A Witching

Some people watch the Pirates of the Caribbean movies for Johnny Depp. Some, for Orlando Bloom. Some, simply for the swashbuckling adventure and action. Me? I look forward to Tia Dalma. Who?

A touch of destiny

Why, the witch in the swamp who gives Jack Sparrow the jar of dirt that we later learn is the goddess Calypso trapped in a human body, that's who.

When she is first introduced, her voice is low, sultry, like a piece of black velvet sliding her sinuously across the room to greet Jack and Will. You almost can't make out her words for the thick Caribbean accent (it's not exclusive to Jamaica, I've personally heard it in Nassau in the northern Bahamas) and it builds an air of mystery about her as they crowd around her home decorated in reagents of her arts. And at the end, she throws the bones. Perfect.

I can kind of identify with her as she speaks, in this first scene, of the love between Calypso and Davey Jones, and then, later (the third movie? I'm marathoning them right now as I type) she has an interlude with him while she is in the brig of a ship. There is a certain bitterness as they both speak of their love for each other and with my recent vulnerabilities... well, it's hard not to dig up movie clips of all these scenes, mash them together clumsily and email them off. She also has crazy eyes. That helps. I have those too. Anyway, I could probably write a whole blog entry about how the love between Tia Dalma/Calypso and Davey Jones is so much more meaningful and deep than the actual love story between Elizabeth and Will Turner but that's not what we're here for today.

Every adventure movie should have a witch, a mage, a soothsayer. Ultimately, I'm a bit biased from my dabbling in Wicca in my early 20's in thinking this witch should be female (granted, I still have a bit of a shamanistic tendency, I'd like to be the Woods Witch some day, but that will take some doing) but I guess a male wouldn't be so horrible.

Excluding the Pirates movies since I've already mentioned them, and the Lord of the Rings trilogy because, well... Gandalf, I'm going to list movies in my collection that have a good representation of the types of witches I'm talking about.

13th Warrior (also a great book)
Clash of the Titans
300 (oracles count)
Merlin
Conan (the new one)
Immortals

Now there are some movies in my collection that I couldn't remember. Like Pathfinder. I watched it once. It was one of those cheap DVDs I bought on a lark but involving early Native Americans and Norsemen? Probably a witch somewhere. I also didn't count any of my anime. Because it's anime.