ORTGEIST

 

There are certain places where evil spirits gather to feed.

It’s always useful to have names for things if one is going to talk, write, and think about them, and any good magician can tell you that it’s especially useful to have names for the spirits one might encounter.

Geist is the German word for ghost or spirit. It can refer to a literal ghost or spirit, as in the term poltergeist, which means “noisy ghost,” or it can be used in the figurative sense, as in the term zeitgeist. The spirits (evil or otherwise) that haunt specific locales, I've taken to calling ortgeists – “place spirits.”

Let us say that there is one particular crossroads a mile or so outside of town, surrounded by a grove of gnarled and ancient oak trees, and that it is the quaint and charming custom of the good townsfolk to hang bandits, tax collectors, and arrogant tourists from the sturdy and plentiful branches of those trees, and to leave the corpses to dangle there as a friendly message to visitors who pass that way, a tactful reminder that it is important for travelers to remain sensitive to the values of regional cultures.

At this crossroads, there will always be crows. Even in a slow season when there are no hangings, the crows, when their services are not required elsewhere in the vicinity, will gather there in the oak branches and wait.

But it is not just the crows who will gather there among the hanging trees at the crossroads. Evil spirits, like crows, make a habit of congregating in those places where they’ve learned that the feeding is good.

Unlike crows, evil spirits have no bodies of their own. To act, they require hosts.

Picture people as sticks of wood. Picture consciousness, virtue, self-reflection, and compassion as water – the life-giving moisture that permeates the cells of green, living wood. Picture the gathered host of ortgeists as tiny sparks of flame, waiting for kindling. Wood that’s green and alive enough won’t catch fire from those sparks, but dry wood will. The less committed to consciousness, virtue, self-reflection people are, in the moment at hand, the better kindling they make, the better hosts, the better food.

The crows wait at the crossroads for the next hanging; the ortgeists wait for the next bunch of hosts to come along, the next potential lynch mob. Dry wood. Mmm, tasty.