Posted on November 30, 2021
***Excerpt from my book W.I.T.C.H. to be published in 2022***
The witch wound, also known as the persecution wound, is our collective spiritual trauma that has been carried forward through generations by our ancestors or from past lives we had in which we were persecuted. It is a wound that stems from our innate feminine gifts – our intuition, our sensuality, our embodiment, our psychic powers – being invalidated, belittled, and shamed. It is a wound that stems from women who were of service to the healing of the world, such as herbalists, midwives, wise women, and healers, being tortured and killed for living in authentic expression of their truth.
When we think about the witch trials nowadays, many must think that our society back then was rife with witches going around casting evil spells on everyone and that the witch hunt eradicated them. The stories and imagery that we are fed about witches are however just a detraction from what the trials really were – a mass murder of mostly women but also some men that dared to live outside the box and threatened the status quo. Witches represented a political, religious, and sexual threat.
And fact is, that these women were women just like us. Women that happened to have hair that was too red, who were too sexual, who were in tune with nature and the moon, who were deemed too emotional, or women who were simply accused for no reason at all. This brief context of history is important to understand so we can become aware of how it still manifests in our individual and collective psyche today. Personally, learning of the witch wound was a fundamental aha moment in my own healing journey.
The witch wound manifests in many different ways and like most of our conditioning is often subconscious. Many of us, especially those of us who have chosen to be of service and to share our spiritual gifts in some capacity, have certainly experienced fear and resistance around sharing ourselves and our spiritual messages openly and freely. Some of our fears might even seem irrational, like fears around making a mistake or rattling cages that could draw attention to us; however, the irrational becomes more logical when we take into account the witch wound -- after all, we spent lifetimes in hiding or in fear of being wrongfully accused and those experiences still live in our DNA and our psyche.
For some of us even the simple act of trusting ourselves and our intuition doesn’t feel safe and we would rather rely on logic and reason because living in accordance with our knowing, our magic and the power of the Universe is subconsciously linked to a sense of fear. These are just a few examples of how and why many of us choose to live within the box that is drawn for us by social and religious conditioning.
For me, I have learned that the witch wound manifests in a few additional ways. Since I was a little kid, I have had physical issues with my throat and lungs, and whenever I get sick, I end up with a sore throat or bronchitis; it is my weak spot so to say. Energetically speaking, these are just physical manifestations of stored memories and trauma and the throat chakra is all about being able to authentically express oneself. I also feel complete restriction in my throat, like words won’t form to leave my mouth, in times when I feel extremely vulnerable – one could say that I even feel strangled or suffocated because it doesn’t feel safe to be fully expressed.
I am also a recovering people pleaser with a tendency to fawn. I would work so hard to not rock the boat or to not attract any unwanted attention or criticism. I became a perfectionist and would be a passive bystander in conversations and situations, especially when my opinion differed from others. Getting noticed and attracting unwanted attention is what got us witches in trouble after all. Related to that is my fear of being a fraud or an imposter, which I think many women can relate to. This also stems from the collective wound of being either feared for our gifts or being belittled and shamed for them.
The latest wound manifestation that I am uncovering and working with is my fixation with economic security. This for me is most certainly generational as the women and men in my family have had to struggle to survive. But many women in the past also had to exchange their economic safety for physical safety, which is why our physical safety and economic safety can be so heavily linked, like it is for me.
At the end of the day, it can seem much easier and safer to just stay in the spiritual closet, do our spiritual things quietly and to not tell anyone what we believe in. We all have free will and the choice to do so and in certain situations conforming to the status quo might be a wise decision. But while it will seem easier to simply play along, the stirring in our soul and in our heart to live fully expressed will always be there. Staying in the closet might feel safe, but it will ultimately hold us back from true physical, emotional, and spiritual abundance, wealth, health, and freedom.
As a Woman In Total Conscious Healing, it is part of our curriculum to uncover why we fear what we fear and why something feels unsafe, not just logically but in our bodies. It is part of our curriculum to uncover what is stored in our bodies and in our psyche and to listen to what it is that we need to feel safe. Coming out of the spiritual closet, living authentically, and becoming fully embodied will certainly take you to your edge over and over again. It will fire up your nervous system and at times make you want to literally crawl out of your skin, but it is the only way to really step into your true self and your true power. We are magical, powerful, emotional and intuitive creatrixes and it is our time to walk this earth as who we are born to be. Women In Total Conscious Healing - when YOU rise, we ALL rise.