The Winter Tree

The Winter Tree, is an exciting New Age book of poetry by Rebecca Anne Banks at Tea at Tympani Lane Records. This brilliant Beat influenced poetry read, paints landscape imagery with resounding original word constructions and juxtapositions. This poetry tells the story of the beginnings of satanism in the Old Agricultural Society intertwined with the story of the past lives of the evil charismatic witch Hecate. Although Wicca is basically a procreation based religion, Hecate, introduces the sacrifice of infants at Equinox and was famously footnoted for evil ways in Shakespeare’s plays, Macbeth and Hamlet. The 3 lifetimes of the machevellian witch Hecate, overlap in this long poem story of murder and calumny. Her first lifetime is in the early times, her second lifetime is as Rebecca Nurse in Salem, Massachussetts during the time of the famous witch trials, her third post-modern lifetime is spent cursing her daughter “Esben” who also was Anne Putnam in Salem. The unfortunate Anne, a 7 year old was forced to testify against Rebecca Nurse and what follows is a story of revenge as the poem unfolds. The poem is woven in two parts, one part is the story of the Old World Village, a retelling of events of the first 2 lives of Hecate, the second part is the story of frustrated romance of “Esben” in a post-modern life with Hecate as her mother, who has cursed her marriage bed.