Witch: Unleashed. Untamed. Unapologetic.

by Lisa Lister

Being kind doesn’t mean becoming a complete pushover. You can be kind and have very clear boundaries about what is and isn’t acceptable to you. I totally recommend practising that.

Every culture has its own folklore, magic and mystical practices. If you’re not sure of yours, talk to your family, trace your family heritage and ask questions of your aunties and grandmummas. If they’re no longer alive, ask them questions in dreamtime. Before you go to bed, either write a question in your journal asking them specifically to answer it, or ask it out loud naming the family member you’d like to answer it for you.

If you feel called to a particular place or tradition, or to a particular goddess, it might be because you lived that tradition in another life. If you’re called to a piece of jewellery with the Eye of Horus on it, it could be a sign that you need to look into Egyptian culture and its deities. My advice? Be super-respectful, educate yourself, ask questions and deeply honour those who are indigenous to any particular tradition or practices you explore. Be respectful and follow the breadcrumbs.

Witchcraft takes us back to the most natural, vibrant and raw parts of our soul; so find what feels good to you and then move towards it.

Feel what it’s like to no longer be separate. Remember that you’re a reflection of Mumma Nature. You, me and SHE are a force, a power source – we’re not separate.

I recommend reading every book by Sybil Leek and Doreen Valiente: two super-influential south-coast witches.

Glastonbury. It’s a small English market town, world-renowned for being a place of pilgrimage for spiritual seekers; and for being steeped in mysticism and spiritual folklore.

Glastonbury has many witchcraft, spiritual and new age shops in its high street. But that’s not where you’ll find the magic. Instead, the magic is in her landscape.

It was a talisman – a token to imbue with the magic of what was happening

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.

Why do we have to remember that we are powerful? Why have we forgotten? Why do we remember, then forget all over again? Why do we have to wake and reclaim the witch now more than ever before? Patriarchy. Note: When I talk about Patriarchy, I’m not man bashing. I’m not bashing Christianity either. When you read what I’m about to tell you, you’ll realize we’ve ALL been played by Patriarchy: men AND women.

The facts may have been written down at the time, but what was the agenda of the man who wrote them? Remember: women were rarely allowed to write until the nineteenth century.

The challenge – specifically for women, whose story has been censored, silenced, repressed and burned over the last 3,000 years – is to question EVERYTHING. I invite you to feel into the truth behind the actions you hear or read about. Get curious. What was the motivation?

For centuries, women have lived in a society and system that has held very little love and respect for who they are and what they do. But it wasn’t always like that.

Ancient societies had priestesses: the women of the temples of Artemis and Diana in ancient Greece and Rome, the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi and the Celtic priestesses of Britain. All these wise ones were keepers of arcane, sacred knowledge. They had many skills, including the sacred observation of seasonal customs, healing, star craft, divination, seeing the future, and understanding and recognizing the roots of that future in the past and present. They also held sacred the spiritual lives of the communities they served.

Without a mumma, both men and women remain infantilized. They’re filled with fear daily to maintain obedience and amenability. That makes them unable to take responsibility for themselves. And Patriarchy has continued to create firm structures to keep us that way right through to the times we’re currently living in.

Suddenly, the Great Mother was made to serve as Christ’s virgin mother – her sexuality erased, deleted and no longer necessary. Her power was reduced from that of Mother Nature, creatrix of the entire freakin’ world, to a sterile intermediary between man and a male god.

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.

Stamping out religions and relentlessly disconnecting us from our power was carried out in many, many ways. Changing the terminology of words like ‘virgin’ to take away any kind of powerful connotation? Well, that was simply one of them.

Patriarchy couldn’t control a woman’s ‘magic’ or her ability to create ‘weakness’ in the otherwise-compliant work machine by enticing and manipulating men through her sexuality and female power. And that meant that Patriarchy needed to demonize women and their ‘powers’.

Older women were persecuted too, as they were the ones who remembered. They went from home to home, circulating stories, sharing secrets and wisdom and weaving together past and present events. In doing so, they became a threat to the modernizers, who were determined to destroy the past and undo customs and relationships.

In her book Caliban and the Witch (PLEASE READ THIS BOOK: it’s heavy going, but it’s so worth it! It’s been influential in educating me and in what I share here), Silvia Federici says that the witch hunts introduced a system of terror to ALL women. And from that system emerged a new, much more acceptable model of femininity to which women would have to conform in order to be socially accepted in the developing capitalist society.

But what would the beauty and self-help/diet industries do if women trusted that all the knowledge and wisdom they ever needed was already inside them (and that it could be accessed by connecting with the power of their rhythmic intelligence and cyclical nature)? I ask this not to put even more pressure and responsibility on you, but because I want you to know, if you don’t already, that billions of pounds are invested in keeping you subordinate and not loving your sweet self.

For more insight, read Witches, Midwives, and Nurses by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English.

We live in a cultural climate that makes women feel perpetually guilty for simply being women.

The fear that it’s ‘not safe’ for us to speak/write/share our story – which is our ultimate medicine to the world – can keep us mute. And THAT renders our powers completely useless.

I don’t speak in soundbites, but what I’ve come to realize is that how I show up is irrelevant. It’s in the act of showing up itself that we really claim the power back. So I keep showing up: imperfect and unedited.

As women, it’s our responsibility to make it safe for each other to be powerful.

We have to realize and remember that it’s society that’s broken, NOT us. And that remembrance has to be a daily practice, because the witch wound is cavernous.

First though, we have to walk through the fire; and really believe that it’s safe for us to speak, scream, howl, get angry, be loud, cry, curse and even orgasm. It is safe for you AND for me to do that. And if it doesn’t feel safe? We need to call on others to help us feel safe.

We need to make it safe for each other, not by calling each other out and finger pointing, but by calling each other in. We don’t have to agree with each other. We don’t even have to like each other a whole lot. That’s not the point. But in order to challenge Patriarchy, create change and begin to heal the witch wound, we DO have to support other women who dare to speak their truth. Even if it’s completely different to our own.

When I talk of feeling safe, the REAL safety comes from knowing yourself and all your parts so intimately that NO one can ever ‘have’ anything on, or over you. When you have fierce self-belief, no one can blame, shame or make you feel ‘less than’.

Some of these are inspired by my gorgeous friend Kimberley Jones, who writes extensively about women’s wealth and the witch wound – it’s really good stuff.

So how do you face that fire? You remember. You remember that you ‘know’, deep in your cells.

Notice how that wound is affecting your life right now. Is there a truth you’re not sharing? A step you’re not taking because you’re too fear-filled? Is there something you’d love to do in your life, but you’re afraid of how others will react? Are you hiding intuitive hits, gifts and abilities? If so, why?

Ask for courage. Ask for faith. Ask for trust. Ask for your sisters, other SHE-led women who are rising and waking the witch in them, to support you and hold you.

We both know that we’re here to do the work of SHE; and so every day, on waking, he asks, ‘What can I do to support you in doing the work you do?’ THIS is the work of the men right now. It’s not to fight wars. It’s not to ‘grab pussy’. It’s not to stay in the space of a perpetual ‘boy’ who feels threatened by women reclaiming their power and thinks his toys are being taken away from him. It’s not to be scared of a woman’s wildness, darkness, shadows and edges either – or to see any of these aspects as threatening or ego-puncturing. Instead, it’s to be able to be with that wildness, that darkness and those shadows and edges. To hold space for women to explore, nurture and most importantly, express all those thoughts and support them and love them wholeheartedly as they do. It’s to use their big, beating, pulsating-with-love hearts to ask women what the fuck they can do to support them as they wake.

Here’s the deal: I have a LOT of rage. I’m emotive. I disturb the peace. I’m super-sensitive, and I feel it all. These are all traits that Patriarchy has suppressed in women. In me. Yet, they’re our total freaking super-powers.

‘One of the most beautiful things I feel right now, is that you see these amazing, empowered women who are stepping up and really reminding us young men, and men in general, that our role is to let the women lead. And yet, we’re their protectors, and we stand side by side; but the women are supposed to lead with their hearts.’ – NAHKO BEAR, LEAD SINGER OF NAHKO AND MEDICINE FOR THE PEOPLE, SPEAKING ABOUT THE INDIGENOUS WOMEN LEADERS AT STANDING ROCK

The good news is that he’s making it visible. For so long, this has been bubbling away – unreported and unseen – and now it’s rising to the surface. It has to be seen, it has to be felt, before it can be healed. It has to be brought out into the light so that we can see how destructive and divisive a force it is.

as Patriarchy begins slowly to crumble, it will try desperately to hold on. And let me tell you, the tricks that it’s willing to play in order to survive and suppress women’s power are NOT pretty. They mainly involve making sure that our witch wound – the gaping huge gash that Patriarchy has inflicted upon us – NEVER heals.

I will express my reality: my pleasure, my pain and my experience direct from my heart and womb. I will act. I will take responsibility because I’m a witch, and witches aren’t here to make others feel comfortable. They’re here to show the full spectrum. To show what truth, lived fully, looks and feels like. It’s safe. You’re safe. We’re safe. Repeat these words daily like a mantra, because of course, you won’t FEEL safe. This book isn’t a meme on social media. It’s not a few words of false reassurance that you scroll past without having to take personal responsibility. This is a call AND it’s a response.

This will be what REALLY messes with Patriarchy: women standing together and encouraging each other. And not in a social-media-friendly photo opportunity way either, but by having conscious, brave and real conversations with each other. By calling each other in, and not calling each other out. By helping each other to put back the pieces, to become whole and to feel fully supported without being judged or shamed in that wholeness. Remember, reconnect with, re-wild and reclaim what is rightfully yours. Yourself. Your truth. Your voice. This is necessary for both men and women. The entire planet we inhabit needs to learn from Patriarchy’s mistakes; and wake up, listen to and take action based on the wisdom of the witch.

A witch does have a relationship with the dark. She’s intimately familiar with her shadows because she KNOWS that the only way that we, as women, will ever be fully whole is by acknowledging the dark. We need to acknowledge our own darkness, without being afraid of it. I get it. Of course I do. I’m a woman who’s been called a ‘witch’ as an insult. Yet, when you know the power of the word – the potency of woman held within it – you start to get really passionate about claiming it back.

It’s going to take practice. Lots of practice. But in reclaiming the word ‘witch’, you claim your authority. You claim your power.