RECLAIMING THE WITCH
The word Witch is thrown around a lot on social media and within marketing campaigns, so much so that we have lost touch with its meaning and taken for granted the practices within a lineage that, throughout history, was persecuted and unaccepted. Our ability to use the word so freely but without a conscious understanding for its meaning, its history, and its practices, disrespects the women that came before, those who died for engaging with the Earth, with sacred knowledge, with practices that were feared by those who chose to misunderstand the wild.
The word Witch means someone who, above all else, honours nature. The healing arts that we use today, such as Reiki, naturopathy, herbal medicine, psychic readings, tarot (to name a few)… are all branches that ancient Witches drew upon to help so many.
Witches seek the sacred knowledge the rest of the world has already forgotten.
To be a Witch is to know that the mind is the seat of all consciousness; it is to master our thoughts and direct this energy toward outcomes that will benefit others as well as ourselves. It is a woman who honours and has reverence for fertility, for life and death, for the seasons; she understands and accepts masculine and feminine polarities, the duality throughout nature. She recognizes and her creative power to birth life and knows that this gift makes her the ultimate creatrice.
A Witch is someone who practices rites to attune herself to the natural rhythms of life; she recognizes that her intelligence gives her a unique responsibility to uphold and respect her environment, and thus our planet; she acknowledges that there is a depth of power far greater than herself that is The Divine - she is part of and weaved into the web that connects us all as equal in potential, in creativity, in endless possibilities. A Witch seeks to control the forces within herself, making it possible to live wisely and without harm to others - she seeks to bring harmony to everything she engages with.
"A Witch is a woman who emerges from deep within herself. She is a woman who has honestly explored her light and learned to celebrate her darkness. She is a woman who is able to fall in love with the magnificent possibilities of her power. She is a woman who radiates mystery. She is magnetic." And she uses magick (natural forces within) to bring about change. -Dasha Avelin
At heart, we are all powerful, beautiful, and capable of changing the world with our bare hands. Recognise the power you have within you, the power of woman that runs through your veins. Everything you touch, you touch with the legions of women who stood before you and those that are emerging. Find reverence within the sacred lineage that is, WOMAN.
To me, a witch is a woman that is capable of letting her intuition take hold of her actions, that communes with her environment, that isn't afraid of facing challenges. ― Paulo Coelho⠀
If you want to learn more about my definition and alignment to the Witch, I invite you to listen to my Podcast episode, Reclaiming the Witch, available on iTunes.