She taught me the ancient tongues,
and asked me to copy them out in English, along with other tales and
spells which she knew only in her mind, that they might not be lost at
her death. Yes, Mary, she was a witch, though that name need not mean
all that fear implies." She paused.
"A priest has a kind of power over men, because he appeals to the
angelic, or 'right' side of the soul---all filled with yearning for
the light, and the fear of God. The witch works through the left, no
less powerful, because its roots lie in corrupted instinct: vanity,
unclean desire, treachery and violence. And to the weak and abusive,
men such as my father, it is only that much harder to deny. The
daughters of Lug cast no darkness of their own, create no evil that
does not already exist in a man, but only turn that inner blackness to
his own undoing.
"Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord. These words are attributed to the
great God of Christian and Jew alike. But what men cannot see, because
their simplicity demands a single being to worship and fear, is that
the One God is divided into many facets, wholly separate beings, with
moods and purposes all their own.
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