By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
 

 

There is something about that turn of phrase, something wicked this way comes, that creates an inner shudder. I first heard it used by Ray Bradbury in his short tale of the same title Something Wicked This Way Comes (an excellent story), later I was to learn that it was from Shakespeare’s Macbeth and is spoken by the second of three witches just before Macbeth arrives to see them.

 

There is a great deal of irony in Shakespeare having a witch, seen as a great character of evil, pronounce that something wicked was coming and it turns out to be Macbeth himself. In some ways the scene challenges our perceptions of evil. Macbeth would (and does) consider the witches themselves to be the personification of evil and yet they see him as evil (albeit evil they helped to forge).

 

Perhaps we spend a great deal of time trying to ferret out evil and wickedness in our lives like a beaver trying to stop up every small trickle in the dam and not realizing how hopeless the task is if one stops for even a moment. Maybe we live with a haunting sense that evil is somewhere nearby. It seems clear that Macbeth felt the evil that was causing all of his suffering was around him, outside of himself and he never stopped to consider that it was actually within him. This is what makes up a significant portion of his tragic flaw – that he did not know himself.

 

When we have that feeling, that inner sense of dread that "something wicked this way comes" should we perhaps stop looking around and maybe look into a mirror and ask some honest questions of ourselves? Wisdom (and humility) would suggest that before we look outside of ourselves we look within first.