The Witch archetype
Today I really feel called to explore the archetype of the witch and her connectedness to nature.
I see so many images, centuries of women attending to others in their villages. Creating life and preserving it. Talking to nature, making balms and tinctures, anything to repair damage. Passing the knowledge down through generations, the same way that the Earth passes down the entire history of the land to a little new flower bud that blooms in the soil. It contains the knowledge of centuries, of the whole story of the Earth in it.
Witches. The word has become ugly, a taboo, but it has no real meaning. A witch is just a woman, the magic is only the talents that are natural to her. A woman holds this knowledge dormant in our DNAs. It is in all of us, the ones who consciously chose to work with it then have been labelled witches. A bad word. One that comes only from fear, from terror.
Child bearing is magic, what could ever be more magical, miraculous than creating life?! And yet we take this for granted. Our empathy, skills to recognise pain in others, to heal through words, and hugs. To defuse situations through emotion and logic, all these are our magic powers. Powers that we hold in silence, with no expectation of praisal or reward. No need for applause, because these gifts come to be used for service. And so they are not ours, they are shared.
Men have magic in them too, and powers that have been created to compliment the woman, as ying and yang, two wholes make a (vesica piscis)
But it is the ego that has come in the way. The ego, the fear, and the desire of a few to rule and hold power. A few bad seeds were planted and from there, fear has confused some souls to follow the wrong path. Like new born turtles follow the city lights rather than the moon if the former are brighter. Confused, they don’t know better, and they never reach the water. There was nobody to show them the way to the light, and souls have been misled into a lick of trick and deception: one where things happen TO US, a reactive life. This takes away the power of the woman, the power to create. The power to attract and make our own reality. We cannot live freely if we are caged into the beliefs that things happen to us, trying to swim the best we can against the current. No, we must create the sea, understand it, bond with it, be the sea and then we will swim. Better yet, it will keep us afloat. I understand this as the mastering of our emotions, of the water inside of us. Looking in, to the depths of what we hold, what we have ignored for so long to live in a life that happens around us, rather than inside. I see the mastering of the sea as the understanding of the unique chemistry of our souls, how it is shaped and what makes it roar. It is then through the flow of our own water bodies than we evolve, mixing with other seas, rivers, oceans, other women in journeys of flowing. The exchange of energy: the release of tired waves that can now move on to shift the sand in someone else’s shores, and the embrace of new colder waters that we can learn to integrate, and heat up with our own sun.
These darker speckles of soul have put down the spirit of the Wild Woman*, calling her a witch. So her power was feared, deemed ungodly, out of this world, impossible. But the miracle of life, that couldn’t be denied because it’s too true, too physical and too necessary to keep the bloodline going. So that was called ‘responsibility’: it was taken away from it’s magical pedestal and brought to the world of the physical as our chore, the only thing we were good for: being a womb. “If they could, they would’ve shut our mouths too and have our bodies just reproduce!” As I write this I feel the anger and power of all these women that came before me. All these women that have fought for our rights, the ones that could not be silenced and that have reached different endings: some the steak, some ignored but some have had their words heard or written, and those words have passed down and they live. They live in silence sometimes, and in the wind other times, but they do live. The changes throughout the centuries have been great for the female gender, it is much changed from a few centuries ago. Yet, it is not enough, as we don’t hold the magic we once had. It is each of our journeys to discover it and harness it.
*This conversation sparks of the book I am currently reading. Woman who run with the wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, who speaks of the Wild Woman archetype and how to embrace it. Beautiful and inspiring book, her words have sank into my soul and inspired this conversation as I am sure, many future ones.
Conversation with the Earth’s Consciousness
