Cardinals and Ordinals (Updated)

I’ve written about the Witches in my fan-fic version of Oz before, but I’ve done a lot of work on them since then, so I figured it was high time for an update.

First an overview:

Oz (my version) is separate from our world. You can’t get there from here except by magic, and certain rules work slightly differently there, allowing for the existence of fantasy magic. However, most of the wonder of Oz is that it is an overall friendly place (there is no war and little violent crime) with an intact ecology–the Pleistocene megafawna extinctions didn’t happen here. Among humans, witches (note lower-case w) are clergy, healers, mediators, and so forth. They have no special powers, only special training, and most of their magic consists of understanding psychology, medicine, and so forth, though they also have some psychic abilities and things of that nature. In this context, “magic” just means things you can do because you know more about how things work than most people do.

In contrast, Witches (note capital W) are not human. Exactly what they are is never clearly defined, although they came into existence when Oz did and will cease existing only when Oz does. They have some ability to alter reality at will–if Oz were a computer program, they’d have access to the code. Each has clearly-defined responsibilities. In some sense, they are forces of nature and as such are both necessary to all life and dangerous–none are wicked and none are good. They are amoral.

While humans can be witches regardless of gender, all Witches are female. It’s not clear whether that is important (the Wizard, who is human but acts as a metaphysical counterbalance to the Witches, can be male but does not have to be; it is the Wizard’s humanity, not his or her or their gender, that is of metaphysical importance).

The Witches are of two orders, the Cardinals, each assigned to a cardinal direction, and the Ordinals, each assigned to an ordinal direction, thus eight in total, though the word, Witches, is sometimes used to refer to the Cardinals only. There are also various other entities of Oz that might broadly (and not entirely accurately) be called spirits. In Oz, animism is an obvious, literal reality.

Oz as a whole is circular and has eight regions, rather like a sliced pizza. Each region is called an octant. Each Witch has special responsibility for, and can manifest most clearly in, her own octant. She has lesser but still real influence in the octants that are wholly or partially in her own half–for example, the North Witch can manifest as human only in the North octant or the Center, but can manifest in her alternate form in all octants except the Southeast, South, and Southwest. This matters because Oz is, among other things, a living mandala–each direction is associated with particular aspects of reality personified by its Witch.

The Cardinals

The Cardinals are what most people mean when they refer to the Witches. They can take human form and are the closest thing to rulers that the cultures of their octants have, resolving disputes, offering guidance, and approving witches (and sometimes other specialized roles). They refer to each other as sisters. The Witches of the East and West are somewhat antagonistic to each other, as though their areas of responsibility were mutually exclusive–they aren’t, but it is because the East Witch personifies reason but lacks compassion, while the West Witch personifies compassion but lacks reason that each can be quite dangerous. The North and South Witches do not lack each others’ gift, but do have trouble understanding and valuing it. When they meet, they are not antagonistic, but are somewhat testy with each other.

By American standards, all four look racially ambiguous, but that’s because the physical variation of the peoples of Oz doesn’t map onto American racial concepts well. Each Witch has a human form that looks like a typical member of the ethnic group of her own octant.

Athne, the East Witch

• Area of concern: Intellect, communication, air and light
• Apparent age: late teens
• Color and style of dress: punk, in black, white, and blue
• Primary magical tool: athame or sword
• Magical gift to give: silver shoes (always fit comfortably, never wear out, can teleport)
• Method of scrying/divination: tarot (or similar)
• Animal form: blue raven

Athne is petite and self-possessed, with a great air of dignity and authority. Despite her youthful appearance, she is quite obviously not a kid. And yet the strictness and pitilessness with which she enforces her standards is somewhat like the black-and-white idealism of some adolescents. She is also both funny and easily amused, though she rarely laughs and is never silly. Her jokes can be cruel. While generally helpful towards humans, most people are afraid of her and avoid drawing her attention, because even her love is very tough, and she will savage those who do not measure up. She particularly has no patience for mental laziness or emotional decision-making, and will grant wishes that shouldn’t have been wished in order to make an example of someone.

And yet, Athne is also a cultural hero for the people of her own country. Her people love to tell stories about her, the ways peoples in our world tell stories about our trickster figures, and they more or less share her ideals. She is the champion and protector of the cognitively disabled as well as a teacher and role-model for scholars, philosophers, and the Oz-equivalent of scientists. She is also specially concerned with the very young; she visits all beings in Oz at the moment of their birth, though she’s usually invisible to the mother and anyone else present. To each human baby in her own country she gives a bouquet of flowers, often taken, without permission, from the neighbor’s garden.

Note that clothing styles in Oz are distinct from ours, so “punk” is an approximation of how her style of dress looks in their cultural context.

Glinda, the South Witch

• Area of concern: will, passion, fire
• Apparent age: mid-thirties
• Color and style of dress: glamorous, elegant, sexy, in red and white
• Primary magical tool: wand
• Magical gift to give: golden belt (the wearer can do Witch-like magic in special circumstances)
• method of scrying/divination: fire and oil scrying
• Animal form: red rabbit

Glinda’s most obvious feature is her beauty and, to those who find women sexually attractive, her sexiness. And yet her affect is never seductive or flirty, and while she understands and appreciates the effect she has on people, she has no sexual interest in humans at all. Her own people generally venerate her and some develop a passionate, religious devotion to her–she graciously accepts such treatment, understanding it as a need some humans have, but she does not require it. Her human form is that of a new mother, for while she has a slim, toned figure (like a celebrity mom who has lost her baby-weight weirdly fast), she has stretch marks, loose belly-skin, and milk-heavy breasts–though no one has ever seen her actually express milk.

Glinda is primarily interested in helping people identify their true desires. Authenticity is important to her. While she isn’t exactly kind, she is never cruel, and her dignity and glamor have a warm, supportive character. Her support of dreams, goals, and missions does not extend to helping with the practical, nitty-gritty, nor does she really understand the preoccupation some people have with outcomes and results–she is not hostile to practical matters, but is nearly indifferent to them. She isn’t actually hostile to anybody, but for those who get caught up in impulsive, transient, superficial desires she has no time. She will let them destroy themselves, or even hurry them along. She is not merciful.

Glinda comes to first-time mothers–and fathers, if they are emotionally involved–during and immediately after labor, though anyone else present at the birth will not be aware of her. She is also sometimes said to appear to people having sex, but that’s no quite accurate–she doesn’t violate anyone’s privacy. However, some people, during or immediately after sex, find themselves able to perceive themselves and their partner and the world in general as Glinda does.

Psila, the West Witch

• Area of concern: Emotions, emotional health, water
• Apparent age: fifties or sixties
• Color and style of dress: drab, something to wear while doing housework, in yellow, brown, and white
• Primary magical tool: broom
• Magical gift to give: golden cap (summons winged apes)
• Animal form: yellow owl

Psila is ugly–not because of her physical shape, which is simply plain, but because of a quality of her character. She can be brutal. When she shows her compassion, she often does so with a messy, blubbery emotionalism. When she cries, she ugly-cries. When she laughs, she brays, snorts, or cackles.

She is in some ways the least human of the four in that she becomes what the people who approach her expect her to be. Approach her in fear, and she becomes terrifying and dangerous. Approach her in trust, and she becomes wise and compassionate. Her immediate presence also causes humans to hallucinate and sometimes to drop into dream-logic. She is hostile to those who use intellectualism to hide from their emotions or to justify emotional decisions, and critical thinking doesn’t work in her presence. Although she is sometimes spoken of as a personification of mental illness, she is also the champion of the rights of the mentally ill. When anyone in Oz loses someone they love for the first time, she comes, usually invisibly, to keep them company in their grief.

Elli, the North Witch

• Area of concern: practical effectiveness, physical health, care of the dying, earth, rock, bone
• Apparent age: eighties
• Color and style of dress: simple, practical, comfortable, in purple, gray, and white
• Primary magical tool: heron-bone flute
• Magical gift to give: kiss (creates a permanent, visible scar, the sign of Elli’s favor and protection)
• Method of scrying/divination: in her fox form, scries with the scent of her own scat
• Animal form: purple fox

Elli is a being of great humor and compassion. She has no interest in pretense or drama, and although she appears to be very old, there is also something girlish about her. She never wears shoes. When anyone dies in Oz, she joins with them so that they won’t die alone.

In her own country, she sometimes appears to people working on practical problems such as building or fixing something, and she offers guidance to them. She also receives pilgrims in the extreme north of her country, the beautiful and forbidding Mammoth Steppe. Those who seek her there will find her sitting on a rock, playing her flute. While all four Cardinal Witches have non-human animal forms, she is the only one known to live an animal life–as the Purple Fox, she hunts, eats, produces bodily waste, mates, bears and raises young (her kits are ordinary foxes), and sometimes gets killed by larger predators, though never permanently. She understands ordinary human life in a way the others don’t because she can relate from her own experiences. She has the full range of human emotions, though she isn’t especially demonstrative, and her perspective on things is often quite different from ours (being tens of thousands of years old and able to multi-locate and so forth will do that). Of the four, she is most wholly and obviously a person.

She is not hostile to anyone, though she does not quite understand her “sister to the South,” as she calls Glinda. The idea of pursuing a goal without paying attention to whether the goal is achievable or worthwhile is alien to her. She never hurts anyone, but doesn’t seem to mind that people sometimes get killed following her advice. She is beautiful but not pretty, gentle but never soft. She won’t protect you from pain or difficulty, but she’ll prepare you for them if she can. When you succeed at something, she’ll be happy for you. And when you come to die, she’ll hold your hand.

The Ordinals

The Ordinals of Oz are both more and less human than the Cardinals. It is never entirely clear whether each Ordinal is a single entity or a class of entity. They don’t have separate human and animal forms but instead have a single quasi-human shape with a limited ability to shape-shift. They do not wear clothes, being “naked” embodiments of certain aspects of life. They are simpler and less human psychologically, less concerned with things outside their purview. Each has as a name the word for the aspect of life she embodies.

They each have only a single form, but it is variable, shifting to a more human-like version to interact with humans. While the Cardinals are the same size as Oz people, the Ordinals are smaller–they are sometimes called the Little Sisters, a phrase that means many things but is also literal. The smallest of them are the size of young children, and even the largest are smaller than most adult humans.

Each Ordinal can be understood, in part, as the overlap of the Cardinals on either side.

Inspiration (Muses) of the Southeast

As an individual, this being is called Inspiration. As a class, they are referred to as muses. She/they normally takes the physical form of a strange bird, like a cross between a giant dove and a peafowl, with red and orange plumage, about the size of a turkey. To talk to humans, she/they becomes like a woman covered in feathers and scales of red and orange, but small, between three and three and a half feet tall. She/they can understand language but does not talk. She doesn’t control or cause creativity, she personifies it–and yet it is possible to deliberately entrain with her, to ask for her direct guidance, a procedure not without risk.

Desire (Sirens) of the Southwest

Desire is typically a mermaid, though one more dolphin-like than the usual depictions of mer-folk. That is, she/they lacks hips and buttocks and therefore can’t sit. To talk to a human on land, she shifts to a humanoid lower body, but her skin is a dull bronzy green, and upon her head, her pubic area, her armpits, and her forearms and shins she has wispy, green, algae-like hair. In her humanoid form she looks humanlike enough that humans sometimes desire her sexually, but her affect is unselfconscious and largely sexless. She is desire itself, not its object. She can both talk and sing, as well as listen. Her song evokes the listener’s desires powerfully. Those who hear her song and resist often drown when their resistance gives way, as it always does. Those who do not resist the experience can listen safely. She asks permission before singing, usually. She has the power to lead a seeker through an exploration of their desires, though they must submerge with her—if they exhale fully and surrender to the water, they will be safe. If they try to hold onto their air as they follow her, they will drown.

Loss (Daemons) of the Northwest

Loss naturally appears as a dry, dusty wind–she is in some sense a water-spirit, because of her association with the watery West, but it is the absence, not the presence of water that she personifies. To talk with humans, she has the form of a slim, dust-colored woman with long, wispy hair. She/they can be present invisibly, while it is not clear whether the other Ordinals can. She does not take—she is that which is once something is taken. She can talk and listen, and some seekers find talking with her valuable, but she does not teach, give, or heal in the normal sense, as those are presence, addition, intention, psychological positive space. She is about negative space, silence, room.

Memory (Gnomes) of the Northeast

Memory normally takes the form of a stack of black or dark gray rock (diabase, perhaps), somewhat like a stone snowman or a cairn. She/they seem to have always been there, though in fact they/they might only have arrived a moment ago, condensing from a curious mist. To talk to humans, the rock stack becomes a rotund stone statue, like a paleolithic Venus, but with a face, hands, and feet. She is definitely alive, and yet made entirely of dark gray stone, even to her eyes. The hair of her head and of her pubic area are indicated by texture in the stone, as if in a carving. She contains the complete memory of the whole of Oz, something no other being, structure, or object does, though the Cardinals and the other Ordinals have memories of their own existence stretching back to the beginning, it’s just not perfect nor omniscient recall. Humans can ask her questions about the past, and she will answer, though this seldom happens, because Oz people do not think in terms of history. The humans of her own octant honor her in an almost religious way, leaving her symbolic offerings at stone alters. It’s unclear whether she/they care about this, or are even aware of it.