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Discworld witchcraft

A collection of quotes about Discworld witchcraft that particularly resonated with me and/or amused me.

All witches did their magic in their own way

[O]ne of the minor benefits of being a witch is that you know exactly when you're going to die and can wear what underwear you like.* * Which explains a lot about witches.

Most witches don't believe in gods. They know that the gods exist, of course. They even deal with them occasionally. But they don't believe in them. They know them too well. It would be like believing in the postman.

“Ain't witchcraft all runnin' around with no clothes on and stickin' pins in people?” said Mrs. Gogol levelly.

It had taken many years under the tutelage of Granny Weatherwax for Magrat to learn that the common kitchen breadknife was better than the most ornate of magic knives. It could do all that the magical knife could do, plus you could use it to cut bread.

Being a witch meant going into places you didn't want to go.

The trouble with witches is that they'll never run away from things they really hate.

[W]itches were generally more at home around back doors

Granny Weatherwax had many times flicked through the channels of consciousness around her. It was, to her, part of the heart of witchcraft. To see through other eyes ... But there was a price. No one asked you to pay it, but the very absence of demand was a moral obligation. You tended not to swat. You dug lightly. You fed the dog. You paid. You cared; not because it was kind or good, but because it was right. You left nothing but memories, you took nothing but experience.

She'd never been bored when she was a witch. Permanently bewildered and overworked yes, but not bored.

What is magic?

Then there is the witches' explanation, which comes in two forms, depending on the age of the witch. Older witches hardly put words to it at all, but may suspect in their hearts that the universe really doesn't know what the hell is going on and consists of a zillion trillion billion possibilities, and could become any one of them if a trained mind rigid with quantum certainty was inserted in the crack and twisted; that, if you really had to make someone's hat explode, all you needed to do was twist into that universe where a large number of hat molecules all decide at the same time to bounce off in different directions.

Younger witches, on the other hand, talk about it all the time and believe it involves crystals, mystic forces, and dancing about without yer drawers on.

Everyone may be right, all at the same time. That's the thing about quantum.

“But they're witches. I don't like to ask them questions.”

“Why not?”

“They might give me answers. And then what would I do?”

If you want to really upset a witch, do her a favor which she has no means of repaying. The unfulfilled obligation will nag at her like hangnail.

“Go back,” said Granny. “You call yourself some kind of goddess and you know nothing, madam, nothing. What don't die can't live. What don't live can't change. What don't change can't learn. The smallest creature that dies in the grass knows more than you.”

Witches can generally come to terms with what actually is, instead of insisting on what ought to be.

As a witch, she naturally didn't believe in any occult nonsense of any sort.

You needed at least three witches for a coven. Two witches was just an argument.

[S]he had shown signs of craft ability. That was only to be expected. There was nothing like that not fitting in feeling to stimulate the old magical nerves

On the whole, witches despised fortune-telling from tea-leaves. Tea leaves are not uniquely fortunate in knowing what the future holds. They are really just something for the eyes to rest on while the mind does the work.

Like it or not, witches are drawn to the edge of things, where two states collide. They feel the pull of doors, circumferences, boundaries, gates, mirrors, masks ...

... and stages.

[Granny said:] “Mrs Palm is an old friend. Practic'ly a witch.”

This was when you started being a witch ... It was when you opened your mind to the world and carefully examined everything it picked up.

“We witches have always held everything in common, you know that,” said Granny.

“Well, yes,” said Nanny, and once again cut to the heart of the sociopolitical debate. “It's easy to hold everything in common when no one's got anything.”

Granny Weatherwax had never heard of psychiatry and would have no truck with it even if she had. There are some arts too black even for a witch. She practiced headology - practiced, in fact, until she was very good at it. And though there may be some superficial similarities between a psychiatrist and a headologist, there is a huge practical difference. A psychiatrist, dealing with a man who fears he is being followed by a large and terrible monster, will endeavour to convince him that monsters don't exist. Granny Weatherwax would simply give him a chair to stand on and a very heavy stick.

[Miss Tick said:] “Witches don't use magic unless they really have to. It's hard work and difficult to control. We do other things. A witch pays attention to everything that's going on. A witch uses her head. A witch is sure of herself. A witch always has a piece of string-”

“I always do have a piece of string!” said Tiffany. “It's always handy!”

“Good. Although there's more to witchcraft than string. A witch delights in small details. A witch sees through things and around things. A witch sees farther than most. A witch sees things from the other side. A witch knows where she is, who she is, and when she is.”

Tiffany was on the whole quite a truthful person, but it seemed to her that there were times when things didn't divide easily into ‘true’ and ‘false,’ but instead could be things that people needed to know at the moment and things that they didn't need to know at the moment.

[The kelda said:] “Ye got that little bitty bit inside o' you that holds on, right? The bitty bit that watches the rest o' ye. 'Tis the First Sight and Second Thoughts ye have, and 'tis a wee gift an' a big curse to ye. You see and hear what others canna, the world opens up its secrets to ye, but ye're always like the person at the party with the wee drink in the corner who canna join in. There's a little bitty bit inside you that willna melt and flow.”

“That was great, a' that reading' ye did!” said Rob Anybody. “I didna understand a single word o' it!”

“Aye it must be powerful language if you canna make oout what the heel its' goin' on aboot!” said another pictsie.

[Granny Aching said:] “Them as can do has to do for them as can't. And someone has to speak up for them as has no voices.”

I've been given something for a while, and the price of it is that I have to give it back.

And the reward is giving it back, too. No human could live like this. You could spend a day looking at a flower to see how wonderful it is, and that wouldn't get the milking done. No wonder we dream our way through our lives. To be awake, and see it all as it really is ... no one could stand that for long.

“We look to ... the edges,” said Mistress Weatherwax. “There's a lot of edges, more than people know. Between life and death, this world and the next, night and day, right and wrong ... an' they need watchin'. We watch 'em, we guard the sum of things. And we never ask for any reward. That's important.”

Ordinary fortune-tellers tell you what want to happen; witches tell you what's going to happen whether you want it to or not. Strangely enough, witches tend to be more accurate but less popular.

Always face what you fear. Have just enough money, never too much, and some string. Even if it's not your fault, it's your responsibility. Witches deal with things. Never stand between two mirrors. Never cackle. Do what you must do. Never lie, but you don't always have to be honest. Never wish. Especially don't wish upon a star, which is astronomically stupid. Open your eyes, and then open your eyes again.

[T]here wasn't a person on the Chalk, from the Baron down, who didn't owe something to Granny. And what they owed to her, she made them pay to others. She always knew who was short of a favor or two.

“She made them help one another,” she said. “She made them help themselves.”

“And Mrs. Earwig,” said Mistress Weatherwax, her voice sinking to a growl, “Mrs. Earwig tells her girls it's about cosmic balances and stars and circles and colors and wands and ... and toys, nothing but toys!” She sniffed. “Oh, I daresay they're all very well as decoration, somethin' nice to look at while you're workin', somethin' for show, but the start and finish, the start and finish, is helpin' people when life is on the edge. Even people you don't like. Stars is easy, people is hard.”

“That's why we do all the tramping around and doctorin' and stuff,” said Mistress Weatherwax. “Well, and because it makes people a bit better, of course. But doing it moves you into your center, so's you don't wobble. It anchors you. Keeps you human, stops you cackling. Just like your granny with her sheep, which are to my mind as stupid and wayward and ungrateful as humans.”

That's what we have to do. And there's no one to protect you, because you're the one who's supposed to do that sort of thing.

First Thoughts are the everyday thoughts. Everyone has those. Second Thoughts are the thoughts you think about the way you think. People who enjoy thinking have those. Third Thoughts are thoughts that watch the world and think all by themselves. They're rare, and often troublesome. Listening to them is part of witchcraft.

Remember the hat you wear! Remember the job that is in front of you! Balance! Balance is the thing. Hold balance in the center, hold the balance....

Witching was turning out to be mostly hard work and really short on magic of the zap!-glingle-glingle-glingle variety. There was no school and nothing that was exactly like a lesson. But it wasn't wise to try to learn witching all by yourself, especially if you had a natural talent. If you got it wrong, you could go from ignorant to cackling in a week....

‘Cackling,’ to a witch, didn't just mean nasty laughter. It meant your mind drifting away from its anchor. It meant you losing your grip. It meant loneliness and hard work and responsibility and other people's problems driving you crazy a little bit at a time, each bit so small that you'd hardly notice it, until you thought that it was normal to stop washing and wear a kettle on your head. It meant you thinking that the fact you knew more than anyone else in your village made you better than them. It meant thinking that right and wrong were negotiable. And, in the end, it meant you ‘going to the dark,’ as the witches said. That was a bad road.

[Granny said:] “Magic is mostly movin' stuff around.”

A witch didn't do things because they seemed a good idea at the time! That was practically cackling! You had to deal every day with people who were foolish and lazy and untruthful and downright unpleasant, and you could certainly end up thinking that the world would be considerably improved if you gave them a slap. But you didn't because, as Miss Tick had once explained: a) it would make the world a better place for only a short time; b) it would then make the world a slightly worse place; and c) you're not supposed to be as stupid as they are.

Some people think that ‘coven’ is a word for a group of witches, and it's true that's what the dictionary says. But the real word for a group of witches in an ‘argument.’

I'm not superstitious. I'm a witch. Witches aren't superstitious. We are what people are superstitious of.

With witches everything is a test.

[Nanny said:] “Good. It's good to be good at something. Now, our next little favor is —”

— giving an old lady a bath, as much as was possible with a couple of tin basins and some washclothes. And that was witchcraft. Then they look in on a woman who'd just had a baby, and that was witchcraft, and a man with a very nasty leg injury that Nanny Ogg said was doing very well, and that was witchcraft too

It was lonely on the hill, and cold. And all you could do was keep going. You could scream, cry, and stamp your feet, but apart from making you feel warmer, it wouldn't do any good. You could say it was unfair, and that was true, but the universe didn't care because it didn't know what ‘fair’ meant. That was the big problem about being a witch. It was up to you. It was always up to you.

[Mrs Aching said:] “But can't you just wave your hand and make all the dirt fly away, then?” ... Mrs Aching backed away. “I thought you just had to wave your hands about,” she mumbled nervously.

“That works,” said Tiffany, “but only if you wave them about on the floor with a scrubbing brush.”

[Rob Anybody said:] “Underworlds are more o' the gloomy sort. It's where folks end up when they's lost, ye ken.”

But she was a witch, after all, and there was a job to do. Mysterious omens could wait. Witches knew that mysterious omens were around all the time. The world was always very nearly drowning in mysterious omens. You just had to pick the one that was convenient.

“Yes, sir. I‘m a witch, sir.”

“And in this context that means ... ?”

“I try very hard not to have to tell lies, sir.”

[Mrs Proust said:] “Sometimes what is legal isn't what is right, and sometimes it needs a witch to tell the difference.”

At this point Miss Smith held up a hand. “No, don't say that it would be impossible for even a small witch to get inside an eggshell without crushing it, because that is what we in the craft would call a logical argument and therefore no one who wanted to believe that witches sank ships would pay any attention to it.”

[Miss Smith said:] “There are plenty of people out there whose poisonous minds will open for him. And there are those who would rather be behind evil than in front of it”

That was the problem with witchcraft: it was as if everybody needed the witches, but hated the fact that they did, and somehow the hatred of the fact could become the hatred of the person. People then started thinking: Who are you to have these skills? Who are you to know these things? Who are you to think you're better than us? But Tiffany didn't think she was better than them. She was better than them at witchcraft, that was true, but she couldn't knit a sock, she didn't how to shoe a horse, and while she was pretty good at making cheese, she had to have three tries to bake a loaf that you could actually bite into with your teeth. Everybody was good at something. The only wicked thing was not finding out in time.

[Tiffany said:] “It's witchcraft with all the crusts cut off, and real witchcraft is all crusts.”

[S]till, when it came down to it and the life-or-death decision had to be made, then it was made by you, because you were the witch. And sometimes it wasn't a decision between a good thing and a bad thing, but a decision between two bad things: no right choices, just ... choices.

[Eskarina said:] “I said you weren't born with a talent for witchcraft: it didn't come easily; you worked hard at it because you wanted it. You forced the world to give it to you, no matter the price, and the price is and will always be, high. Have you heard the saying ‘the reward you get for digging holes is a bigger shovel’? ... People say you don't find witchcraft; witchcraft finds you.”

It was never easy being a witch. Oh, the broomstick was great, but to be a witch you needed to be sensible, so sensible that sometimes it hurt. You dealt with the reality - not what people wanted.

“Well, I make no bones about it,” said Miss Tick firmly. “I tell them to think hard; it's not all magic and waving wands and all that silly business. It's dirt and grime.”

Tiffany sighed. “Being a witch is a man's job; that's why it needs women to do it.”

[Tiffany] said to herself, I do what is needful, Mrs Earwig, not what I want to do.

A witch is always on the edge, between the light and dark, good and bad, making choices every day, judging all the time. It was what made her human.

“As a gonnagle, I say to leave a space for goodness tae get in, as it was in the Lay of Barking Johnnie,” said the gonnagle

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