Reclaiming the Power of Terror and the Voice of the Witch
It is easy enough for the average person to imagine that the witch hunts were necessary. I think, somewhere, deep in all of our bones, there lives a place of deep fear against the witch. In fact, that fear is so deeply embedded that even though I have practiced a way of life connected to the elements, in communion with the ancestors, weaving light and magic and beauty and song that shifts consciousness– I have long still felt ashamed to call myself a witch. When I realized this, I realized how successful the witch hunts had truly been.
When we hear Witch Hunt, most of us sense and see, specifically, the Salem Witch Trails, popularized in modern culture and high school assignments on The Crucible, but the reality is astonishingly more extensive. The true swath of the witch trails spanned over three centuries in Europe and the Americas– from Germany, to England and Scotland, to colonial America– and they decimated an entire group of women– some truly magical in some capacity, and many not.
These hunts were largely driven by a peak of religious conflicts, the spiritual impacts of colonization, and crushing layers of political instability, combined with a deeply ingrained spiritual cosmovison (view of the world) in which God and the Devil are sky-daddy beings actively in a way interacting with everyday life, in such a way that crop failure is the devil’s work. And if that is so, someone – or something– must be working for him. And this deep-seated fear and hysteria produced a multi-century community and political obsession that killed 50,000 people, 75% of whom were women. Somehow, someway, someone would need to be held responsible for the reality of this world.
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It is easy when we enter into states of fear, to begin to look for a source, a culprit, a cause. And it is easier still to look upon those who are marginalized, unknown, less understood, and fringey as the reason. Of course, the less we know someone or something personally, the easier it is for humans to make it black or white, to dissociate from our own sense of humanity, and then, to theirs.
The complexities of the witch hunts are vast – and the ways in which women were “tested” as witches is far more bizarre and obscure than any sort of medicine practices I have ever known – Can you float in the water like the devil, or sink like a human? Are you light? Can you fly? Do you have an extra skin tag or nipple? All of these mean you’re a witch.
These layers of insanity are easy to see. Some, in the witch trials, more complex. Because the truth is some of us are actually magical. We do actually carry the capacity to dreamwalk, to weave herbal medicines that heal, to sing songs that awaken the heart.
And so, there is complexity– and this is where things get stranger. Some of the accusations in the trails suggested that certain women in the communities came to them in dream states.
And the reason this is so strange, and even more complex, is that some of us do visit other humans in dreams. Those of us who carry dream medicine, who are dreamers, often have entire networks of communities in the otherworld, and visit others to offer medicine, a mirror, or wisdom– and are often the object of other people’s psychological projections. And what I mean by this is that in a Puritanical community such as Salem, a woman who lived on that edge of that community, who made herbal medicines, or who carried the capacity to dreamwalk, could have activated in others a very strong projection of fear. And may have actually shamanically visited someone in dreamtime, or may have been the object of that person’s repressed inner world, and never actually done anything at all, except exist.
Some of us trigger other people’s psychological projections and fears simply by existing. Those of us who tend to think, live and act on the outer fringes of societal norms— our simple existence threatens the status quo that lives in the inner psychological terrain, especially in societies where certain aspects of the human experience are taboo.
And suddenly, women who make medicines and heal, and sing songs that transport consciousness– are terrifying. Because what would it mean if all of that was actually part of the greater web of reality? What would it mean about me if this whole reality were not what I thought.
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One thing I know for sure in our contemporary culture– woven with ancient threads that weave back through our ancestors in Europe– is that we are terrified of the oracle. We are absolutely terrified of a woman so deeply connected to her inner knowing, to the heart of Life, to the pulse of the primordial, that we kill them rather than receive their truth.
This has happened time and time again – from the silencing of the Oracles at Delphi, to the slaughtering of the “witches,” to the covering and stuffing of the medicine of the ancient and holy springs around the world.
This world is terrified of the voice of the Great Mother. And so, time and time again, it has killed the voice. It has killed the voice of the Oracle, of the Elder, of the spring, and of the Witch. These voices are inconvenient, life-changing, confronting– and they evoke within us– terror.
This truth is why they killed us.
And the terror is why we kill ourselves again and again.
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But in truth, there is one path forward, and as always, it involves meeting the one thing we think we cannot meet.
We must meet our own terror.
We must learn to meet and sense and hold the depths of terror that we carry in our bodies, and to own and reclaim any psychological outward projections. In order to fully reclaim our bodies and hearts and souls from the shattering of the witch trials- whether we were perpetrators or victims (and aren’t they both simple sides of the same coin?), we must hold ourselves responsible for holding terror.
Had the Puritans and the governments in Germany and Scotland, or the agents in the Roman empire been able to meet and sense and hold TERROR in their bodies, something would have happened. And the same can happen to us now.
When we can hold terror in our bodies, and not repress it, or project it, an alchemy begins that transformations terror into awe. After all, the original use of the word “terrible” means – to inspire fear, awe or formidable power.
What would happen if we were able to hold terror so wholly in our bodies that we could begin to feel the awesome power of the Oracle’s voice?
What would happen if we were able to hold terror so wholly in our bodies that we could begin to allow that truth to shake away the foundations of our illusory-induced suffering?
What would happen if we were able to hold terror so wholly in our bodies that we could actually awaken out of the hall of mirrors and into the hallows of sacred Love?
This invitation is the alchemy we need - to turn our terror into a great shaking alive, as we hold the power of Life, of earth, of holy water, of volcano, of Love, in our bodies.
This is what the witches, the oracles, the shamans, the wise ones, the elders – this is the possibility that they hold for us. They hold a possibility of the terrible, awe-inspiring, life-giving new world, one born through our embodiment of conscious power.
In this possible, may every witch hunt cease, may every spring break open, and may every voice of the oracle rise. May it be so.
P.S. If you are a witch, oracle, keeper of the rose, wise one, poet, songstress, or visionary, and you are ready to reclaim your voice from the depths of this wound, I will be offering the third round of The Holy Voice, live starting February 2. This 3-month sojourn through the mythic landscapes of our ancestors invites you to reclaim the power of your voice. Reply to this message or comment below with your email, and I’ll add you to the growing waitlist. Every graduate of this course will be invited back at a special rate.
