Oooh, big-ass woo-woo revelation! I’m a witch! A real, house-haunting, broom-riding, cauldron-stirring witch.1
I have always known, but I didn’t know, you know?
As a child, I was deeply interested in magic, witches, fairies, genies, anything mystical and magical. My favorite TV shows were “Bewitched” and “I Dream of Jeannie,” both about secretly-magical women. It bothered me that they had to keep their abilities a secret, particularly because it was at the behest of their men. But I didn’t know I was a feminist back then either.
A favorite book was No Flying in the House, about a little girl who didn’t know she was half-fairy and had to live apart from her parents until she chose to be human. That sucked. I mean, I wouldn’t want to live away from my parents either, but who wouldn’t want to be a fairy? Cheese and rice.
At slumber parties, I would hold an object and “read the energy” from it, playing “fortune-teller” for my friends. I was eight years old—how the hell did I even know how to do that?
But back to that keeping-it-secret thing. History provides endless examples of persecution/execution of women who were suspected of practicing witchcraft. And we all know that’s just more patriarchy bullshit, but bullshit can get you killed, as it has millions of women over the centuries. It goes on to this day in some places in the world.
I recently read a novel about witches around the turn of the 19th century in England. I won’t share the title, because it wasn’t a very good book, but it revealed to me information I had not thought about before—or at least, in a very long time. The “Craft” or practice of witchcraft is not a thing in the world except the Divine Feminine at work. And these days, we often call it Law of Attraction, manifestation, or simply prayer.
Really. Very broadly, men work in the concrete, women in the abstract. Men are about building and destroying material things, women are about connecting with and nurturing people. Women are by nature highly spiritual and connected to the natural and the divine.
As I said, that is a broad assertion, with many exceptions. There are certainly men who are also spiritual and connection-oriented, just as there are many women who are solidly-founded in the material world.
But by a majority, women are the life-givers, the nurturers, the healers, the teachers, the connectors. Going back through history, women’s work became men’s work as men were able to make money doing women’s work. For example, not too many centuries past, it was the women who almost exclusively brewed the ale, dyed the fabrics, nursed the sick, delivered the babies, and many other tasks. When men determined that they could make money doing these jobs, they took them away from the women and called those women witches.
Midwifery was always the realm of women, until male doctors decided they had to do it. Did you know that the position of lying on your back to deliver a baby is only for the doctor’s convenience? Midwives have always encouraged a laboring mother to assume whatever position feels right to her, allowing her the most comfort and control for her delivery.
Likewise, male doctors in the middle of the 20th century began prescribing enemas for women in labor, ostensibly to keep the delivery zone “sterile”, but it’s not sterile to start with and a little poop on baby’s skin doesn’t hurt anything. So those enemas were for the doctor’s convenience, too. The practice has mostly abated in the United States and other developed countries, but you will still find it here and there.
“Witchcraft” became men’s word for anything women did that men either didn’t understand or wanted to make money from—or both. Many women bought into the idea too, such was and is the power of the patriarchy.
By the time I came along, in the latter half of the 20th century, nobody really believed in witches anymore. Oh, there were still a number of practitioners of the Craft, certainly, but there was nothing really mainstream. Except in fiction. Which I gobbled up like Hallowe’en candy.
I was raised in the Presbyterian Church, and happily so. My parents were both raised Baptist, with my father even planning to become a minister, like his grandfather, who was a Baptist preacher and Daddy’s hero. Daddy changed his mind shortly before college graduation, but I still grew up with four Baptist grandparents. If you were at my dad’s parents’ house on Sunday morning, you were Baptist too! I like to say I was half Presbyterian and half Baptist.
In spite of regular church attendance, I never considered my family to be very religious. Maybe we actually were and I just didn’t know the difference! I was involved in youth group, Sunday school, and church choir until I graduated from high school. I got involved again in my mid-twenties and that lasted until some time in my 30s, when I wandered away from the church and wondered toward, “What are my gifts and how do I use them in service to others?”
The idea of using your God-given talents in service to others definitely comes straight out of the Bible. I learned it in church as well as at home, and I have since analyzed my understanding of it to be sure I want to hold that value as my own. I don’t feel that way about everything I learned in church, trust me.
When I was a psychic child who felt spirits around me, unseen except in my mind’s eye, I gave little thought to such abilities. My mom said I had a wonderful imagination and “What a lovely quality!” I shrugged and assumed that all creative people shared my “woo-woo” experiences.
But there I was in my thirties, wondering if being a property manager was what God or the divine or my own soul intended for me to do. I loved my job and I was good at it, I was a good boss, I was a great project manager (still love project management!), and I made pretty good money for a woman at that time and in that field. But I just had this nagging feeling, the tug of Fate, if you will, that there was something else I was supposed to share with the world.
“Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” –Matthew 5:15-16
See? I told you it was in the Bible. And that I can quote the scriptures, being a Presbyaptist.
I no longer believe in the “church God” and I don’t believe that Jesus is my Lord and Savior. In fact, from what I have learned and read about Jesus, I don’t believe he even wanted to be anyone’s Lord and Savior. He was the Great Messenger, in my book, a prophet with some really great, really feminine ideas and ideals! The other night, while trying to sleep, I suddenly thought, maybe Jesus was actually a woman. That would explain all his divine-feminine teachings of love, help, support, nurturing, sharing, etc. And why the men were so very afraid of him!
But I do believe that there is a vast collection of divine entities and energies, which together comprise the force that creates the physical world/universe we live in. Each of us has a chunk of this divine collective, which we commonly call a soul, living within us. (I call my soul Chunky Divine. It just works.)
In my search, I discovered that I was actually quite woo-woo. I began practicing as a psychic and discovered what those unseen spirits were: the late loved ones of my clients. (When I was a kid, they were only people who had passed away, because I didn’t have any clients.) And I was off and running! It was very exciting to be a psychic and a medium! I loved it! I regularly hung up the phone after a reading and sat on the sofa in my office, agape at the power of my abilities and the connection they created between me and my clients and the divine. It truly was a wonder, and I was overwhelmingly grateful.
After almost fifteen years of that practice, I started feeling the tug again. My angels and guides let me know that I needed to expand my services to use ever more of my gifts in service to others.
“More of my gifts?” Hm… I had offered life and/or business coaching as an intuitive off and on throughout my practice as a psychic medium. I love teaching, training, supporting, encouraging others and helping them figure out their own path. So I began to pursue coaching in earnest. I opened the doors to my Mighty MoJo Club and enrolled other midlife women who wanted to use their gifts in service to others, make their lives better, and figure out their destinies.
This new endeavor struggled to get off the ground. I absolutely loved it and knew it was right, but I still wasn’t sure that I was doing enough. My ever-patient angels and guides kept nudging me. The Club and my individual coaching clients became a broader part of my work, and my psychic practice dwindled. This also felt right and actually quite good, because I had grown tired of giving readings. What had once left me agape now left me slightly bored and, if you’ll forgive me, disspirited. Talking to spirits, as special as it could be for my clients, had always felt a little bit like a parlor trick. I mean, it’s real, no sleight-of-hand, but it’s the kind of thing that makes people go, “Ooh! Ahh!”, it’s showy and show-offy. Showman though I am, I was just tired of it. Like an actress having played Ophelia on stage for fifteen years—the appeal had worn smooth.
The Club grew so very slowly; I hired a friend from a coaching group I belonged to (as a client, not as the coach) to help me with marketing. She was an “out” witch. And I vaguely knew I was a witch too, but I didn’t have any form of practice, except regular meditation and communing with my guides. I don’t care much for rituals, either, although I had become a true genius with manifestation, which, technically, yeah, that’s kind of ritualistic and, dare I say, magical? My process of manifestation is actually a ritual that could be labelled spellcasting. No question.
Naturally, just as had happened when I first learned I was a psychic, people and information crossed my path, teaching me about witchcraft without me even thinking about it. I read an article about young people (“Gen Z”) in particular who are forging a new interest in the Craft. I understood that everyone designs their own path.
And, as so often happens to me, it hit me squarely between the eyes one day. I was having my daily Spray-n-Pray time in the shower, and I got the message. “Oh! Well, duh! Of course, I am a witch!”
Like my friend, “A”, who is a psychic and possibly a medium, parading as an intuitive life coach, I have been a witch in psychic medium’s clothing. My psychic gift is but one of the many under my umbrella witch identity.
That’s it. It’s a new identity. Hello, paradigm shift and existential crisis. Except I am not afraid. I feel like I have come home. And I know there is far more to come. I used to wonder, after a few years in the psychic biz, if there would come a time when I found other gifts and what they might be. How about that?
Oh, and I have dubbed my practice “MoJo-Craft.” Chunky Divine approves.
1That’s a quote from the first episode of “Bewitched”, a childhood favorite of mine, when Samantha reveals and proves to her husband that she is, in fact, a witch.
