shadow men

Shadow men.

I think they've got at me for wanting to write about them.

Really ill today. It's crept up on me and like hammer blows,

Just winter illness. But don't know how much i'll be able to do

 for a couple of days....

I wonder about sbadow people.

I suggested yesterday that they might have something to 

do  with residue magic. They could be some kind of ghost

or demon, but they could be "shades" 

by which i mean spirits of the dead

in a slightly different sense. The ancient Greek and Roman one,

Of the spirits living in the land of the dead.

Not Hell exactly, not as we understand it, but Hades

in the old Greek sense, as the place where 

these residues of the human spirit end up, 

a subterranean waste bin of the soul.

What I was wondering, writing about witches, were tales

about the "Black Man" leading witch's Sabats.

This is traditionally ascribed to xenophobia,

The white man's view of  other races....

It's claimed that the Moor, as a non-Christian, in days after

the crusades, was seen as an enemy of the church, 

and there were coloured people in England 

during the dark ages. 

That view shows up in the film of Richard Mathieson's

scripting based on Wheatley's novel, (loosely) of 'The Devil Rides Out.'

Where a black skinned demon appears in a trap set

in the old house's observatory.

Saw it again last night, on tv, having woken coughing

and spluttering in the middle of the night.

I think that the "Black  Man" is a much more complicated 

mystery than that theory allows for.

 Although fear of what we don't understand may be a part of it.