Season of the VVITCH
“Shadows mutter, mist replies; darkness purrs as midnight sighs.” — Rusty Fischer
As it strikes the witching hour for Halloween in California, I decided to quickly post some of my favorite paintings and illustrations depicting Witchcraft, alongside four of my own.
Firstly, two photos I took of a particularly Magickal Manko, for the Orbital Comics Gallery, Halloween themed exhibition Magick Eye II, back in 2012. For the above image, the letters were sampled from an old medieval manuscript about witchcraft that used two V's as a precursor to the letter W. Coincidentally, three years later, the movie The Witch used the same for their own poster campaign.
The following images are some I posted previously, the first by one of my favourite pictorialists, William Mortensen.
Preparation for the Sabbat by William Mortensen, 1927
Magic Circle by John William Waterhouse, 1886
Départ pour le Sabbat by Albert Joseph Pénot, 1910
Departure of the Witches by Luis Ricardo Faléro, 1878
Witches Sabbat French postcard c. 1910
Muse of the Night by Luis Ricardo Faléro, 1880
Off for the Sabbat by William Mortensen, 1927
Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses by John William Waterhouse, 1891
By Arthur Rackham, 1907
and another two of my own photographs…
Here’s a nicely edited video to round things off.