I’m not sure when I started collecting witches. I remember going to a public ritual in 1988 or ’89 and seeing someone with a beautiful witch. “Where’d you buy her?” I asked. I went to the same store the very next day. Now I have (I think) 350 witches (not including me and not including the witch doll who rides in the back seat of my car with her own seatbelt). For a long time I thought I had about 200, but when I was interviewed a few years ago, I did a witch census.
They’re in every room—including the rubber duckies in the bathroom—and on nearly every horizontal surface in my home. They’re also on the walls, like, a photo of Margaret Hamilton in full regalia and witches riding their brooms. There are also shelves of witch dolls above my bed. That’s in case the Big One hits: I’ll be pelted with cloth dolls. It’s hard to count my witches. I’m convinced that when I try to count them, they move. So I took a pen and paper and kept a running list, and I did it three times and got three different numbers. That’s why 350 is only my best current guess.
I used to take some of “the girls” to the Samhain rituals held in the early 1990s by the Circle of Aradia. I set them along the mantelpieces and on other flat surfaces in the ritual room. To this day, women remember seeing my witches.
Above My Bed
These are the cloth dolls above my bed. When the Big One hits, at least I won’t have hard witches falling on me.
Witches in My Living Room
This is just one bookcase in my living room. (Pay no attention to the dust.)
Witches on Big Books
These are fairly fragile, so they live on big books I don’t often open. The black book under the owl is my Ph.D. dissertation.