In St Andrews, there is no transitionary period really between sunny evenings on the beach and sudden days of darkness, frost and mornings that make you wish you possessed the power to hibernate.
The swift nature of this change surprised even me this year—as I write this I recall two weeks ago today lounging on St Mary’s Quad jacketless in the scorching sun, and rushing off to the beach in the spaces between classes. Now, even an outdoor cigarette is an Odyssean task, lest you lose the use of your fingers to the cold. Not just jackets, but jumpers, thermals, fleece-lined tights and handwarmers are about to become a necessity.
You could spend these upcoming weeks in quiet shock mourning the summer that we barely caught a glimpse of this term, or you could, as I plan to do, revel in it. As despite the cold, and darkness, and occasional shower which makes it all far more unbearable, the upcoming season is my favourite season of all time: It’s the Season of the Witch.
The phrase coined by the Scottish folk singer Donovan in the nineteen-sixties in a song of the same name could not better fit the upcoming month, especially in St Andrews—a town with a rich and twisted history of dark superstition and witch trials. And although the last recorded witch to be killed in St Andrews was back in 1644, witches and witch hunting are not as expired as we might believe.
Originally written about his anxiety concerning a prophesized drug bust as hard drugs moved into bohemia, Donovan’s ‘Season of the Witch’, is a psychedelic anthem for paranoia, and not necessarily of the supernatural kind. Both Autumn and The Sixties are revered as periods of extreme change, and the song encapsulates the feeling of living within such a period. It is an elegy to the gut-tugging feeling that humankind is known to experience when our body comprehends before our brains that something great is about to reveal itself.
Of course, within these periods of uncertainty live ‘the witches’. When the weather turns and night falls quicker, anxiety is not uncommon, and if let to fester, this anxiety becomes paranoia. In the dark months, it is easy to become sceptical of others, especially as the schoolwork piles up and we all return slowly to hermit-like states. Cliques begin to emerge, friendship dynamics shift, patterns fall away which for many people may stimulate feelings of dread or even targetless resentment.
What is important to remember in the upcoming months is that ‘The Season of the Witch’ is not exclusively about these negative feelings of anxiety. Autumn is a testing time, but also a time within which to embrace change, as nature does. Engorge yourself in the dark and mystical. St Andrews is a town with so much history and secrets that it was made to be viewed through this lens of half-light and frost. It is not that it is too cold to be outside, you simply have to move enough so that it does not catch up with you.
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