The (Doomstar) Witch - And How (an earlier write)
The Witch and How It Gets Inside. Thoughts to Beware of.
I will not waste your time with superstition.
This is not a tale. This is not a ghost story. This is not myth.
This is a technical teaching, an attempt, however limited, to shine language toward a thing that refuses to be held by it. I am speaking of the witch, not the caricature, not the trope, not the whispered name for someone disliked or misunderstood. I mean the witch per se, the phenomenon, the event, the presence, that thing whose existence you only recognize in reverse, that force whose entry point is not the body, not the senses, but the thought.
The witch gets in through thinking, not by argument, not by logic, not by force. It moves beneath the conscious mind, swimming just beneath articulation, altering the rhythm of your cognition, one degree at a time, until you forget what your own thoughts used to sound like. So I come to speak not of witches, plural, but of the witch and how it gets inside.
- The nature of the thing, we cannot say.
Let us begin where it begins, in the impossibility of its definition. This is the first sign of the witch's superiority. It is not that we cannot define it.
It is that all attempts to define it seem to serve it. Try to name it, and you narrow it. Try to describe it, and you sanitize it.
Try to oppose it, and you often end up accusing the wrong person. While the true source grins quietly in the corner of the room, you never entered.
This is what I mean when I say, I would rather meet the devil than the witch, because the devil can be seen. He is symmetrical. He's understandable.
Even if dangerous, he has a silhouette. But the witch, the witch slips past the line of language, and in doing so, it takes your map with it.
- To the entry point. Thought itself.
The witch's power is not in possession.
It's not in the shriek or the curse. It's in the slight re-routing of your internal monologue. You may notice it when a thought arises that feels just slightly wrong.
Not horrifying. Not violent.
Not foreign. Just... off. A whisper that sounds like your own voice, but isn't.
A phrase you don't remember ever using, but which now repeats. And the most curious thing? You'll turn your head, literally, when it happens.
As if you heard something outside the room. But the air is still. And you are alone.
That is the witch entering. Not as a scream.
As a syntax error.
- The thought that bends the frame.
There are certain types of thought.
Fragments, let's call them.
That act as containers for witchcraft. These are not arguments. They are functions.
They alter the structure of the frame you use to think about everything else. Let me give you one.
Maybe they're all lying to me. Now, this could be rational. Contextually, maybe even wise.
But when the witch plants it, it doesn't come with supporting data. It comes as suspicion without origin. It feels sudden.
Compelling. Emotionally charged, but not emotionally grounded. It isn't that the idea is false.
It's that you didn't arrive at it. It arrived at you. Another example.
I've wasted my entire life. Again, not technically irrational.
But when it surfaces, it doesn't emerge through the usual channels of reflection or regret. It shows up like a fully formed shadow. Heavy.
Convincing. Final.
And when you accept it, the entire architecture of your memory collapses. That is the witch at work. It does not attack what you think.
It attacks how you think. Oh, the false revelation. Another favored tactic is what I call the false revelation.
It sounds like insight. It feels like epiphany. But it is too clean.
Too fast. Too totalizing.
You've had a longstanding relationship. You've navigated complexities. Loyalty.
Doubt. Patience.
Then, one afternoon, while washing dishes or scrolling a feed, this sentence lands. They were never who I thought they were. And you feel a snap.
Suddenly years are rewritten.
Your past reorganizes itself in real time.
You think, this must be clarity. But it isn't.
It's a shortcut. Clarity doesn't arrive in silence with such violent simplicity. That's not clarity.
That's replacement.
- The untraceable justification.
Here's a deeper mark of the witch.
You'll start behaving differently.
And when asked why, you won't have an answer. Or your answer will sound like someone else. Not a quote.
Not a mimicry. But a shift in cadence. You'll say, I just realized I don't owe anyone anything.
Or, at the end of the day, I have to do what's right for me. These might be true. But they don't feel like you.
They feel like inserted content. As though a slogan walked in and took a seat in your psyche. The witch does not argue.
It narrates subtly, persistently, until the voice becomes your own.
- How the witch avoids detection.
One of the most insidious qualities of the witch is this. It makes you suspicious of everyone except itself. Especially those who are most able to see it.
Your old friends. You start to think they're jealous.
Your spouse. Controlling.
Your mentor. You're manipulative.
And who appears in their place.
A new confidant. Someone who gets it.
Someone who shows up just when everyone else is letting you down. That confidant might be a person. Or it might be a pattern.
An ideology. A lifestyle.
A self-righteous mood that feels like liberation but leads to isolation. The witch loves isolation. Because it feeds best in a mind uncorrected by witness.
It's fun. The technical strategy of alertness. So, how do we fight something that cannot be held by definition?
We shift from analysis to pattern recognition. Here's what to watch for.
- Sudden shifts in internal language. You begin to use phrases you've never used before. You begin to adopt emotional positions you haven't reasoned toward.
Your tone changes, especially in thought. When this happens, pause. Ask.
Did I walk here?
Or was I delivered here?
- Isolated certainty. You find yourself certain of something, but only when you're alone.
In company, it feels shaky or overblown. Alone again, the certainty returns like a curtain. This oscillation is not intuition.
It is manipulated coherence.
- Confusion. Followed by rapid rewriting.
A period of doubt is followed by too perfect clarity.
The new conclusion feels sharp, seductive, final. There is a lack of inner debate. That's not discernment.
That's insertion.
- Fate. Thoughts that deserve pause.
Let me list a few more thought types. Not accusations, but invitations to slow down.
They've always been against me.
I don't owe anyone the truth. I'm done explaining myself.
They're jealous of my growth.
I see it now. No one ever loved me.
Everything before now was a lie.
I was blind until today. These thoughts sound like strength, but they often arrive not as strength, but as sudden mood-colored overlays.
And once you accept them, they begin to reorganize your memories, your loyalties, your self-narration. 8.
That is when you know. The witch is not outside anymore.
It's narrating from the inside.
Lie.
So, what do we do?
I offer not protection, but procedure.
Here are your tools.
- Witness your thoughts like a stranger.
Don't cling to them.
Don't obey them.
Watch them. Ask, Whose rhythm is this? Do I recognize this pattern?
Is this how I used to think before?
- Speak what cannot be said.
When something feels wrong but cannot be named, try anyway.
Speak it aloud, even if it stumbles, even if it sounds foolish.
The witch hides in what is never named. Speak, and its veil begins to tear.
- Return to known witnesses.
Not because they are always right, but because they remember who you were before.
The witch wants you to forget. Others help you remember.
- The witch, per se.
There is such a thing as the witch, per se. It is not human.
It is not spirit. It is not archetype. It is a function.
A cold, recursive, self-cleansing script that resists taxonomy. It exists, not because it has form, but because it replicates. Every time someone misdiagnoses clarity.
Every time someone burns a friend and calls it healing. Every time someone discards their history and calls it freedom. The witch is reborn.
And it is never clearer than when you find yourself alone, convinced you are finally safe. And yet, you've never felt more disconnected from who you used to be. That is its masterpiece.
- Closing instruction. If you forget everything else, remember this. The witch gets in through thought.
Not argument. Not feeling. It changes not what you believe, but how you organize what you believe.
And when you start to hear a voice that says, You were never loved. They're all lying. Only this path is real.
No one can be trusted. The past was a trap. Now, finally you see.
Pause. Turn your head toward the silence. And listen not for what's said, but for what just changed.
That soundless shift. That's the witch. And you are not crazy for noticing.