VII: Hazel
How a werewolf discredited a water witch.
Good morning. Today is septidi, the 27th of Pluviôse, Year CCXXXI. We celebrate le noisetier, the tree of wizardry.
Let's dive into the time a werewolf proved a psychic wrong.
For more than a thousand years, people have believed that grabbing a forked branch of hazel and walking around with it will find things. Known regionally as dowsing, divining, and witching, the practice has been discredited as hooey for as long as it's been around, but there has also always been an undercurrent of belief to keep it alive, if only as a fascinating bit of lore.
In 17th century France, there was a bit of turmoil between the death of Louis XIII and the childhood regime of Louis XIV known as The Fronde. This was nearly a French Revolution before the French Revolution, with uprisings throughout the country that didn't have the coordination necessary to actually topple a government, but had a frightening (if you were the king) amount of support among the gentry, who were miffed about taxes. The fizzle of it all was quickly overshadowed by the showy and imperial longevity of Louis XIV's court, but the moment snuck several ideas into the populace that would prove sticky in France an elsewhere: that taxes should be leveed by representatives, that government should be checked and decentralized, that the Roman Catholic church was a corrupt and immoral wielder of power in France ... and that rational observations were a better source of truth than regal or sacred proclamations.
It was the last bit that led to a craze for dowsing.
