Witch: Unleashed. Untamed. Unapologetic.

by Lisa Lister

The witch is a woman fully in her power. She’s in touch with the dark. She knows how to be the witness, how to let things go and how to follow her own counsel. Most importantly though, she questions EVERYTHING.

Instead, it’s about being a woman who can recognize, navigate, claim, trust and use her Goddess-given powers of creativity and manifestation, her vision, her intuition and foresight, her rhythms and cyclic nature and her ability to experience FULLY the dark to serve the light. And she does it to heal not only herself, but her family, her community and ultimately, the world.

To me, the essence of a witch is someone who trusts their inner authority and uses their own personal magic to navigate and negotiate the environment they currently find themselves in.

‘We are the granddaughters of the witches you could not burn.’ Dana laughed and said, ‘Forget that slogan! I’m the witch you DID burn, over and over, and I’m back, bitches!’

Yes, we ARE back; and this time we’re taking back our power. It’s time to wake the witches!

Being a witch is remembering. It’s the GREAT remembering. It’s the remembering of who you were before you forgot.

And then it’s the lifelong job/journey/quest/adventure of reconnecting – over and over again – to your forgotten knowing.

It’s being someone who trusts her inner authority, and doesn’t look outside herself for validation and/or approval. It’s being someone who uses her own personal magic to navigate and negotiate the environment she currently finds herself in.

That fear, the hiding in the shadows, the always feeling like you have to live life as an outsider on the outskirts of society? It stops with me.

But like ‘witch’, ‘bitch’, ‘cunt’ and ‘menstruation’, ‘power’ is NOT the dirty word we’ve been taught that it is.

Asatru and Followers of the Northern Tradition Asatru is a term that means ‘loyalty to the Aesir (a group of Norse Gods)’.

and in modern Scandinavia it’s often called ‘Forn Siðr’ or the ‘Ancient Way

Sticks, Stones, Roots and Bones

Every woman is a witch, regardless of whether she knows it or not. Why? Because she’s cyclic, she’s powerful and she can embrace nature to heal herself AND her community. In other words: she IS magic.

Being a witch isn’t about what you do. It’s not spells, rituals and ceremony: it’s the stance you take in life. It’s who you are at your source.

‘I am a witch, by which I mean that I am somebody who believes that the Earth is sacred; and that women and women’s bodies are an expression of that sacred being.’ – STARHAWK

I’m a witch who works with Mumma Nature and her cycles to create and manifest life, dreams and wishes into being.

I’m a witch who has been burned with shame, who burns with passion, and who – at another time, in another place – would have been burned at the stake.

Pick up a crystal, or an item of jewellery or clothing. Does your energy go up, or does it go down? Start to practise this with people, places and items. Tune in to each thing, and then tell yourself the truth.

Naming something gives power over that which is named. When we name our fears, we can begin to witness and overcome them.

It IS safe for me to be powerful. It IS safe for me to be in my power. It is safe for YOU to be powerful. It is safe for YOU to be in your power.

Ishtar, Diana, Astarte and Isis were all called Virgin too, but that didn’t mean ‘sexually chaste’ as Christianity has had us believe. Instead, it meant ‘sexually independent’. A woman unto herself. Basically, badass.

Monica Sjoo and Barbara Mor outline in their book The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth that virgins were literally ‘free women’. They were women who were ‘one in themselves’, i.e. not yet legally owned by their husbands. In fact, the very word ‘virgin’ derives from a Latin root meaning strength, force and skill.

Remember Tune in to your body. Cell deep. And listen to the echoes of truth that reside there.

You realize you’ve got work to do – witch work. You’ve got art to make, people to heal, roots to tend to, humans to create, houses to build, networks to construct, rituals to craft, stories to write, magic to manifest and revolutions to start.

The Force of Nature: SHE who cannot be controlled The Creatrix: SHE who dreams, manifests and makes magic The Oracle: SHE who trusts her intuition and sees all things The Healer: SHE who heals herself and heals the world The Sorceress: SHE who is charmed, dangerous and not afraid of the dark

A spell is simply a prayer in action. It’s an active way of manifesting.

The more you practise, the more you’ll begin to trust yourself, and the more you’ll begin to trust THAT knowing.

I remembered that the onset of Patriarchy didn’t kill the Goddess. She simply lay dormant underground in the darkness, growing roots. Really strong bloody roots, because she’s cyclic; and she knew that with every Great Forgetting, where women and their power are put in the dark, there had to come a Great Remembering. That Great Remembering is now.

When Socrates asked how he could become wiser, the Oracle of Delphi told him: ‘Know Thyself.’

Swords: conflict, mind or moral issues Cups: emotions and relationships Coins: material aspects of life, such as security and finance Wands: jobs, ambition and activity

(And by ‘slut’? I mean, any woman who enjoys sex more than the man calling her it does.)

Rewilding is reclaiming and returning to your wild, feminine nature.

when we stop bleeding, we’re told that we’re surplus to requirements; when actually, we’re women who no longer need to unfold and unfurl. We are sovereigns. We are queens. We are wild. We are crones and we are wise women.

‘I won’t fight other women for one of the limited seats at the table. We’ll march side by side and demand a bigger table.’ – GLENNON DOYLE MELTON