20/04/2025
I shared this to my Substack a few days ago... My husband, after reading it, suggested it should be shared here in full. So here it is. ✨️❤️
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"The Witches Who Turned the World Back"
A Modern Fairytale for an Age of Reckoning
Once upon a now, in a world that had spun far too fast for far too long, there was a land called the Divided States. Though it was rich in soil, song, and story, its leaders had lost the plot. Towering palaces of profit rose while the poor bent their backs, and the sky, once clear, was choked with the breath of machines. The people were told to be grateful—for scraps, for cages, for silence.
At the helm were men cloaked not in robes of wisdom, but in false holiness. They called themselves righteous, wrapped their hate in scripture, and crowned themselves shepherds of a flock they had long since betrayed. Behind their sermons were weapons. Behind their smiles, greed. They claimed the Creator for themselves, but they had forgotten Her name.
Yet across the earth, from the red deserts to the cold forests, from the islands swallowed by rising seas to the mountaintops above the fray, there stirred an ancient force: the witches.
They were not witches as feared in old tales told by trembling tongues—no baby-eaters or broomstick bandits. They were wisdom-keepers. Memory-holders. Daughters and sons of those once hunted, never burned. Their blood ran thick with oak and moonlight, their voices carried lullabies once whispered in caves during purges and wars. They were midwives of change, and their time had come again.
One by one, they emerged. Old women with knowing eyes. Young ones who sang to bees. Men who felt the pain of trees when they were felled. Non-binary mystics who walked barefoot on scorched city sidewalks, planting flowers in the cracks. They gathered not in war rooms, but in circles—under stars, in kitchens, around fires, in dreamspace.
And together, they cast the Karma Spell.
Its words were simple:
“May the true horror of your actions be revealed to you.”
Unlike curses of old, this was no vengeance—but revelation. It did not twist the world. It unmasked it.
For some, the spell came as a whisper in the dark. For others, a blinding flash. A senator who passed cruel laws dreamed each night of children screaming in cages. A preacher who shamed women bled for forty days and forty nights, and no doctor could help him. A tycoon who had poisoned rivers began to taste metal in every sip, no matter the wine.
But the spell spared none. Even the witches wept when faced with past harms—the bee-keeper who once sprayed pesticide out of fear, the herbalist who had closed her heart to her estranged brother, the healer who hoarded knowledge instead of sharing it. Each faced the mirror. Each bore the burn.
And still—they cast the spell. For they knew that only by facing the truth could the world turn back.
From the Andes came stories of Pachamama, Mother Earth, groaning under the weight of broken promises. From the Ganges flowed the memory of Ma Ganga, sacred and sickened, weeping oil instead of offering. From the Celtic groves rose tales of Danu, the earth-giver, long ignored. The people listened now. The wind carried whispers from every corner of the globe:
“Turn back to the earth. She remembers. She forgives. If you do.”
Trade began anew—not of money, but of skill, kindness, and seeds. Solar panels glinted on thatched roofs. Children learned to fish, to forage, to speak the language of birds. Town squares returned. So did songs. So did neighbours, now unarmed, helping each other because it was good—not because it was required.
The witches—those strange, strong souls—did not rule. They reminded. They walked beside. They told stories of the old world, and helped shape the new. They taught that kindness was not weakness, that faith did not require a steeple, and that the Golden Rule was older than any flag.
"Do unto others," they chanted, "as you would have them do unto you."
And slowly, painfully, gloriously, the world began to heal.
Some refused to change. Some fled to bunkers, built towers of tech and titanium, tried to outsmart karma. But the spell found them all. Not out of spite—but out of love. Because even the wicked might change, once they truly see.
And so, the witches kept watch. Not as saviours, but as sisters and brothers and beings of earth and air, fire and water. Guardians of balance. Mothers of mercy. Daughters of dust and dawn.
The world turned back. And in doing so, it moved forward—toward a future not of domination, but of connection. Not of punishment, but of truth.
And in that truth, finally, lay hope.
The End.
(Or rather... the beginning.)
***Author’s Note:
The line “May the true horror of your actions be revealed to you” appears in this story as a kind of curse or wish. I’ve heard it spoken and seen it shared many times over the years, but despite searching, I haven’t been able to trace its original source. As such, the author of that particular line is unknown.
***Image description: A soft watercolour of a twilight forest scene, framed in a circular wash. A pale blue stream winds through warm earth, flanked by tall evergreens. Above, a golden crescent moon and scattered stars glow in a dusky sky. Signed Tara Shannon in the lower right.
