The making of Sha: The Witch Connection

I had a series of startling ‘dreams’ about a witch burning at Najac, a remote village in France.

When I was researching Sláine, I read in the great Celtic saga The Tain that Cuchulain, the prime source for Sláine, was taught martial arts by the witch Scatha. So the ultimate warrior of all time was a woman. Pronounced ‘Scortha’, I simply had to write about her. My pagan friends who were in a rock band had even written a song about her, that’s how important she is in Celtic and magical circles. So eventually I got to write Scatha as a newspaper strip, beautifully illustrated by Glenn Fabry for the short-lived, left wing News on Sunday newspaper that appeared in 1987. It featured alongside Brendan McCarthy and Peter Milligan’s terrific Summer of Love strip. 

I considered expanding it as a comic book series for Marvel Epic, but Archie Goodwin – the late, great founder and managing editor of Epic – said that although he liked the idea, sales were likely to be low because it was set in a mythical past, rather than in a modern urban environment.  Accordingly, I rewrote it for the present day. That proposal faded out, too, as story ideas often do and so I shelved it. 

Then I got caught up in a curious series of adventures I’ve related in the chapter ‘A Castle in Canada’ in my book Pageturners.  The relevant section I’ve adapted as follows.

I had a series of startling ‘dreams’ about a witch burning at Najac, a remote village in France. The same place the Crusaders had committed some atrocities in the Catholic war against the Cathars. I would describe the dreams as a haunting. They were very emotional and graphic. They depicted the characters I featured later at the beginning of  Sha: Volume One. And especially a sixteen-year-old girl who is burnt at the stake for being a witch. 

The ‘dreams’ had detail, characters and even esoteric spirits. The spirits were like ethereal, friendly dolphins, flying through the air alongside her, as she walked along the river bank on her way to the stake, wanting to be with her and console her at the end of her life. Some of the details I’d never read about in books before – such as a crude jaw clamp to stop her cursing them in her anguish. In this they failed: She cursed them to Hell.  The young witch had a name: Claretta or Lara de Voix. Lara of the Voice. Although her witch name was de Veau – Lara of the Calf, a reference to the cow goddess secretly worshipped in pagan times.

However, I had no intention of visiting Najac. I feared such a psychic quest might easily get out of hand, like my earlier Castle in Canada adventure. This had featured a Crusader and the Cathars he had persecuted. The Cathars believed in reincarnation and this was regarded as heretical by the Church and a reason for exterminating them. Despite my rejection of the quest, the Fates had other ideas. They endlessly played ‘Three Coins in a Fountain’  in my head and it finally got my attention” I realised they wanted me to place three coins in a fountain at Najac: to commemorate the girl who had died and her mother and child. All victims of the Burning Times in the 17^th century.  

Catholics, such as Bill Donahue, president of the Catholic League, claim the number of witch burnings have been greatly exaggerated but here is the view of Beth Bartlett in ‘Remembering the Burning Times:

The hundreds of years from the 13^th to the 18^th centuries in which vast numbers of the peasant populations of northern Europe were accused of witchcraft, imprisoned, tortured, and burned alive. The estimates of the numbers of those killed varies from sixty thousand to nine million, but that about 85% of these were women is undisputed. 

…But I and others believe it was due to the association of women with the devil. That the Church considered women to be in league with the devil dated back to Tertullian in the 2^nd Century CE who wrote of women, “You are the gateway of the devil; ... Woman, you are the gate to hell.”

It seemed to me wildly indulgent, not to mention costly, to carry out such a magical mission. I may write fantasy, but I’m not a fantasist. So I ignored Frank Sinatra’s beautiful song and its poignant lyrics, full of heartrending meaning for a tragedy that happened four hundred years earlier.

That was my final word on the subject.

A week later I got an invitation from my French publishers, Glenat, to go to the Angoulême comic convention, all expenses paid.  Angoulême is only a four hour car drive from Najac. 

I couldn’t really say no to either invitation – from a comic publisher of today or the ghosts of the past. And so I went to Najac, found a mediaeval, dried-up fountain and duly remembered Lara and her family with the coins. Then I walked along the river which led to her place of execution and it was exactly as I had seen in the ‘dreams’. I ate in a local restaurant and, with my usual rubbish French, thought I should order Tete a Veau, as being appropriate to the occasion. But, mercifully, a girl dining alone at the next table asked me, ‘Are you sure that’s what you want? You know that’s the head of the calf?’ She was most attractive, spoke perfect English, and as we talked about what I was doing in Najac, she seemed to me like a personification of the Goddess, watching over me.

Later, I reflected on the pattern of events. Firstly, in the Castle in Canada, I had experienced a Crusader, a perpetrator of horrific crimes against the Cathars, now I had experienced a Witch, a victim. How reincarnation really works I can only speculate. Or indeed if it really is reincarnation. I’m still a little sceptical. I prefer to think of it more as a form of possession. Whatever the explanation, I doubt it’s as simplistic as it’s often represented. It may be that characters from the past are attracted to empathic conduits, like myself,  and they manifest themselves to deal with unresolved pain. 

A psychologist would say it’s a complex delusional system, and they would tie themselves in knots making sense of it in their own terms, not least because it was witnessed by other people. It would be far better if they just admitted ‘science has no answers,’ but they’re far too arrogant to admit the failings of their mechanistic universe.

But there still needed to be closure, so I got together with my pagan friends who lived in France and we held a ceremony to honour Lara with mediaeval food and drink that she would recognize and make her feel welcome. It’s the spirits’ feelings that cross time and space and her feelings came across loud and clear. She described herself  to us all as a poisoner, which is the biblical name for a witch, and she found our modern concept of time as too absurd for words. Her hatred of the Church knew no bounds and, understandably, she still wanted revenge.  

But, after Najac and after the ceremony, there was a kind of closure.

Then, suddenly, out of the blue, just a few short months later, came an extraordinary offer for me to write about my strange experience. An experience that would become the story of Sha, to be illustrated by France’s top fantasy illustrator – Olivier Ledroit. More on that in the final part of the Making of Sha – The French Connection next week.

Last week I introduced you to Sha and talked about the 2000AD connection and showed you some of the pages from Vol 1: The Shadow One. Our plan is to bring out a deluxe edition of Sha, with a Kickstarter campaign. We’d love to know how much support there would be for this project, so please leave a comment to let us know, either here or on one of last week’s posts. Thanks!

Tomorrow: Sha 2: Soul Wound