs it between her fingers, realizing that it is oil. The Elder lights a small twig with it, then throws the twig onto the larger pile of wood. The flames burst into symphony, multiplying like the fires of hell on judgment day. Mary looks at the faces of the people she tried to help. She motions to them, utters one last dumb plea drowned in noise. Then the flames rise higher, separating her from the faces of the villagers. The scent of rosemary and jasmine is replaced by a noxious fume, one she finds impossible to inhale.

The idea of burning witches, one of the cruelest forms of execution, is said to have originated with Saint Augustine in the fourth century. He said that “pagans, Jews, and heretics would burn forever in eternal fire with the Devil unless saved by the Catholic Church.” Some zealots were not willing to wait for Judgment Day for these punishments to be handed out.
***
Mary Fox is thirty-three years old and bored with her life as a administration clerk in the Marketing Department in Johannesburg at the cross-over between the 20th century and the 21st. Dumpy and drab-skinned, she attracted no attention from suitors in her unremarkable college education a couple of years back. She is of average intelligence, dresses dourly and does her work with neither complaints nor outstanding dedication.
Over lunch hours she enjoys a quiet tea by herself and watches television in the canteen. Sometimes she fantasizes about working on the upper floor of her building, the place where the high powers negotiate, eat important business lunches and sign big-profit deals with other organizations. When she gets tired of dreaming she watches the sport channel, although she hates sport. That is all that is ever showing on the television in her work canteen.

Her eyes light up briefly behind their glass veils. The television announcer calls their attention to the running of the 23rd. A crumpled-up ticked in her hand reveals that she has her hopes pinned on Hex, the white-tailed mare third from the left. As the horses jump out of their iron containers, Mary draws in her breath. Her colleagues look at her with brief absentminded interest, and then return to their newspapers and trivial discussions. The horses make the first bend but Hex is slipping further back, Mary is clutching at her off-white shirt-cuffs, ruffling and creasing them to stop the sweat dripping off her palms.
“Com’on, Hex...” she says softly enough not to attract attention to herself. She wrings her hands, stands up, and awkwardly sits down again. She paces around the television as the horses enter the home straight. She watches the strong muscles of the horse contract and push forward in a driven frenzy, the whip of the jockey coming down on the horses’ firm flank. Hex surges ahead with a burst of uninhibited speed. He crosses the line in first place.

Oh Hex!

Mary spins around, her small ankles rising into the air on sensible court shoes, her knee-length skirt twirling around her in a moment of uninhibited delight. She raises her hands in the air as if to praise some unrecognized deity. She uncrumples her ticket and smoothes out its creases, holding it now like a precious amulet to her heart.
Mary’s race track never uses the word ‘gambling’, because of the depraved, money-sick image that it conjures up. They use the word ‘gaming’, thus using the simple dropping of a ‘bl’ to transform their activities into an acceptable and pleasant recreation.

Mary goes to collect her winnings from the racing lot. She holds the glowing 200 Rand note in her hand. She stares at its blue edges as if she wishes to see through it, to see into its misunderstood materialistic soul. She thinks of the really white blouse that she can buy with her new fortune, leaving enough for her to enjoy a long overdue evening out.

The bottle-blonde at the counter asks: “Will that be all, ma’am?”
She stares at the woman as if she is speaking another language.
“Wh-hat?”
“Betting for the next race closes in 15 minutes, so place your bets now, Enchantment favoured 3-1 for the win.”
The woman’s hair has turned to sunshine; her simple request is heralded with trumpets and cymbals in Mary’s mind. At home, the quiet night awaits her. Her cats need feeding. Her house could do with another cleaning. Other than that, this quiet night belongs utterly to her.

Gambling on horses should be treated like any other important relationship. Some thought should precede action. Psychology indicates that taking a bad mood to the betting windows is risky business. But how many people take to betting when they are fulfilled and content in the important areas of their lives? Prior to some horse racing, a sensible better should consider his own emotional composition, because it has a direct impact on his handicapping skills.

Slowly she hovers between the lure of the white blouse and greater, more infinite possibilities. She hands the blonde back her note. “150 Rand on Enchantment.” She says. The lady nods, congratulating her on her choice and wishing her good fortune. She imagines herself clinking champagne glasses with the company C.E.O. and she is dressed in a white gown that sparkles with crystals.

In Mary’s head, a variation in brain chemistry has already been affected. This change has been reinforced by Hex’s victory, thus installing an urge for her to repeat her actions. Thanks to this chemical altercation, Mary’s behavior should persist long after it has stopped being rewarded.

People start to notice the glow in Mary’s eyes, the bit of rouge applied around her dull cheeks. She’s won again, and again! She’s the bell of the ball and her days fly by in a happy swoon, her nose buried in statistics on her champions, racing tips, spreads, and race schedules. Every race night she leaves her cat and paisley curtains, carried on the surge of winners’ cries, losers’ groans, the grunting of the horses, spectators clapping hands. She keeps the bank notes in her hand so that she can smell victory right under her nose.


There is a golden rule in racing talk which says: “Never put good money after bad money.” Money wagered with a negative outcome is lost. It is then time to stop gambling and accept the loss, instead of continuing and losing even more.
Losses? Of course there were losses. Mary is a sensible girl and knows that everyone loses now and then. But she has remarkable skill for judging a young mare, for sizing up the opposition. And fate favours her bravery. The primary problem is that the amounts she can play with are so insignificant, such a paltry offering the gods of fortune! She wants to invest in this new confidence in herself. She discovers how to open an Internet betting account, using her Members’ code to place orders electronically. Now there is no limit to the realization of her dreams.

Pathological betters have lower levels of norepinephrine than normal betters. This brain chemical is secreted under stress, arousal, thrill and excitement, so pathological betters may engage in risk-taking activities to increase their levels of norepinephrine. Because these people lack the brain’s natural highs, they try to create it through risky activites.

Mr. Wately is also a wagering man. She is able to pass a couple of hot tips to him. She never realized that her boss was so good-looking close up. She hadn’t really got close up with him before this.

“Thanks, Mary, you made me a nice bonus on Shadow of the Gods.”
“I’m glad to be of help, Mr. Wately.”
“Good girl. You have finesse for the horses, that’s for sure.”

There is almost a swagger into her step as she goes back to her cramped office with the faltering air-conditioning.

Dependency includes an inability to stop or control the addiction, denial, severe depression, and mood swings. These include chasing the first win, experiencing blackouts and using the object of addiction to escape pain. Both pathological gamblers and persons addicted to alcohol or drugs are preoccupied with their addiction, experience low self-esteem, use rituals, and seek immediate gratification.

The horse was called Flight. Princess of thoroughbreds, champion of the summer’s racing track. Mary placed her bets effortlessly on-line, upping her stakes, always smelling the sweet waft of increasing cash in the air. Excitement numbs her safe, plodding disposition. She bets with more than she has to her name.
The golden filly stumbles and falls in the center of the track. Mary stumbles and falls with her. Both their careers end in one fell swoop.

“Mr. Wately, I need to talk to you.”
“I also need to talk to you, Mary.”
She jumps ahead of him. Desperation makes her courageous.
“I need a forward on next month’s salary. I am having financial difficulties.”
“But Mary, what is this? You are always so prudent with your paychecks.”
“It’s an emergency.”

Gambling may also refer to engaging in any high-risk behavior in which decisions are made, based upon incomplete knowledge.

He nods and hands her the money. He doesn’t look back as he brushes her out of the office. She is clutching the notes to her tattered jacket and the stars in her eyes have gone out. She walks home with a rain-cloud following her, eager to settle her debts but feeling with every step as if all her life had been sucked out of her by misfortune.

She walks past the racing lots. For a second she tastes that glorious initial sense of victory, the rolling out of easy money, the cheers of a delirious crowd. She holds this picture of power and popularity like a seeing-ball in front of her. She walks through the stalls, tasting the adrenalin of gut decisions, careful strategies, every face lit up with the same rattish hope that she fosters in her own heart. She uses her Member’s Card to place twice her bosses’ advance on an infallible horse called Wizard. Handing over the piece of golden plastic with her name embossed on it, she senses control over her life which has for so long been lacking. She revels in her own quiet rebellion against the notions of a good girl. She was always that dowdy good girl, never had any fun, never got anywhere from trying to portray an image of coy restraint. Now she is aware of her own daring: she gives voice to the Mary who loves and lives and is not afraid to take risks. The naked Mary of the forest.

Pathological gamblers are addicted to action, not money. Many will gamble to lose in the desperation phase of their addiction, because it is the action they seek, not the money. For a gambler, being in action is similar to being high on cocaine for the person addicted to cocaine. Both describe their drug of choice as seductive and ultimately destructive.

The horse didn’t win.

“Mary? We need to talk.” Mr. Wately plays with a golden-tipped pencil and avoids eye contact with his tired employee.
“I don’t know what’s been happening to you. Your work performance has deteriorated, you’re hardly ever here, you’ve been moody and abrupt with staff and three times I’ve passed money to you for emergencies and the money simply disappears.”
She stares at him without understanding. Her mind has left the offices hours before.
“If it was only my decision, I would give you another chance. But the board is putting pressure on me from all sides. They have enough on you, Mary. I’m afraid we’re going to let you go.”
Her body is rigid, unexpressive. “I need more money,” she says in a cold and unfamiliar voice.
“I won’t ask you to pay back the money I have given you.” He says sternly.
“That’s already more than what severance you can hope for.”
“You have to help me.” She says, but there is no battle left in her voice. She is a beggar standing before him, and her request is devoid of pride.
He opens the door, shaking his head and walks her out of the office.
She still fosters the hope that her attractive boss will bail her out of her mess, but he simply waves her on her way with “Perhaps you need to speak to a professional, Mary. Good luck.”
She is a ghost wandering through the city, stopping to stare lustfully at the horse tracks, her thin fingers clawing the bars that prevent her from entering.

Because of the generally negative religious view as well as perceived social costs, gambling is subject to some form of censure on most legal jurisdictions. In particular, in many cases, wagers are not recognized in law as contracts and any consequent losses are debts of honour, unenforceable by legal process. Thus the enforcement of large gambling debts is often taken over by organized crime, using violent methods.
Mary enters her house. She is too dejected to realize that she does not need to unlock the door to go in. The foyer is littered with her possessions, smashed or removed from their places. Two thick men in denim jackets jump on her, and the one holds a large stick to her head.

“Think you were going to get away without paying, huh, honey?”
She does not answer him, but struggles against his muscular form.
“Now where do you keep the valuables, or shall I smash your skull in first?”
She points a shaky finger to her drawer.
“Is that all the crap you got? That’s never going to make the grands that you owe!”
She had been ignoring the threats for weeks now. She never realized that the Internet Company would go to such lengths to settle her debts.
She shakes her head.
“When you gonna get the cash?”
“As soon as I can.” Her voice is harsh but lifeless.
He drives the stick across her cheek. It raises a blue and pink crest and stings away the last small remnants of her emotions.
They grab the television and radio and throw her small belongings into their bag.
But they are noisy and arrogant and she hears the soft call of sirens outside.
Listlessly Mary makes her way to the door, opening it quickly, crawling out into a crossfire.

The thugs fire at the police and they retaliate. Glass crashes and thick wood engulfs whole bullets . A young eager officer fires at the thug moving past a window, but his bullet ricochets. It crashes into Mary’s side. Falling at the edge of her home, she notices soft blood pouring from her wound, soaking her dirty white coat. Somehow she is detached from the pain of it. She is aware that she cannot move, that there is no bodily force or willing spirit urging her on. She finds herself smelling the scent of the garden as the light grows to darkness around her. Rosemary and Jasmine, which had somehow survived the neglect of her garden. The dance of two beautiful flower- princesses. Through the twilight, she half-imagines that she can see wood stacked around her, and soft flames licking at her wounded body. Her hands are tied so that as much as she struggles, she cannot free herself from the flames that consume her. People are watching her failing life as a form of sympathetic entertainment. As she inhales smoke as thick as tar, there is an inescapable quality to her end, a bad set of cards that get dealt over and over in each and every century.

What is a witch? In a certain sense it is someone who acts the part of a rebel, registering protest against her social superiors, trying to survive in a hostile environment. But in the case of witches, this rebellion takes the form of curse or acts of sorcery, often the witches’ only weapon against those who she saw as victimizing her. The fear of witchcraft gave power to those who were believed to be witches, relieving them in some way from their impotence. It was a gamble with fame and notoriety, as the witch sought to do enough to build up a reputation in her community, without doing too much and becoming a threat that had to be erased.