“There’s a little witch in all of us.” ~ Practical Magic
Witch. What thoughts come to mind as that word rings through your ears? For me it’s many things… Glinda The Good Witch, The Wicked Witch Of The West, Bewitched, The Craft, Practical Magic, Hocus Pocus, The Good Witch, my all time favorite sonic witch, Stevie Nicks, spells, potions… all the ways witches have been portrayed in pop culture… and fear, lots of fear. Fear of even speaking of the subject. Fear of my deep seated anger that arises as I feel into an ancient, collective wound that exists in the hearts, guts and the subconsciousness of women for once being brutally tortured, humiliated and slaughtered for shining their unique light and speaking their truth.
Fear of sharing how I’ve been drawn to the witch since I was a little girl, mesmerized by women who believed in their own magic. Magic that I held as a child and now as a woman. Magic that I was very familiar with as a little girl but had no clue how to verbalize or use intentionally. I was so curious to what this magic was, this other worldly connection, but I had to hide my curiosity, especially if this conversation didn’t come in the context of Jesus and Christianity. And for anyone wondering, I’m totally down with Yeshua. I have my own relationship with him and his teachings, though it bares little resemblance to the way I was raised. Hey, I get it, after all that we’ve bought into as a society, it’s not easy to venture out of what we believe keeps us safe, and the idea of safety is what gets passed down from generation to generation.
Now, when I speak of witches, I do not speak of the scary, evil kind, as they have been so conveniently painted in our society for patriarchal control and used as some sick justification of a horrifying massacre. I speak of WOMEN that listened to their intuition and created hand in hand with spirit. The kind that were deeply connected to source, Mother Earth and all of her blessings. The kind that had reverence for both the light and the dark that dwells inside. Even as I write this now there are so many racing thoughts rushing through my head of fear and judgement for speaking from my heart on this subject. A choking feeling in my throat growing stronger and stronger. I’m not a well versed scholar on the witch trials, but I do know that they were so very unjustified. Women, killed out of fear, “in the name of god” for what others did not understand, condemned for their uniqueness and for not following the path of the norm, the path of the controlled woman. And look, this is still being done in this world, not only to women, but to all that do not fit into a box. For far too long our narratives have been driven by fear. It’s time that we take back the story and make it one created in LovE.
WITCHES WERE WOMEN! Women who could create magic and birth worlds from the deepest places of their being, women that spoke the hardest truths in times when they knew that doing so would be the end of them. I believe witches were women who knew the small voice of god inside and knew it well, so well that they trusted it and followed it above all else, something that most of the people that read the good book had no clue of how to touch, so they condemned it, calling it the work of the devil. And the irony of it all was where the real darkness was being woven… in the church, where power, money and politics took precedence to the connection with The One. Yes, I believe that there was and is god within the witch, for witch is just a label you see. WITCHES WERE AND ARE WOMEN and there is no place where god isn’t. These women honored and celebrated spirit through ceremony. They cherished Mother Earth and all that she provided. They knew the power of sisterhood and gathered in the magic and holiness of community. They healed and created through working with energy and by being a conduit for spirit to flow through. Hell, we actually have schools to learn to develop these gifts now, we just call it by a different name and so that makes it ok and more palatable.
I long to be more like the “witch.” The woman who trusts in her connection to god/universe/ the magic that lives within above all else, who’s connected to her cycles and to the Mother and honors her deep wisdom. The woman who creates community wherever she goes, that cherishes the feminine and the female bond. A woman that cannot be tamed, that knows her power and stands in it, even if she’s standing alone. This is the story I choose. This is now what will flow through my mind when I see the word WITCH. What I’m saying is this… I am one of the women that allows god/the divine/universe to work through me, that opens my heart and my vessel to divine LovE. I KNOW that power deeply and I believe witches did too. I believe that’s what witches truly were and I believe that’s the woman who’s rising again… THE HOLY, WILD WOMAN. This time, she’s rising without the fear, without the shame, without any label attached to her name. She’s rising in the name of fierce LovE.
So, I ask you to take a moment, not only with the tales of the witch, but with all of the ideas and beliefs we have been fed and ask yourself what’s true FOR YOU!? Do the old beliefs and tales still suit you? How ingrained are they in your psyche and why do you still hold them so close as truth? Is it out of fear? Possibly not wanting to stray away from the societal norm? If you are a woman, do you ever find yourself holding back your truth? Is the fear sometimes so debilitating without any justification in the moment of why? How can you help heal the collective wound for all women? Where can you begin to speak up more, to share your full heart? How can we take these tales of fear and turn them into LovE? We need your truth in this world. We need your weird. We need your light. We need your dark. We need your witch. We need your WHOLE WOMAN, woman.
