Season of the Witch
Greetings Dear Ones,
I hope this finds you well and enjoying our arrival in the days of darkness. Next weekend is daylight savings and we are hurtling towards the holy days and the winter solstice, the shortest and darkest day of the year.
Welcome to the season of the witch.
Do you think witches are scary? Bad? That they eat children and put evil spells on people and consort with the devil?
See the article below to find out a bit about the true meaning of the word witch and why I identify as one myself.
Today is Halloween, or Samhain (pronounced saa-wn), or All Hallows Eve. It is definitely a powerful time for witches.
Today is also the Celtic new year and the time when many cultures understand that the veil between the worlds is thin, when we can more easily connect to and communicate with our ancestors.
Above is a picture of my ancestor altar with a photo of my maternal grandmother and grandfather as well as my mother and aunt, all of whom have passed from this realm except for my aunt.
Not only the Celtic people have understood this time to be an opportunity to connect with and honor those who have passed on, in Mexico, tomorrow is Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead, when families go to cemeteries to share a meal with their loved ones who have died and connect with them when the veil is thin.
I always create an altar this time of year to honor my ancestors, both those who are in my blood lineage and those who are not, like Maria Sabina, a drawing of whom is in the photo to the right of the skull with wings in the image above. She was a Mexican mushroom shamaness whose poetry and teachings have deeply influenced me on my path of learning about earth medicines and their healing ways. I discovered her words and teachings when I was a student at Naropa University and have felt strongly connected to her ever since.
I love marking the wheel of the year with simple rituals like this altar to remember my ancestors, honoring the energies that move through the seasons in the traditions of my blood lineage, my spiritual path, and the indigenous earth wisdom that we all hold deep in our DNA.
In the wisdom stream of Ayurveda, which I am also a student of, this is the season of Vata, the season of air and ether, the most refined elements, most closely connected with the spiritual world beyond form. Here we find yet another resonance across systems that understands the energetic wisdom of the seasons and how to safely and effectively interact with the energies as they move around us and within us.If you'd like to ground and balance your Vata, come see me for Abhyanga, specifically designed with Vata balancing in mind. Or, come see me for private yoga or integrative health counseling to discover pranayama, asana, herbs, and seasonal diet to support healthy Vata.
Here is an image of my mom (in her high school senior photo), I appreciate this time of year and the opportunity to connect with her more deeply.
One of my favorite 'mantras' from my mom's wisdom is 'God always turns everything to the good honey'. I so appreciate that constant reminder rolling through my head in her voice that even when events in our lives appear sad or difficult, in the bigger picture, they are always for our souls highest good and purpose.
I hope it might serve you as much as it does me.
If you'd like any comfort or support during the dark days, don't hesitate to reach out.
With Love,
~Liz
And just for fun; The Season of the Witch by Donovan
You might be surprised to know that I identify as a witch. This is an image of one of my favorite witches, after whom my botanical business is named, the Russian folktale character, Baba Yaga. She is a master herbalist, a dangerous wisdom giver, and she rides around in a mortar, stirring with a pestle, and sweeps away her tracks with a birch broom. She can mix together a few herbs and grow to the size of a house, or shrink to the size of a thimble. The forces of time are at her command. She is very ancient and has refined her wisdom over 100's of years in this realm.
The word witch comes from the words wicca and wicce (feminine and masculine forms) and later became wicche in Old English, which didn't distinguish between the genders. The words originally meant ‘wise one'.
During the inquisition, there was a book created for and used by inquisitors to seek out witches and torture them into confession and then burn them alive. This book is called the Malleus Maleficarum, or the Witches Hammer. I have a copy of this book, translated into English, and in the book it reads 'there is no greater enemy to the church than the midwife'. The Inquisition was an office set up within the Catholic church to root out heresy, that is, anything that didn't agree with the official teachings of the church.
You might wonder why midwives would be included at the top of the list of worst enemies of the church. It is because the inquisition was a tool to suppress women's knowledge of healing and connection to the earth, use of herbs and magic for healing, and direct connection with the divine. The church was closely involved also with the physicians guild at the time, which didn't allow women to belong to its membership and wanted to monopolize the healing sphere.
According to Barbara Erenreich and Deidre English in their book on the subject "The age of witch hunting spanned over four centuries (from the 14th to 17th century)...The witch craze took different forms at different times and places, but never lost its essential character: that of a ruling class campaign of terror directed against the female peasant population. Witches represented a political, religious and sexual threat to the Protestant and Catholic churches alike, as well as to the state."
The battle between the medical profession (primarily men) and midwives has gone on up until the last couple of generations, and is still alive today. According to OurBodiesOurselves.org:
“...In 1914, “twilight sleep” was introduced. Twilight sleep was induced through a combination of morphine, for relief of pain, and scopolamine, an amnesiac that caused women to have no memories of giving birth. Upper-class women initially welcomed it as a symbol of medical progress, although its negative effects were later publicized.”
In 1915, Dr. Joseph DeLee, author of the most important obstetric textbook of that period, described childbirth as a pathologic process that damages both mothers and babies “often and much.” He said that if birth were properly viewed as a destructive pathology rather than as a normal function, “the midwife would be impossible even of mention.”
I was lucky enough to have two natural home births, and I am completely aware that natural childbirth is actually a right of passage that allows us to step into our true power as women (there are also other rights of passage and women who choose not to give birth have many opportunities to step into their power as well).
The propaganda and ongoing malignment of women healers is not something that just happened hundreds of years ago. To a lesser degree, it still goes on today. Mary Daly in her books calls it 'refined mind binding'. After the burning times, that memory has stayed in the DNA of women healers and we know the danger of being open in the world with our healing ways and our earth wisdom. That being said, I am proud to call myself a witch.
I am a healer (bodyworker, yoga teacher, ordained minister, clinical herbalist, and Ayurvedic practitioner). Not so long ago, these gifts would have gotten me tortured and burned alive.
I mostly consider myself a green witch, a wise woman who has studied and learned the ways of plants. One of my favorite verses to sing is from the Rig Veda, an ancient Indian scripture based on even older oral traditions goes like this:
“Plants as Mothers and Goddesses, I address you. May I gain light, energy, sustenance, your soul, you who are a conscious being."
I do consider the plants as Mothers, Grandmothers, and Goddeses who have gathered their wisdom from 500 million years on this planet in order to offer it to us and our non-human relatives. They have developed chemicals without which we would not exist and certainly not be able to think and function with the rhythms of waking and sleeping. Plants designed and developed trytophan, which in our bodies becomes seratonin, then melatonin, and eventually endogenously produced DMT.
That is only one small example of the vast wisdom of plants.
I am 49 years old and am a witch (wise woman) in training, I imagine my true wisdom will start percolating in my 60's as I begin the final trimester of my embodied life here in this realm.
I am so grateful for the many teachers and guides in this life and beyond, embodied and disembodied, who have helped me to remember the ancient birthright of women and humanity to be in connection with the earth as our mother, with the informing wisdom of Sophia and the darkness, and the light and wisdom of Father sky. I am so grateful to those who helped me to remember my power of natural childbirth. I am so grateful for those that helped me awaken my gifts as an herbalist and vegetalista, especially the plants themselves.
Long live the season of the witch.
Green blessings to you all.
Reading List and Films for Aspiring Witches
Witchcraft Medicine: Healing Arts, Shamanic Practices, and Forbidden Plants by Claudi Muller-Ebeling, Christian Ratsch, and Wolf Dieter Storl
The Last Wild Witch by Starhawk (this is a children's book which I love)
The Sorceress — A beautiful film from 1987 based on the medieval journal of Etienne de Bourbon, a French Friar, describing his experience in a small French village where he was sent by the church to root out heresy.
Witches Midwives and Nurses: A History of Women Healers by Barbara Erenreich and Deidre English
Birth as an American Right of Passage by Robbie Davis Flloyd
Spiritual Midwifery by Ina May Gaskin
Shakti Woman: Feeling our Fire, Healing Our World-The New Female Shamanism by Vicki Noble
Maria Sabina: Selctions (Poet's for the Millenium) by Maria Sabina, edited by Jerome Rothenberg
The Lost Language of Plants by Stephen Harrod Buhner
Secret Teachings of Plants by Stephen Harrod Buhner
Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm: Beyond the Doors of Perception, Into the Dreaming of Earth by Stephen Harrod Buhner
The Witches Ointment by Thomas Hatsis
