Sand Witches

Do you understand sand?

Do you know much about

Beaches and dunes

And deserts?

Do you know much about

Sandstone

Do you enjoy building

Sandcastles?

Perhaps you are

An arenophile.

What is your acquaintance with

George Sand?

What is your 

Acquaintance with

Sand witches and

Process art?

How do you usually

Acquaint yourself with

Wonderful witches?

Are you aware that

Sand is a

Non-renewable resource?

What do you know about

John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich

And the food named after him

What do you know about

Martha Ray?

What have you discovered

About the Battle of Sandwich

Of 1217?

Do you know much about Sandwich 

In Kent in England,

And Sandwich Bay nearby,

And the one in Canada?

 Do you know much about

The Great Sandy Desert

Of Australia?

There is much to learn.

Perhaps you are

An expert on

Psammophiles.

What do you know about

The destruction of art?

What do you know about

The destruction of nature?

What do you know about

Sandpainting in various cultures,

Including sand mandalas?

What do you know about

The destruction of lives

And livelihoods and ecosystems?

What is your acquaintance with

Sandpipers, curlews and snipes

What do you know

About snipers?

What do you know

About desert sand

As a colour?

What do you know about

Operation Sandcastle

And other marine pollution

And acts of scuttling

What do you know about

White Sands National Park

In the United States and

The associated missile range

Do you know the Sandman?

He may be found in a song

Or in an opera or

In your imagination.

What do you know about

Transformative arts and

Expressive therapies

And magic maps?

What do you know about

Bonseki and yantras,

and sandpaintings of

Navajo yeii and

Indigenous Australian

Dreaming?

What do you know about

Sand drawing and rangoli,

Kolams and marmotinto?

What do you

Want to know

About sand witches,

And why?

What do you know about

Sand animation?

What have you observed

About sand sculptures

And sand festivals?

What do you know about

Understanding art?

What do you know about

Art-based research?

What do you know about

Sandstorms and quicksand,

Sand mining and sand theft,

Beach replenishment and

Singing sands

Perhaps you have your

Head in the sand.

What do you know about

Sandboarding and sand islands

and hourglasses?

What do you know about

Oil sands?

Where have you drawn

A line in the sand?

What do you understand about

A head-in-the-sand approach

To finance?

What do you know about

Resource depletion?

What do you know about

Sand shortages?

Perhaps you are

An expert on

Struthioniformes.

What do you know

About ostrich politics?

Sand witches respect science.

They respect respectfulness.

They respect well-informed

Kindness.

They are aware.

They care.

What do you know about

Storms and tides?

What do you know about

Barchan dunes and

Desertification?

What do you know about  

Operation Barkhane?

What do you know about 

Operation Desert Storm, and 

From whose point of view

What do you know about

Resource wars?

What do you know about

Dust devils, otherwise known 

In Australia as willy-willies?

What do you know about

The composition of societies?

What do you know about

The composition of soils?

Sand witches

Like all wonderful witches,

Do their best to learn  

From history, science,

Art and philosophy.

They do not suffer 

Fools or sleazeballs, 

Regardless of their ancestry.

What do you know about

Sandbags and storm surges?

What do you know about

Coastal flooding?

What do you know about

The Great Sand Dunes

National Park and Preserve

In America? 

What is your acquaintance

With Eucla in Australia?

What do you know about

Rabbit plagues and

Rising sea levels?

What do you know about

Submerged forests and

Marine transgressions?

What do you know about

Deforestation

Perhaps you are aware of

The Great Vanity of 1641.

Perhaps you know about

Hurricane Sandy of 2012

Perhaps you know

Something about

Sand dune stabilisation and

Desert greening.

Perhaps you are

Familiar with

Sandhills and strand plains

And sand waves and

Underwater environments.

Perhaps you know

Something about

Atolls and coral reefs.

What do you know about

The seabed, and where?

What do you know about

Erosion, including 

Coastal erosion, and how?

What do you know about

Tsunamis?

What do you know about

Waves of economic shocks

From a global sand crisis or a

Global semiconductor crisis or a

Global timber crisis or a 

Global climate crisis?

How peacefully and

Responsibly do you 

Respond to crises?

How do you compare

The extraction of sand with

The extraction of gravel?

What do you know about

Aggregates for concrete?

Perhaps you know 

Something about the

History of cement, mortar

And Roman concrete.

How have you 

Made your way through

The sands of time?

Have you ever seen

Wildflowers bloom in a desert?

What do you know about

Auguries of innocence 

By William Blake?

How do you assess

Importance?

Who and what have been

Important influences

In your life?

How do you grandmothers

Compare with

Marie-Aurore de Saxe

and the mythological Diana?

George Sand was taught

By her grandmother 

Through the ideas of 

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

How were you taught

As a child, and by whom,

And why?

And why are you

Reading this grimoire?

How do you tell

Which witch is which?

What do you want

To know about

The powers of a

Sand witch and

Their source?

Perhaps you have been

Picturing witches all

Wrongly. 

If you are inspired

In unisex attire

Or in Turquerie

In turquoise,

Eat a baguette but

Never forget the

True origins of anything,

Including sand and Sandeau.

Do you understand now?

Real witches are

Tellers of truth with

Suitable sensitivity,

However they prefer

To dress themselves

And their food.

They are never

Unnecessarily rude.

They know how to

Dress a wound

And address problems.

They understand proving.

They respect lactobacilli

They appreciate yeast.

They know sourdough.

They have trained to

Understand grains,

Of minerals and cereals

And granular materials

And textiles and

Of wood.

They appreciate seeds.

They know about particle sizes

They know about grain crops.

They know about

Kifli and croissants.

They know about

Selene and Endymion.

They know about

Pliny the Elder.

They know when to

Take information with

A grain of salt.

They know about mixtures

Of salt and sand. 

They know about filtration.

They know about

Viennoiseries and

Various lunar deities

Various diets and

Symbols of stars and crescents.

They have a deep knowledge of

The history of fascination

And desecration and desiccation.

They are well acquainted with

The ghosts of cultural heritage.

They hold all facts as sacred

However distressing

Those facts may be.

They work carefully to

Overcome disenchantment.

They respect the

Amazing and ancient

In nature and culture.

They clearly distinguish

Between nature and hubris.

What do you know about

Sandpaper?

What do you know about

Silt and river floods 

And mudflows?

What do you about

The importance of

Very old trees and

Old-growth forests

And soil regeneration?

How do you

Show respect towards

The primordial EverTime?

Do you associate sand

With paradise?

How do you distinguish between

Facts and knowledge?

How do you distinguish between

Desecration and secularisation?

What have you discovered about

The secularisation of knowledge

And the sacred importance of facts?

What do you know about

Eskers and sand pits and

Beach volleyball and dune buggies

And eskies and silver sand and

Sharp sand and black sand

And heavy mineral sands and

Magic sand and ironsand

And coral sand and

Sand sharks and sand tiger shark

And sand foxes and sand lizards and

Sand crabs and sand eels

And sand goannas and sand larks and

Seaside resorts and

Placer deposits and molding sand

And sand casting and 

Sandblasting and sandbreaks

And sand filters and

Perceptions and interpretations?

What do you know about

Scheveningen in Holland

And the Chihuahuan Desert and

Lençóis Maranhenses National Park

And Great Sand Sea?

What do you know about

The Sand Reckoner by 

Archimedes?

What do you know about

The Atacama Desert?

What do you know about

the destruction of woodlands?

What do you know about

Mist oases and fog deserts

And sea smoke and steam devils and

Brocken spectres and mirages 

And Arctic haze and rain shadows and

Optical glories and desert blooms?

What do you know about

The Gobi Desert and desert climates

And ergs and eggs and Uluru and

Aeolian processes and yardangs

And hamadas and desert islands?

What do you know about

The Simpson Desert?

How do you compare Blood and Sand

With Mud and Sand, and why?

How have you recently

Been thinking about

Culture and kindness, and why?

What do you know about

Semi-arid climates, and how?

What do you know about

The Tabernas Desert in Spain?

Much of the Earth's surface is

Covered in large oceans

Or large deserts.

But where does communitas exist?

You may or may not

Know much about sand flies

Or mud pies or sand volcanoes.

Do you know much about

Poetry disputes?

How do you interpret

Poems about life?

Perhaps you prefer novels,

Or journalism, or

Descriptions in an

Encyclopaedia,

Or sketches in words

Or images.

What is your acquaintance with

Solange Dudevant, the

Daughter of George Sand?

Perhaps you regard life as

Imitating a novel.

Perhaps you regard poetry as

Imitating the divine or

Arising from the divine,

Possibly in several minds at once.

Or perhaps you regard

Most human minds as

Imitative of one another,

With little uniqueness.

How do you account for

Literary fashions,

And musical ones,

And textile ones,

And art movements more generally,

And intellectual ones,

And political and spiritual ones?

What, for example, do you know

About the life and career of

Letitia Elizabeth Landon,

Or Sandro Botticelli?

How do you think the

Sand witches act in springtime?

Do they rest to

The Sandman's lullaby

From an opera

Do they re-enact Primavera

Or even The Birth of Venus?

Are sand witches encountered

Only as, or during,

Anomalous experiences?

Do they dance to

Chopin preludes on

The sands of time?

Perhaps you have

Encountered

A sand witch in a

Beach bar in Mallorca 

Or even in

A cell in Valldemossa

Perhaps you have

Encountered

A sand witch in

A desert or parched field

In Australia or as 

An assistant elsewhere.

You may be acquainted with

Clara Southern or

The work of Eugène Delacroix 

Or even of Frederick McCubbin

You may be acquainted with

Handel's Messiah even

In a land quite prone to

Catch on fire.

Perhaps you believe in

Guardian angels and

Even imaginary friends

You may even believe in

Romantic love.

Perhaps you have taken

Your obsessions from

Covent Garden to

The Tyburn Tree.

From Love in a Village

To Love and Madness and

Through George Sand's Indiana 

And on the beaches and 

Reefs of Réunion,

And in the Museum of

Romantic Living

In Paris, there is much

Witchery and trickery

To discover and

Truth to recover.

Who knows

Good government

Of societies

And emotions?

I wrote my name upon the sand;
I thought I wrote it on thine heart.
I had no touch of fear, that words,
Such words, so graven, could depart.

Never forget Hecate.

How do you assess spells?

How well do you understand

The spell of desire? 

Please be aware

Learning the truth

About witches

including

Sand witches,

Is your responsibility. 

Learning the truth

About the world

More generally is

Also your responsibility.

You may smile at the fanciful structures I rear,
And say, that my castles are built but on sand ;
Like bubbles, that on the blue waters appear,
That sparkle, invite, and then sink from the hand.

Where have you seen

A line in the sand?

What do you know about

History ignored?

When does nature

Take away beaches?

Why is erosion

A cause of distress?

Nature is often blamed

For making a mess.

There is much to

Understand,

Whenever buildings are

Unsuitably planned.

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