The recent one-year anniversary of the women's march, and the memes and sayings that have been included with it have reminded me of a commonly used phrase: "We are the granddaughters of the witches you could not burn."
I think what we're seeing on a national and individual scale actually goes much deeper than that. I've done past life regressions and had experiences, whether in reiki sessions, sound baths, or while doing breath work that have shown me glimpses of previous lives when I was a witch.
I've seen one life when I was chained up by my wrists in a dungeon where I was tortured. While doing breath work as part of my reiki two training, I came back to this life to do some healing on this experience. I was then transported further back in time to another life, where I lived alone in the woods in a cabin I built with my own hands. Looking at the cabin and the feelings it stirred in me, I knew I lived there a long time and saw hardly anyone. But at the time, it was the only way I could be safe.
One reiki healer saw a life where I was hung in a village surrounded by woods for being a witch. I was told by another reiki healer that I was being held and tortured in the Vatican for being a witch, and that my eyes were gouged out while I screamed and swore like sailor.
I believe that we are the incarnations of witches, warriors, shamans, healers, medicine women, and—lest we forget—the midwives who were tortured, beaten, and ultimately murdered.
Our current state of affairs is reminding us who we are and the true power that dwells within us. It may have been beaten back over the centuries by social conditioning, a forced patriarchy intertwined with religion, and actual physical violence, but it has never diminished.
For me, there is a difference between being the granddaughters of witches and being the reincarnations of witches because it reminds us of our true power. There is a deep well of knowledge, courage, and strength within each of us.
Have you ever been a natural at a certain skill? Is there something you've ever begun to do and you realized you took to it quite easily? I believe past lives inform our everyday experiences far more often than we realize.
I may be the descendant of a witch who went unnoticed and survived the witch trials, but from what I've studied of my family history, that would go back further generations than I am able to count. My own memories, however, lie much closer to the surface. I can see these lives and experiences as if they part of my past from this life.
For me, this realization feels intimidating at first but also empowering. At the time, we had to keep ourselves and our abilities hidden, and if we did not succeed, or if someone merely had a a target on our back, we paid with our bodies and our lives.
Even though we find ourselves in a tumultuous time, I think taking back that strength and inner knowing, reclaiming that brutalized past and personal experience helps us realize our own abilities.
Because of what I've seen and experienced again, I have been able to reconnect to a part of myself. That connection is still growing, but I'm also able to compare those time periods to this one.
We are in a much safer time now. We are able to #WaketheWitches, as author Lisa Lister would say, and blaze a new path forward for ourselves. We can move beyond the pains of the past and remember our own matriarchal societies. We can forge new societies, new companies, and new mindsets about the role of women in this world.
We have the ability to do for ourselves what we were never able to do before.
RELATED BLOG POSTS
Don’t Be Afraid of Who You Are