53. We Need Witches in the World
Would you like to talk with me about Land + Spirit?
53. Witches are Sewing Spirit Back into the World
Healing the Witch Wound and encouraging the sharing of Witch Wisdom are (in my journey) the two most important and needed actions on the table for transforming the error in belief that the world is fragmented and hierarchical.
This healing and wisdom sharing hits all points of intersection that spark my joy: Land + Spirit, Ways of Knowing, Re-connection to Roots, Land + Ancestors and a general speaking of Earth and Spirit in tones of Presence and Warm Welcome.
This whole thing that I’m doing is called Beloved Presence for a reason. Because the Presence of Spirit is here. Right now. Not gone. Not separate. Not held apart for later. Here. In the World of Form. Land + Spirit together forever and WE ALL BELONG.
Your browser doesn't support HTML5 audio
53. The World Needs Witches
Transcript
Lezley (00:12):
Hi folks. Welcome to the Beloved Presence Podcast. I'm Lezley Davidson, your high priestess of Holy shit. I love saying that. Okay, today let's talk about how we need Witches in the world. We need them, they're necessary. I talk to the "dead". Okay? I talk to the unseen, I talk to spirit. I always have. I've just recently come out of the closet with it to the public, so it's been a couple years and I'd like to tell you the story of Irene. So Irene is a friend of mine that I worked with years ago, probably 15 years ago, maybe even 20 years ago. I've been seeing her in a while and she is a friend on Facebook, and so I would kind of keep in touch that way where I'd see the changes in her life, getting married, having children moving to a different country, and I haven't seen her, but she's just such a beautiful soul and a warm, loving person who I was just happy was in the world.
Lezley (01:32):
Last year I found out Irene died, and when I found out she died, my response was intense grief and it was grief that followed me for days and it was grief that didn't make any sense because the grief I felt at her passing was way out of balance for the level of friendship that we had. It didn't make any sense to me and I didn't understand why I was broken hearted by her passing. And so I sat one day and I said, Irene, if you want, let's have a chat. And Irene came and we had a chat. And the long and the short of it is she said, no one's going to keep me away from those I love because I'm "dead". And she air quoted "dead". She air quoted it. And I learned so much from her that day so much about how our belief in what happens to the "dead" contributes to and impacts our relationship with them here and what they are allowed, how far they're allowed to communicate and how present they're allowed to be in our lives.
Lezley (03:12):
And that was the main message was that she wanted to continue relationship with her loved ones and that she can, if we're willing and there's a myriad, there's an infinite way of being in communication with our loved ones who are "dead" "dead". And we should find the way that works best for us and we'll know that it works best because we can feel and experience the presence of our loved ones in the world with us right now. And I was guided very strongly to send this conversation to one of Irene's relatives, and it was only one. There was only one who I was going to send it to if I wasn't sending it to her. I wasn't sending it to anyone. And when I sent her the Facebook message with the attached documentation of the conversation I had, oh my God, I had such a huge emotional breakdown.
Lezley (04:26):
It was the most fear and dread that I've ever felt. It was chaos and I didn't know what was right. I didn't know what was up or down. I didn't know what's the right thing to do. I don't know what the right thing to do is. This was on a constant repeat in my head and it was panic and it was fear. It was terror. It wasn't just fear, it was terror, existential, living terror. And God loved my elders and my support group, my spiritual support because I reached out to them and they were there and they were able to help me feel the feelings and be present for them and walk through them. And that was a threshold for me. It was a threshold to begin to speak in the world actually about communicating with spirit, communicating with the unseen, which is what I've done my whole life, but kept it private, kept it inside, kept it hidden because of the reactions in the world, the reactions in the world are not always favourable towards this type of gift, towards this type of communication.
Lezley (05:42):
Irene's message was passed along to her loved one and what was beautiful about it is that loved one already knew. All I was doing was confirming to her what she already knew and what she was already experiencing. And if you hear anything that I say ever is that the "dead" don't stop. They continue and they are present if we allow them to be here. I communicate with the unseen and I think we all do to some degree. I think it is just a natural part of us being together with spirit in the world of form fite fuaite. So there is a word called Tuar in Irish and Gaelic, it means second sight. It means psychic ability, mediumship fortune, telling prophecy Oracles it means wisdom available to us from the unseen, from spirit. This gift is our ancestral inheritance. And accepting this gift in your life is part of healing your roots and reconnecting to your Ancestors and to your Indigenous, cultural and spiritual practice.
Lezley (07:19):
Tour is common, expected and welcomed warmly by our Celtic Ancestors. Aeries, Oracles prophecy, vision, second sight, psychic abilities are all valid and legitimate ways of knowing. Our Ancestors lived since Time Memorial with gifts of tour as an integral part of our ancient wisdom practices. This kind of direct way of knowing is accepted and part of traditional wisdom practices of Indigenous peoples all over the globe living with the land and being in communication and belonging to land for millennia leads to direct knowing from the land the land teaches us directly. Spirit teaches us directly Indigenous Celtic peoples new and lived this truth in our own Indigenous homelands. Celtic descendants on Turtle Island are remembering this truth and this wisdom. We are relearning truths of our inheritance through the wisdom of the people of this land. The Indigenous nations of Mashiiki Minisi, which is Turtle Island in Anishinaabemowin, are still connected to the land and still hold knowledge and wisdom the land has taught them. Speaking of Indigenous wisdom and prophecy reminds me of the seven Fires prophecy, which is an Anishinaabe prophecy about our future together. Healing our roots and reconnecting to our Ancestors is the call of returning to those who came before. And this is known in the prophecy that this would be the choice that we would make, that we wouldn't choose a road forward until we returned to our Ancestors to remember what we have forgotten. The people of the earth who have been asleep are reawakening to expanded ways of knowing.
Lezley (09:47):
I think it's significant that the term woke is being used as an insult, that it's been used in the lexicon of popular culture as a disparaging, insulting, dismissing way to characterize those who would dismantle supremacy, who would dismantle inequity and unfair and delegitimate hierarchical structures using woke with derision As a dog whistle, it signals that you know what's up. You know that there's a change happening and you don't like it and it makes you uncomfortable. So you're going to dismiss and disparage those who are doing the work and you're going to signal to other people who are uncomfortable about change and don't want to release their power and control that you think you've been able to have based on your categories of self-identity. Whiteness, Western ness, capital, gender class woke as an insult tells us that you're still asleep. It signals your resistance to change and your resistance to inclusion and joining and you can resist for as long as you want, but you can't put the genie back in the bottle.
Lezley (11:23):
This movement is never going to stop because there is a soul desire and movement towards joining towards warm welcome towards invitation. Spirit has never been fully erased here. No matter how the structures of division have tried to eliminate spirit from being here, it's not possible no matter how hard the oppressors have tried to say where and when and how and what Spirit is everywhere for everyone and the people are awakening. Okay, this is a quote from Niigaanibines, Don Jones from Waking Up Ojibwe. I'll have links in the podcast to these websites so that you can peruse them at your leisure. They are fantastic and great sources of wisdom for us who are reconnecting to roots on Turtle Island. The spirits kept us sleeping a long time ago so that we could be safe. Now the spirits are making changes. We are being given a tap on the head to wake us up.
Lezley (12:40):
There's much more that he talks about and it's relevant and it's wise and needed education, so I really encourage you to go to checkout. Waking up Ojibwe, the people of Earth are waking up to all the ways of knowing and we are embracing these ways and anchoring these ways of knowing into the earth and we're sharing the knowledge as far and as wide as the internet will take it. This awakening is mirrored across the globe. Indigenous nations are rising and revitalizing and reactioning the knowledge that they have not ever lost but just kept hidden through fear and oppression and trauma. They are returning to the ways of their Ancestors and returning to the ways of the land. And this is the time of the Celtic People's return to roots. The people of the Celtic diaspora are awakening and reconnecting to ancient wisdom. On our new homelands, we are braiding the roots of our Iron Age ancestral wisdom and the wisdom of the people of this land to which we are newly belonging.
Lezley (13:58):
We are reconnecting to ancient ways of knowing directly from land and spirit, and these are ways of knowing that our Ancestors practiced and that we are still connected tir agus anam fite fuaite gu bràth. It's Gaelic for land and spirit are woven and sewn together forever. Celtic peoples do not think of ourselves as Indigenous, especially on Turtle Island. We view Indigenous people as the Indigenous peoples of this land, the native peoples, the first nations peoples. However, we are all Indigenous to some place. I have encountered resistance online a couple times to my insistence on reconnecting to my ancestral homelands. I do not call myself Irish or Scottish or Welsh. I call myself a Celtic descendant because I am a melange of all of those and I am no longer rooting into Scotland or Ireland or England or Wales. I am rooting on Turtle Island. So my experience here is very different, but my Ancestors are Celtic and they do come from Ireland and Scotland not that long ago.
Lezley (15:22):
I am claimed by my Ancestors and I claim them in return. Yet there are those who would define and limit and dismiss and gatekeep and reject my attempts to reconnect to my Ancestors, to my rightful Indigenous homelands. We're all Indigenous to someplace. No one can define your ancestry for you, nor dictate your experience with your Ancestors on your new homelands. The people of the Celtic diaspora have a responsibility to connect to our new lands. We have a personal responsibility and a spiritual mandate to root our Celtic indigeneity into our adopted homelands with love and honor and respect for the land and the people of the land. Learning about our roots and healing roots for settlers, for white people on Mishiiki Minishi is happening here. This is the path we're walking. This is the prophecy that was foretold. This was the vision that was seen.
Lezley (16:37):
We're not healing our cutoff to be rooted in Ireland or Scotland or England or Wales. We are healing our cutoff to root on Turtle Island and to be here and belong to this land for however long it takes, the land is patiently waiting for us to belong to them again. They're waiting for us to heal our roots and reconnect heart. To belong to this land, the land offers us loving and warm welcome Han m me the are rooting on Turtle Island. The Cailleach are Witches, tha na Cailleachan a'freumcachadh air Mishiiki Minisi; the Witches are rooting on Turtle Island. The world needs Witches. It's what we need right now. The modern image of the Witch with the pointed hat and the cackles in the broom is all that's left of our ancestral Celtic spiritual practice. It's all that's left of our ancient Celtic, land-based Indigenous spiritual practice and Celts all over the world have the Witch wound to heal.
Lezley (18:00):
I'm going to speak just of Celtic healing because that's what I'm doing. That's what I know. I can't speak with any degree of truth or rightness on any other cultural connection to the Witch wound. I know it's not just Celtic, but that's the wound that I know. So the Witch wound is a great and ongoing oppression and devaluation of Western European direct knowing and relationship with land and spirit. It's primarily a female wound. It's not not male, but it's primarily female and it hinders our embodiment and actioning of our valuable ancient and legitimate land-based, ancestor connected wisdom. Christianity has been a major contributor to the Witch wound in its prohibition to Witches and the resulting target and attack of women perceived as being powerful, wise, weird and outspoken. And just for reference, weird literally means otherworldly and controlling becoming. If you are weird, you are like a weird sister, which is part of integral to the larger patterns of creation, of the movement of this creation. Being weird means that you are in relationship to all that is, which is really everyone. It's just being weird means you know it.
Lezley (19:50):
So be a weird sister please. Weird sisters go. So the prohibition of Witches in the Bible speaks specifically to whispering The root of the Hebrew word for Witches is whisperer and it points to whispering spells, but it also points to the contacting Ancestors, our whispering to our Ancestors, and speaking our native languages. Hi, this is editing Lezley. This brings up a story about whispering as I have used Gaelic and Irish to create for myself phrases of power and intention, which are essentially spells. I would practice them at work by whispering them to myself and practicing how to pronounce the properly, Tir agus anam fite fuaite gu bràth. Is e an tir mo chridhe. Tha na Cailleachan a'freumcachadh air Mishiiki Minisi. Keen way guhdomeh koochinokinagawin, which is Anishinaabemowin for we are all treaty people. These things I would practice under my breath and whisper speaking the Gaelic in the world and the Anishinabemowin into the world of these powerful, impactful, spell like phrases, gave me a frisson of energy and just did electricity. Oh yeah, this is what the Bible and the church didn't want us to do. Connect to Ancestors through our native tongues, connect to Ancestors through the language of the land and remember and practice phrases of power and intention that will change the world. We carry a collective inherited traumatic wound of being persecuted and punished for speaking the truth of our language and wisdom into the world.
Lezley (22:05):
This is why immigrants to Turtle Island and other new worlds from Western Europe have little to no rooted Ancestor practices in our cultural and spiritual inheritance. There's nothing. There's no Ancestor connection. There's no Ancestor veneration. There's no practice or tradition of calling on Ancestors or honoring Ancestors. There's nothing that is part of our cultural or spiritual practice. And being cut off from our Ancestors is a great loss. It is cut off at roots and it's cut off from an integral being. An integral embodied, it's cut off from being weird. No Ancestors means no weirdness, means no connection to an ancient ongoing embodiment or a future embodiment. Cutoff from Ancestors is a major wound for cutoff from ground, cutoff from land because it is another cutoff of spirit from being present in the world of form connection to Ancestors powerful. It's powerful to the rooting of people in the world.
Lezley (23:32):
Ancestor connection literally keeps us vital and connected to the land and wisdom and energy and power and charisma of those who came before. It is a cutoff from land and spirit and the ancestor cutoff goes both ways. We're cut off from them and they're cutoff from us in communicating with us directly in the world when we believe that they stop. When we believe that we should not or cannot communicate with the "dead", with the unseen, with our Ancestors, we isolate ourselves from direct spiritual wisdom to do so. To talk to the "dead" or communicate with the unseen in Christianity is perceived as evil, demonic, blasphemous, or at the very least morally corrupt. I have a deep dislike towards Christianity for the harm that it's caused for the very specific harm that Christianity has caused about spirit being erased from this realm, from the world of form, I have a deep dislike of Christianity and those who support its authority and how they seek to limit and police the female experience and expression of spiritual wisdom, power and freedom in the world.
Lezley (25:08):
Witch wisdom is what's needed right here, right now. It's what the world needs and we are here to deliver. The Cailleach are here to deliver. The rejection, judgment. Oppressive control of women by the Christian Church is a great trauma for the world. It is a violent severing of roots from safe ground. It is the wound that once healed will build the bridge of heart's return to the wisdom of land. People will fear and loathe Witches because they've been taught to. I was recently characterized online as being exploitative and having a quote, "disgusting lack of moral compass" for speaking to the "dead". The accuser clearly wanted me to be ashamed of my gifts and how I share my gifts with the world. I'm not ashamed and I will never stop sharing these gifts, nor will I ever stop sharing the truth of tir agus anam fite fuaite gu bràth . That land in spirit are woven and sewn together and are inseparable forever.
Lezley (26:26):
I'm not ashamed and I'll never stop sharing the wisdom of the "dead". And whenever I say "dead", please let you see and hear the air quotes. Because "dead" is not stopping. "dead" is just change. The "dead" do not stop and they are not separated from us. You can communicate with your beloved "dead" if you want. They are not gone. They did not stop. A woman's lack of shame can be an emotional trigger to those that want to control the limits of spirit. In the world of form, woman's courage is often mistaken for insanity. That is a quote from the doctor who refused to institutionalize. Alice Paul. She was a suffragette, an American suffragette. Witches are healing ancient wounds and bringing back into the conscious world what was for a time believed to be set apart from our daily lives. And this is spirit and this is magic.
Lezley (27:29):
We were taught and we believed for a time that it didn't exist or it was somewhere else. Those who are wounded by oppression will become the oppressors when they refuse to heal their own closed hearts. When we deny love and welcome to anyone, we are perpetuating the wound of cutoff and we continue the wound and the lie of a separation that can never exist. The Celtic diaspora is the biggest in the world. It is the exportation of trauma and it is the emmigration of a twisted and wounded supremacy that got spread all over the globe. Today there are more Irish, Scottish, English, and Welsh descendants living in the new worlds than there are living on the islands of our Indigenous homelands. The call is to Celtic descendants, to heal their roots and reconnect to your roots and reconnect your Ancestors on your new adopted homelands.
Lezley (28:37):
Reconnect to the magic that is your rightful inheritance. As a Celtic descendant, we need Witches to walk the bridge of cutoff between the scene and the unseen between spirit and land and share the reality of feaa out loud in the world, woven in, so woven in, sown created together can never be parted. S on Turtle Island are specifically positioned to do this work because we are walking the path of reconnecting and a return to land that has never been cut off from the people. The Indigenous nations of Mishiike Minisi, that our Ancestors try to erase, are the key to the revitalization, rejuvenation, and welcome return to our own Celtic cultural and spiritual inheritance. Witches and Pagan's, support and uphold valid and legitimate ways of knowing that exist outside the narrow scope of material reductionist science. Material reductionist science, Christianity, colonization, white supremacy, capitalism. These are the institutions of belief in the lie of a fractured hierarchical world.
Lezley (30:03):
This world does not exist. It is a fabrication that we choose to believe in. That world is not real. It doesn't exist and has never existed. We believed in a lie that we could be separated from land. We believed in a lie that we could be separated from spirit. We can only believe the lie for so long before land and spirit demand our return to wholeness. This is a call that cannot be denied. The truth of the world is the ongoing and eternal oneness of spirit in the world of tir agus anam fite fuaite gu bràth. I pray that you never get sick of me saying that say it with me.
Tir agus anam fite fuaite gu bràth.
Lezley (31:02):
It is a spell. Is words of power going out into the world to wake you up to the lie that we believed in. Assume love and guidance assume you are known and loved by all of creation. Assume you are known and loved by all of the universe. Assume synchronicity is assistance from creation and allow yourself to be held and supported in the embrace of spirit and land. Fite fuaite. The practice in the world of your highest vision for the world is what's needed right now. Not waiting. Not waiting for the right time, not waiting to feel ready, not waiting for permission now. Now is the time. The time is now for living your highest vision. The time is now for living your highest vision out loud in the world. The time is now for you living the transformative reality that you came here with. You came here for a vision of yourself and your life.
Lezley (32:29):
And it doesn't have to be grand or fantastic or heroic. It just has to be yours. Just has to be yours from the source of your soul. It just has to be yours fite fuaite. Okay, so I'm done. That was long. That was really long. That was way longer than I thought it was going to be. I want you to go to the library. Go to the Kaan library at my website, beloved presence.ca or Lezley davidson.ca. L-E-Z-E-Y-D-A-V-I-D-S-O-N.ca. Go to library the Cailleach Ken library. It's the Witch's Knowing Library. It's the Witch Wisdom Library, but it's in Gaelic. It's not all in Gaelic. The title's in Gaelic. Anyway, go there. I have for you so many tools and teachings to help you start practicing this wisdom in the world. There is no movement without practice. The practice is so important. You have to bring this knowing into the world. It has to be present with you in all the ways that you live, in what you say, in how you act, in the decisions you make. This vision that you hold and bring into the world has to be practiced and I have tools and teachings to help you do that. Alright, love you. Bye.