The witch is a creature of weather. Wind-summoner. Drought-breaker. Cloud-reader. Flood-flyer. Mist-wearer. She adapts to it, she adjusts the weather to her favour. It's one of her most vital relationships. She wears it on her boots. She wears it on her skin. – #EmilyCBanting #FolkWitchFriday

I am a witch for all those near broken. I am a witch for those scraped raw by trying to climb high walls, cut by having to walk on glass scattered by hollow-hearted bastards. I am a witch for those needing transformation, bound to pain. For witches understand the bruised. - #EmilyCBanting #WitchSky

Most people have a devil and an angel on their shoulders. I just have a dragon – a fabulous firedrake – that lives in my bones. It's much more wonderful and its flame burns away bullshit like you wouldn't believe. – #EmilyCBanting

For I am a salt-hag. I know gull gossip. I know the calling and quelling of storms. My hair is wind-braided. My lips wear rough salt kisses. I stand on the cliffs and read omens pulled by the tide. Be well and avoid my anger. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #FolkWitchFriday #WitchSky

For even the solitary witch never truly walks alone. She may be rarely seen at those guerrilla covens of extreme need, but she travels with the spirits of the land. Her constant companions are genii locorum – whispering, protecting and teaching as she navigate her way. – #EmilyCBanting #WitchSky

Witchcraft is not consolatory hokum. It doesn't offer tepid answers to hard questions and even harsher circumstances. It offers us relationships with the land, its spirits and ourselves. Relationships may be rough and require work, but they get us through. – #EmilyCBanting #WitchSky

Even inland, the salt-hag is tide-pulled. Gulls call her to come to shore and see the wave-polished augeries on display. Sea-seasoned winds make promises of things to be summoned at the slack. She walks to her secret cove. Her first glimpse of sea an intoxication. – #EmilyCBanting #WitchSky

Here on the blurred borders of autumn, fields sing for their due libations of ale and blood. Demand the honouring of our old contracts with them. For harvest needs a balancing and fair payment. Take not corn saints and corn maidens till the tithe is paid. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #Equinox

The witch's calendar is not only told by suns and moons, but by her constant harvest. She knows her place in the year by gifts of the land. Her garnering bag full of tomorrow's magical inks and cures that will be needed in the harshness of winter. – #EmilyCBanting, 1981 #WitchSky

Give me hedge and a cloud-omened sky and I'll give you a witch-telling of tomorrow. Give me autumn lanes to walk and verges to harvest and I'll make my witch-graft a healing of illnesses yet to knock at door of winter. Let the land be my calendar of magics. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky

My morning in Weychester Physic Garden has given me inspiration for more than witchery. I've the perfect design for my next DIY T-shirt. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982

I am a witch of the wild edge, the tall hedge. I will sing the song of scratches and tangles that I hear at every ragged border stitching the land. This is my threshold. This is my feral calendar of the year. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky

Here at the edge of the salt marsh, all magic is brined. Clouds race the sky for the delight of being augury. Boats are warded against the songs of blue-skinned Blood Sisters, the summoning of ill winds. The mud holds its stolen treasures and even we witches walk with caution. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982