Witch Ball Folklore

The Witch is not easy to define or categorise. She’s an idea, a figure, a myth, an archetype, and a reality with her own transgressive epistemology. She thereby serves to shift perception and understanding, or at least invites such shifts, which many believe are essential today as ways to get out of our collective stuckness, and escape our ‘solipsi

“Apotropaic marks,” I said. They were common in old houses and put on the sides of Amish barns to ward off evil.

Someone had drawn a hexafoil on it, the most popular apotropaic mark used to protect humans from witches and magic. It resembled a simple six-petaled flower. You could still see the tiny hole where the point of a compass had rested.

At a point where a pocket would have been was a collection of perforated periwinkle shells, presumably either decorations for clothing or a necklace, or objects to be cast as some kind of divinatory process.