Near the crown of Horsingdon Hill there stands an ancient and withered tree, known locally as ‘The Hanging Tree’. Tradition has it that during the time of the witch hunts, the tree was used as a place of execution for those poor and marginalised women falsely convicted of the crime of maleficarum - and whose revenants are said to haunt the site to this day.
The social significance of these local tales - which employ the language of folklore to speak to the various injustices and inequalities which have blighted the region - notwithstanding, there also exist older, more secretive myths concerning The Hanging Tree (and others like it): that they were seeded upon ancient places of worship and sacrifice - sites of primordial, sacred terror wherein the boundary between this world and the many terrible realms which grind against its fragile boundaries was delineated; that, in constituting spectral lines of division between worlds, such spaces might grant a glimpse of those inchoate principalities which claw ceaselessly against the walls of our world. Fortunately, such sights are not readily bestowed upon the living, and those curious or foolish enough to pursue such a frightful and spiritually-hazardous visionary endeavour first need to obtain knowledge of the appropriate rites which must be intoned at such places at the proper season, and then make suitable sacrifice to the monstrous guardians which lurk invisibly about such thresholds...
No comments:
Post a Comment