Macbeth 3
In the Good Wiccan Guide Part One I go into quite some detail about William Shakespeare’s famous play Macbeth. It is to show you that all the conspiracies and charlatans that you think are brand new have been going since time immortal. I have broken this idea up into three separate posts.
The earlier ones are here: http://www.goodwiccan.com/macbeth-1/ and here: http://www.goodwiccan.com/macbeth-2
Here the third excerpt from The Good Wiccan Guide – Part One: Introduction and Popular Mythology.
Finally, in Act 4, Scene 1 when the witches return again, it’s a comedy routine. Most read it as dark and mysterious. You may read it as pure shtick. The items they are boiling up in their cauldron are outrageous. It is the medieval equivalent of health advocate David Wolfe’s late night infomercial for a NutriBlast kitchen blender – throwing in everything, but the kitchen sink!
Moringa, macuna, shizandra, mesquite!
Some reishi, some chaga and a little hemp seed!
Maybe I’ll take a sniff of some glue?
Or a sprinkle of leather from bottom of shoe!Seriously – it’s funny that people don’t actually ‘get it.’ Bill (Shakespeare) is not being serious. He is even making racial stereotype jokes for the time. This is really what he literally writes:
Liver of a blaspheming Jew!
Nose of a Turk!
Tartar’s (Mongolian’s) lips!It was done for the laughs.
William Shakepeare had a pretty wicked sense of humor. The song of the Witches: “Double, double toil and trouble” is truly dark comedy. It is his commentary about fake psychics with a few jabs at targeted racial stereotypes (which would have received big laughs back in Elizabethan times). Shakespeare’s witches are brewing up trouble throwing everything nasty they can think of, but the kitchen sink. I didn’t include this in the book, but he even throws in part of an aborted baby (finger of birth-strangled babe) to the pot! These were not politically correct times, and so like a really dark Saturday Night Live skit, again he was pointing out just how crazy these power-hungry gals were. The lines would have probably received plenty of comic groans from the audience.
Don’t be like Shakespeare’s witches. Be a Good Wiccan!
~anand sahaja
