Magic and the Supernatural - Lancaster University

46
‘I am a Witch and I like it!’
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shadows at her temples and two barely detectable sets of crowsfeet
round the corners of her eyes. The skin of her cheeks was
evenly suffused with pink, her brow had become white and
smooth and the frizzy, artificial wave in her hair had straightened
out. A dark, naturally curly-haired woman of twenty, teeth
bared and laughing uncontrollably, was looking out of the
mirror at the thirty-year-old Margarita. 3
The process of transformation includes the change of eye color into green. She
feels much stronger and weightless physically, and also quite joyful, the cream
frees her from the sorrows and suffering she has endured. She becomes almost
hysterically happy, ‘Joy surged through every part of her body, and she felt as
though bubbles were shooting along every limb. Margarita felt free, free of
everything’. 4 For her the transformation brings mostly positive effect.
In what follows, Bulgakov carefully develops many of the details so that they
point to the true nature of Margarita’s transformation. She is given a broomstick
and she enters naked into the world of the night, taking a wild ride over night
Moscow. She also uses her new power to take a revenge on Master’s enemy, a
critic who criticized his novel. So, she flies into his apartment and destroys it,
enjoying the ancestral feminine power traditionally associated with the forces of
nature, given to her. On her way to Satan’s ball, she flies to the marches, where she
takes a traditional bath in the lake surrounding by water spirits. There are twentyfive
references to the moon in the two chapters which deal with Margarita's
transformation into a witch and her journey to a mysterious river on a broomstick,
that is, twenty-five references in a total of eighteen pages. The moon is certainly
connected with witchcraft.
After it she returns to Moscow as the anointed hostess for Satan's great Spring
Ball. Again, Bulgakov follows the tradition, as Margarita remains naked during
Satan’s route; she is washed in blood before the ceremony; she gets a golden chain
with the portrait of poodle (associated with Mephistopheles) and welcomes the
darkest celebrities of human history as they pour up from the opened maw of Hell.
She is accompanied by a black cat Behemoth, one of Satan’s servants.
We should not forget that Bulgakov’s mythological view differs significantly
from the traditional Christian one. In his prose, Good and Evil coexist almost on
equal terms, each performing its natural function in the universe. In this case, the
eternal distinction between Good and Evil, black and white magic, witch and saint
is not essential because Bulgakov does not believe in this traditional binary
opposition. Therefore, black magic in his prose is seen as a part of the universe and
a part of the divine plan.
According to Edward Ericson Bulgakov’s deviations from the traditional
witches’ Sabbath and Black Mess are even more striking, ‘as he retouches standard
demonologies so that nothing occurs on this night which violates the Christian