Witchcraft Wednesday Edition
“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”
- H.P. Lovecraft
Darkness is the first unknown.
Before the gods named the stars. Before light was separated from shadow. Before the world had shape or time or form, there was darkness.
Every myth begins there.
In Greek myth, the cosmos was born from Chaos, and from Chaos came Nyx, Night itself. In Norse myth, the void was Ginnungagap, yawning and unknowable. In Kabbalistic lore, creation emerged from the Ain Soph, an infinite darkness with no boundary. Even Genesis opens with a spirit hovering over the waters, formless, in the dark.
Witches know this.
They don’t fear the dark. They come from it.
In the worlds I create and the characters I write, darkness is never just the absence of light, it’s the primordial potential. A place of power, transformation, and unknowable truth.
Yes, it’s where monsters live. Yes, it’s where danger lurks. But it’s also where secrets are kept. Where mysteries are born. Where souls are shaped.
Lovecraft leaned hard into the fear side of things, his darkness is cosmic, uncaring, and overwhelming. I get that. The fear of the unknown is real, valid, and a great tool at the game table. You don’t have to describe the thing in the dark. Sometimes it’s scarier when you don’t.
But I’m just as interested in the power of darkness. The depth. The origin-point.
Witches in my games don’t shine a lantern to dispel the dark; they listen to it. They ask it questions. They trace the shape of what’s moving just beyond the edge of sight.
And when my players step into darkness, literal or metaphorical, they know it’s not just a place of danger. It’s a threshold. It’s where the story shifts.
You can’t cast a shadow without light. But you can’t understand light without the dark. You need both.
So as we stand at the edge of the next room, the next decision, the next truth too big to see all at once, I remind my players:
Go ahead. Step into the dark.
It’s where all things begin.
Questions
How. Envious. Character.
How was I envious of my characters? I don't know. Their ability to pick up languages in the game was always great. I speak English, learned German in High School, took some Japanese in college, and learned some Irish Gaelic and Spanish since then. Each one has been a struggle. But I keep at it.
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