I’ve been seeing hags in the sky - some riding geese, some riding some swans. First, let me explain I practice neldoracht (reading by the clouds). I could say I’ve been doing this for 40 odd years as some of my earliest memories come from being in a pram sitting out in the garden and watching the sky faces peering down.
These hags started two nights ago when I saw a hag who was clearly riding a great goose! Before, me and the dogs got home I saw hag after hag face appearing and morphing in the clouds. Same thing the next day - a hag riding a goose or a swan and then a triple gathering of crones wearing great witches hats!
Spelling Witch by Jean-Baptiste Monge
Click on image for his website
In Scotland the Cailleach is known as the storm hag. While the Cailleach presence can be felt throughout the entire year she is most active as she ushers in the Autumn Equinox and is the dark crone of the winter. When winter begins to wain, Scotland often experiences the end of winter storms
Storm hags emerging from the wool
As hurricane Florence approaches the outer banks of North Carolina (I’m 250 miles inland in the mountains) I’m creating the storm hags, they are emerging from the wool - as they did in the sky emerging from white fluffy clouds.
Habitrot
One of the hags spins - an ancient motif of the wool as the cosmic potential and as it’s twisted and woven the yarn becomes the fate of our lives. The hag who is extending the invitation is Habitrot - a Scottish figure who has oversized lips - all the better to wet her wool as she transforms the raw wool, through her drop spindle into yarn.
She has two sisters - one with an oversized thumb, all the better to draft out the wool, while the other sister has a club foot all the better to use the pedal of the spinning wheel with. This trio are related to the Nordic Norns, the Fates.
Collage as divination
I made this collage a week ago, before Florence had started to call in her winds.
As Florence approaches I’ll take Habetrot’s invitation to spin, like the storm hags circling above and the great eye of the Cailleach watching from the centre of the storm…
