Whether to Embrace the Inner Witch or Not

A long simmering reflection in the quantum

In a time when so many of us are struggling with how to navigate the poly-crises that we’re living inside, I need to preface this long post with the fact that the paradigms the so-called enlightened modern society have used to solve the grave issues facing humanity and our environs have proven woefully inadequate (and more often destructive) to address the complexity of what is unfolding. Hence, it seems necessary to create a hybridity of strategies to move through what we are witnessing and experiencing. Audre Lorde’s often quoted essay comes to mind: “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”. This is not something new; others have been marrying activism with ritual, scientific thinking with energy work, and ancestral teachings with organizing knowhow for decades, well, actually centuries of living under oppressive systems. This essay speaks to my journey into owning and embracing the invisible, intangible wisdoms that have allowed me to trust and have faith in regeneration and positive possibilities.

Plant Witch - digital painting created with ProCreate - 2024

In one my April posts, I mentioned how non-duality was becoming more palpable as a guiding force for understanding the spaces I now occupy. I respect my inner skeptic, but I have asked her to take a few breaths before shouting down or hissing at what might seem irrational or the unquantifiable. Absolutism, a theory that suggests that only one way is right is not useful in this time of chaos. We need to be adaptable and curious, and able to hold paradox. There’s a new buoyancy and fluidity that comforts me when procrastinating on solving a problem. Perfectionist patterns want to pull me into their grip, but I have the awareness to witness and neutralize them.

Writing about my spiritual journey has not come easily. Despite being raised with scientific fundamentalism, a Cartesian or Enlightenment approach that ushered in the Modern Era and all its oppressive contradictions, my early and very animated experiences in nature offered me another path into the mysteries of life. As I’ve aged and learned firsthand about the shadow side of Modernity and the ways it offers up the Earth’s resources and people as extractive commodities, I can see that the instincts of my young self were spot on.

At the same time that I can embrace a worldview that explores many multiverses, I’ve had an aversion to superficial, new-age babble, so that’s made it hard for me to find words to explore the complex landscape I’ve been traveling. Nevertheless, I need to write about this terrain to clarify for myself and understand better what gives me comfort in the midst of the chaos of this time. Yes, I use the word “chaos” a lot these days. I need to remind myself and the reader that chaos can also be a place of great fertility and experimentation, and I recognize that this piece of writing is emerging despite all the swirling stresses that I’ve been carrying.

My spiritual beliefs have little to do with my birthplace, Salem, Massachusetts, because the latter fact just made me a target of ridiculous taunting in my family: “Here comes the witch,” was often uttered as a way to influence behavior that was perceived as “too much” or “out of control.” Of course, if anyone has read the history of the Salem Witch Trials or “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller, you would know that those trials were about oppression, hate, and fear, not about the juiciness of working within the quantum realm. My continually evolving belief systems must have begun as a reaction to rather than the result of where I was born.

Reclaiming the word “witch” has been a task for many of my peers, both younger and older. A recent series called the Witch School, on the podcast How to Survive the End of the World, has 26 episodes with some inspiring people who identify as witches. The interviews are led by adrienne maree brown, the activist, author, cultural worker, and self-described spell-caster. She gives a really good overview of how these spiritual practices have evolved; those practices include rituals, ceremonies, altar building, meditation, spell-casting, song magic, channeling, astrology, tarot, herbology, communicating with the spirits of ancestors and the more than human, and so much more.

Many of these ancient practices have been distorted and made superficial by both capitalism and the new age appropriation of indigenous traditions, so despite having a deep, instinctive desire to incorporate them into more of our lives, many of us have some resistance, insufficient commitment or support, or can’t even recognize that this lack of spiritual nourishment may be a part of our current alienation.

Because my personal history includes the trauma of my father being targeted by the witch hunts of the McCarthy Era, as well as the epigenetic triggers caused by pogroms and persecution in Eastern Europe, I have not been eager to put any label on my beliefs & practices which might give threatened folks more reasons to attack me or perceive me as dangerous. Just the questions I asked and the ones that I encouraged my art students to ask provoked a reactionary response from white, male colleagues in academia - my manner of facilitating classes was perceived as harmful partly because I was not marching in step to the status quo art world and I was a smart female who whose physical appearance embodied “the other.” I was marked without opening my mouth, so why provoke more flack or give those who are intimidated more ammunition to dismiss me.

Still, in this chapter of my elder years, I know longer give much of a hoot about the labels others assign to me, nor do I want to box myself into them either. Despite this desire to persist without labels, there’s obviously no rock to hide under in the current world of connectivity and persistent surveillance. May whomever becomes reactionary in relation to my world view find good ways to process their trauma that doesn’t involve harming others or me. Guess I need to do a protection spell now. LOL.

My initial experiences with energies that were inexplicable came from intimate and secret conversations that I had with trees as a child. Instinctively, I went to trees for comfort, over and over again. I held them in my arms, shared my concerns with them, and hid under their boughs for safety. I did not question this ritual. It seemed “normal” to me at the time. I did have a sense that it was a private thing, my own little mystery, not to be shared with family members or playmates. I didn’t know the word “sacred” then, but I now recognize this ritual in that way.

I spent a lot of time alone in the garden, and had conversations with birds, insects, and whatever I encountered in the more than human world. That’s when my altar building began. I didn’t have many conventional toys at home, so I learned to entertain myself with whatever I scavenged and made magic dwellings and devotional spaces for my “friends.”

As someone raised by an economics research editor (pre-motherhood, she was a top-notch social studies teacher) and a scientist/inventor/activist who were both vocal agnostics and anti-religion, it was impossible to share with them how I was straying off their path. Both parents were avid gardeners, passionate about growing food, so my presence in the garden probably did not alarm them. I appeared to be using my imagination in playful ways and I did not disclose what my “games” meant to me.

Not surprisingly, my parents were insulted and derisive when I suggested, in my 20s, that gardening was a spiritual practice. If I talked about my intuition, I would receive the unwelcome response of “how did I raise a mystic” from my dad. That rhetorical question made me cringe, so I decided to hide anything that might alienate him. Even now, in my elder hood, I sense that some deeply embedded cynicism and skepticism came together to slow down the writing of this essay (I had originally planned to post this for Samhain, the pagan holiday with Celtic origins - for those who don’t know, that holiday was October 31-November 1st). Thankfully, this long pause has just been a temporary gag. It’s truly a necessity to explore this part of my identity within my fractured memoir, so I’m going to do my best to unearth much of what sits buried in here.

As is probably quite obvious already, outing one’s spiritual beliefs can be an awkward thing to do. There’s a strange superstition that creates a bit of fog in my head: don’t talk about this stuff too much because it might stop working. It’s like jinxing your creative process by talking about a project before it’s halfway cooked. Or talking too much about how strong your immune system is, and then getting sick the next day. But a part of me believes that it’s useful to share this journey with others, especially during this precarious time in the world.

Despite relying on spiritual energies to keep me steady, the discomforting impact of witch hunts on my psyche, especially in this political moment of extreme backlash against women, human rights, and free speech, has made me more cautious about how I frame these thoughts. Given how confused and scared some parts of our society have become in the past few decades, it’s no surprise that I’d have some anxiety about stepping more fully into what has always been present (witch-wise). The rise in the rightwing energies around the world have heightened my caution about sharing too much in public forums, knowing how easily words can be misconstrued and weaponized.

Witchcraze by Anne Llewellyn Barstow, details some of the extreme hysteria that launched the state and church-sanctioned killing and torture of women and men accused of witchcraft. There are many other books and articles that detail this period in history, including the brilliant analysis of the relationship between the witch hunts and the rise of capitalism by Silvia Federeci mentioned in a previous post. Watching this documentary film, The Burning Times from 1990 will give the reader some of the history. There are now many books and articles in which the true nature of this hideous practice, killing women as part of land and wealth grabbing, are detailed. The purpose of this essay is not to summarize that research, but I do want to remind readers that witch hunting continues unabated today in several parts of the world including Indonesia and sub-Saharan Africa.

Meditative Witch - digital painting created with Procreate - 2023-4

As a young child, I could not get enough of folk and fairy tales. I was often carrying huge piles of books home from the library. Despite the pop media’s depiction of the good witches in the Wizard of Oz, most of those early tales depicted witches as cruel, dangerous, smelly, ugly, and wrinkled, wizened old ladies; those images were hard to shake, but there was something calling me to the old stories, something underneath the surface, something hidden and powerful, but I could not name it at the time.

Meanwhile, in the dominant culture, a complicated backlash against the early surges of 2nd wave feminism was shaping itself. I recall watching a few episodes of the very sappy series, Bewitched, as a young teen and being baffled by its trivializing depiction of a nose-twitching sex kitten as a contemporary good witch. There were other pop culture images that were more horrific that I avoided. I was and am not a fan of horror flicks. Seeing women depicted as dangerous manipulators of the unseen has been a traditional trope of misogyny; it gives the backlash more fuel for their cruel, controlling behaviors. With so many distortions about the doings of witches piling up in my imagination, it’s no surprise that I was extremely cautious when I learned about the growing movement of women who were claiming witch identities, leading rituals and ceremonies, sitting inside and on the edges of the expanding counterculture.

Somehow, during my teen years, I gave myself permission (in truth, I really had no choice) to make art and write poetry: words and images started pouring from dreams onto paper and canvas and without realizing it, I was hatching spells and conjuring up a different reality for myself. I didn’t recognize my creative work as magic at the time, but, in retrospect, it saved my life. During that time, I was reading books about radical psychology and pedagogy, experimenting with psychedelics, and began organizing my peers for political action (anti-war and anti-dress code). The latter effort was successful, and misled me into thinking that direct action always worked. Of course, since then I’ve learned that the magic of activism typically takes generations of steadfast dedication, including vigilance for the constant threat of backlash legislation.

I’m not sure at what age I learned about the European witch burning of the Middle Ages, but I’m sure I was exposed to a disturbing dose of that history when I started reading feminist literature. Sadly, there was a paucity of the latter when I was first thirsty to read such things, but eventually libraries and bookstores had more than the commonly accessible Simone de Beauvoir, Shulamith Firestone, and Ms. Magazine. All of my research was independent at the time because courses in women studies or feminism did not yet exist at the schools I attended. It’s also sad to say that despite my rage against the sexism that I was encountering and my joy at being part of a crew of women art students fighting that some of that sexism at my college, there was a bit of internalized patriarchy that made me leery of courses focused on women’s topics until the early 90s when I was invited into an eco-feminism class at the Institute for Social Ecology. While deprogramming from some aspects of patriarchal indoctrination is a life-long process, I am now much more mindful of the contradictions when they emerge.

After college, I moved to NYC. In the mid-1970s, the city was a gritty and exciting place, still cheap enough to share space, creative ideas, and meals with peers. There were so many choices about where to put my energy, but I knew that I wanted to find my way into an artist’s life. Listening to Pacifica Radio (WBAI-fm) while I made paintings and drawings on the floor of my bed room (which was also the living room), in my tiny shared apartment, was grounding. Margot Adler, an outspoken pagan/witch who, during that time, was writing the book, Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers and Other Pagans in America Today was my favorite host. She introduced me to an expanded world of speculative fiction, initially through reading the whole book, Ecotopia (Ernest Callenbach) on the air. So unlike the science fiction I had tasted in school, his reimagining of the world eventually led me to believe that as bad as things might be, there were other options besides dystopia.

In the early 90s, when working as a visiting artist at the Institute for Social Ecology in Vermont, I was asked to chauffeur Margot Adler from the Burlington Airport and bring her back to the Goddard campus to to be a guest workshop leader. I was a gushing and blushing fan girl during the whole ride. I appreciated that as a workshop facilitator, leading rituals, she offered us a healthy dose of sarcasm and self-critique in the midst of what we were doing and that somehow made the whole process of creating ritual feel more welcoming and safe.

My continuing ambivalence about embracing spiritual tools was reinforced at various times by encounters with people I respect. I arrived at graduate school in Nova Scotia holding a copy of Jose Arguelles’s The Transformative Vision: Reflections on the Nature and History of Human Expression. I was dissuaded by my studio mate, a Marxist performance artist, and his anthropologist wife from pursuing that line of research. Instead, I focused on learning political theory in relation to art making, reading John Berger, Ivan Illich and many others. (None of this wishy washy, new age crap for this increasingly political artist).

Yet, in 1984, when I met Suzi Gablik, the art writer who became a huge advocate of my audience-participatory work, she introduced me to the writings of various visionary authors including the work of Rupert Sheldrake, Riane Eisler, and Morris Berman. When she took me to the Ojai Foundation to work with Joanna Macy (a new podcast called We Are the Great Turning will give you an idea of Joanna’s work) where I met Joan Halifax, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Stephen Foster & Meredith Little (of the School of Lost Borders), my focus shifted once again to the energies that could not be so easily described by the rational. The impact of the vision fast I did with Stephen & Meredith in 1993 took me into deep time I had not yet experienced.

Meeting my late husband, Dr. Bob Spivey, in 1988, a political activist, healer, and practicing Buddhist, was the tonic I needed to merge what had felt like very conflicting values. Our partnership and discussions allowed me to flow between trusting in the unknown, and a deep critique of oppressive systems. After our first conversation about mutual passions, the rightness of our connection was confirmed in a dream that same night.

And dreams are definitely a kind of magic; they had already been informing so much of my creative practice, and they became more important to me after moving back to the west coast in 2003 when I discovered, via a new therapist, that she and a colleague were starting a women’s dream circle. I loved the process of deconstructing dream images and stories via placing symbolic objects in a tray of sand and dramatic role playing. Both facilitators were trained by Stephen Aizenstat (who coined the term and process of “dream tending”). We stayed committed as a circle for a good six years or more. Life’s impermanence disrupted our work together, with one member dying of a chronic illness, another becoming a widow, and two of us moving off-island.

Inspired by the dream circle, I created a course at UWT called The Artist as Visionary and Dreamer, but I felt that I needed more training to facilitate it. To that end, I worked with Robert Moss in two week-long intensives after moving to Seattle. His Lightning Dream Technique became a very useful tool, both in the classroom and outside of it.

So as I recall all the influences that have allowed me to truly own my more spiritual side, I would be remiss if I did not mention my years of learning about the power of meditation. Before meeting Bob, I had practiced yoga. At age 15, when I was taught my first asanas by a boyfriend who was part of an ashram in NYC. I did chanting and meditation with occasionally, but it was a haphazard practice, without much depth, despite the centering aspect it offered.

In my 30s, I developed more depth in my sitting practice by doing “Despair & Empowerment Work” with Joanna Macy, training with Thich Nhat Hanh at multiple retreats, and practicing within sanghas coming from the Plum Village tradition as well as Vipassana for over 30 years. With Bob’s commitment to both his sitting practice and his social justice/eco-activism, I recognized that these passions informed and nourished each other. Rather than cancelling each other out, they created a powerful flow and exchange. The whole concept of “interbeing,” how we are so deeply connected to the elements, the more than human, and the ancestors, continues to open me to the invisible threads of spiritual life.

Regeneration of the Biome - Procreate digital painting - 2023-2024

Merging all of these past experiences to deal with the stresses of caregiving and the heartbreak of this time in the world, will be the subject of this continuing essay where I will dance more fully into how intuition, ritual, magic, and the quantum realm inform my current life. I’m pausing here to give you, the reader, a bit of a break, and so I can pack for my upcoming journey across the pond.

I have just returned from an eco-embodied arts residency at Centrum in Port Townsend, Washington which I will write about when I’ve had more time to digest the experience, and I’m about to leave for a sacred activism residency at Tamera in Portugal. But in the “present moment, wonderful moment,: I need to pack and tend to my garden before I leave for 3 weeks. I look forward to hearing from anyone who has time to read this post.