The Journey of Embracing your Inner Witch
The irony is not lost on me that as I step into teaching these feminine archetypes, I am met with deeper layers of my own internal resistance to expressing and embodying them.
I am walking this path alongside you. I don’t believe in pedestalizing our teachers.
Writing this blog, sharing about this archetype, has confronted me with the internal layers of resistance that still hold me back from being seen, expressed, and embodied in the archetype of the Witch. Let’s talk about it.
The Witch is the doorway to the feminine spiritual path. She is the archetype that reconnects us to a cyclical, earth-based, Goddess-worship, integrated spiritual practice and lifestyle. Through her embodiment we unravel the conditioning of masculine practices and lineage that dismiss the feminine way.
It is through her that we reclaim the ancient ways and deep power of the feminine lineage.
As a young girl, I was deeply connected to my inner Witch. I was born on Friday the 13th, the day of the Goddess, and even though I heard the stories that Friday the 13th was “bad luck”, I always intuitively felt it was good luck for me. I decided that other “bad luck” omens were also good luck for me, like a black cat crossing my path.
Reflecting on this now, I see how as a young girl, I knew I was different. I also see the ways I was conditioned to believe there was something bad, dark, and dangerous about being a Witch.
Every Halloween, I wanted to dress up as a Witch. When I was 7 I adopted my first cat. I had a tiny cabin in the back of the backyard, which I called the forest. I filled the cabin with spell books and potions. I had a wand. When I was old enough, I took out every book in the library on astrology and read about the star signs of everyone in my family. My mother gave me tarot cards and an astrology book. I hand drew my birth chart using the ephemeris charts at the back of the book.
Every chance I got, I was naked, running around in nature. Barefoot, climbing trees, and telling them my secrets. My connection to spirit was found in the clouds, the plants, and the animals. I had a fairy garden and once I saw the fairies come into my bedroom through the open window late at night.
As I got older, I slowly and quietly disconnected from this part of me. I had prophetic dreams in middle school of things that would happen with my friends. When my dreams came true, no one believed me.
The world around me celebrated my linear and rational side, so I focused on my left-brain strengths, and my academic achievements. I turned up my masculine qualities — because I was recognized for them.
When I got older and began on my spiritual pilgrimage, I felt there was something missing from the Eastern and Western lineages. It was all about transcending the body and mind, silence and stillness, and accessing a detached relationship to the world around me. Some part of me felt this was inherently wrong — as a deeply feeling and connected woman.
But then I discovered the ancient roots of the Witch. The ways that women spoke about finding spirit in everything — in the depths of pain AND in the bliss of ecstasy. The Goddess path reconnected me to the wisdom that there is divinity in everything, every moment, every breath, every living experience.
The Witch finds her connection to the God and the Goddess through nature. It wasn’t on my yoga mat or in silent meditation that I had my spiritual awakening. It was hiking in the Himalayas, healing from the most painful heartbreak of my life.
My journey back to spirit was not all love and light.
I found her, the Goddess, in the pain of my darkest moments. I found my way to meaning, depth, trust and faith through devastating loss and betrayal. My heart was cracked open by the vast, infinite beauty of the largest mountain range on the planet.
Being a Witch, to me, looks like deep listening. It is reverence for the cycles of life and death we all move through. It is the honouring and celebration of every phase of the cycle, not just the boon and bloom.
Being a Witch is feeling my interconnection with all of life — the plants, animals, and elements. The people who weave their way in and out of my life story. As a Witch, I find meaning and symbolism in everyday events. My life is the ritual. My faith is in the guidance and grace of the Goddess, weaving the tapestry of my story in ways my mind can often only make sense of in hindsight.
My soul has walked this path in many, many lifetimes. And the memories of many lifetimes of persecution, betrayal, and exile still lives in my body and soul. Historically, it hasn’t been safe to be a powerful, connected, spiritual woman in this world. I have been killed for this work many, many times. I have felt the visceral fear in my body as I have accessed and processed these soul memories.
We begin our feminine embodiment journey with the Witch archetype, because clearing the karmic and generational fear of being a powerful, spiritual woman is foundational. Without working through her traumas, we can’t access her bountiful wisdom and medicine.
She not only teaches us the foundational wisdom of cyclicality, of ritual, of the elements, and of creating sacred and intentional containers for magic. She teaches us to be bold, expressed, and unhiding in our reclamation. She teaches the restoration of the feminine way, and she helps us heal the parts of us that hold ancient memory of being burned for carrying the lineage of the divine feminine.
We will no longer be silenced, caged, and killed for our power. The feminine is rising, and it is through the Witch that we begin the journey of reclamation.
Big love,
Hannah
Ps. Join me for a FREE workshop to unravel the Witch wound and step into the medicine path of reclaiming her. Happening in COVEN on Monday, July 21 at 5pm ET. Replay will be posted if you are reading this in the future. Join COVEN here.
If you are ready to embark on a year-long study and embodiment of the feminine through 5 ancient archetypes, click here to read about ROSE TEMPLE: Academy of Feminine Arts.