My Journey to The Witches' House

I've always wanted to write a blog. I've never been able to. I've always found writing really hard. My activated nervous system has always struggled to sit down and concentrate for long enough. My self-critical mind has always convinced me that I don't have anything important enough to say that others would want to read. So I never started....that is until now!

Something within me has shifted recently as I continue my journey of trauma healing. There is a kind of settling down, a new found clarity and a rather strange ability to focus as I work to rewire my system. So it feels like time to finally get started. I guess everything has it's own timing. And it feels like now is the time to commit.

So here I am committing to a monthly blog. With no expectations or goals. I learned a long time ago that detaching from the outcome is always the best way to live. I just want to start writing because I think it will help my creative expression and doing it through a blog gives me a bit of helpful accountability. 

And so where to begin? Well, maybe at the beginning, maybe with my own story. It makes sense to share a bit about the most incredible journey I've been taken on over the last few years, which has brought me to this point of birthing The Witches' House of Healing Arts into the world. I kind of need you to know where I'm coming from so you can decide whether there might be something here for you. So thank you for reading this far, if you've got your cuppa and a spare 5 minutes of calm, then I'll begin.

Born from the Magic and Mayhem of Menopause!

My inner journey began in my early thirties when I began to immerse myself in the world of therapy, rites of passage work and women’s circles, on a quest for inner healing. One of the big teachings of this work for me was the power and importance of seasons and cycles and in a break from the patriarchal linear growth model, I always tried to live my life aligned to the natural flow of my menstrual cycle, and with awareness of the maiden, mother, crone phases of my womanhood.

In 2016 as I entered my mid-forties, peri-menopause snuck up on me rather unexpectedly. My menarche and motherhood initiations had been somewhat non-existent and so this time, I wanted to cross the threshold of menopause deliberately and with intention. I had no children to take care of, no 9-5 job to hold down, and some meagre savings in the bank, so I gifted myself a whole year of “conscious menopausing” to simply follow my body and see where it took me. I had no idea of the magic and the mayhem that would follow!

Along with a whole load of the crazy physical symptoms, - you know the ones; the hot flushes, achy joints, migraines, sleepless nights etc - my inner world too became a black stormy sea of emotions as waves of pain, despair, confusion, anxiety, rage, terror and powerlessness came crashing in around me. Childhood wounds resurfaced, I lost all sense of any identity or purpose I’d worked hard to build, and I had no idea who I was anymore or what my life was for. As I flailed around in the dark, desperately trying to keep my head above water, there was a tiny flicker of light in the distance and I began to swim towards it.

That light was the call of my Ancestors and the life raft that would ultimately save me. I took hold of the faint red thread and began following it back through my ancestral timeline on a search for my indigenous roots. I signed up for an Ancestral Healing Practitioner’s Training and began researching the history of Britain through reading any books I could get my hands on, and watching whatever I could find on YouTube. I needed to piece together the timeline back through all the invasions and key events to understand as much as I could about all those people who stood behind me in my ancestral lineage. And that’s when the witches arrived.

When the Witches Came Knocking...

I never really thought much about witches., I certainly never considered myself one, and whilst I’d heard of the witch hunts, I didn’t really know anything about their actual history. That was until they came knocking so loudly at my door, I had no choice but to let them in - metaphorically speaking.

In my daily shamanic drumming practice they started coming into my journeys. Now witches were no longer mythical characters in black pointy hats, they were Ancestors, real people from whom I had descended. During these journeys they would show me what happened to them, bringing me face to face with the horrors of life during the Early Modern Witch-hunts.

Each journey brought up profound grief, loss, rage and terror which I had no choice but to feel and allow to express through my own body. I saw how profoundly so many people had been affected emotionally, physically, spiritually and mentally during a period of almost 300 years - that’s 20 generations of Ancestors living in traumatic states of being. Strangely, the more I cried and raged on their behalf, the better I began to feel. I started to see how their unconscious beliefs and behavioural patterns, rooted in mere survival, echoed my own and had held me hostage for most of my life.

Weaving in what I had learned about epigenetics and generational trauma, I came to understand just how deeply their experiences continued to affect not only my own life, but our whole collective unconscious almost 400 years later. Even though the threat of burning and hanging is no longer a reality in the UK, we continue to “witch-hunt” each other albeit in different ways.

The Untold Hystory of the Burning Times...

I needed to know more and spent a pretty heavy 12 months of researching this dark chapter of our collective history, described by Starhawk as “The Burning Times.” Instigated by the Catholic Church back in the 1400s, witch-hunt hysteria spread like wildfire across Europe with academics citing 40,000-60,000 victims between 1450 and 1750.

Fuelled by the paranoid King James VI of Scotland, who became King of England and Ireland in 1603, Britain did not escape and over 4000 people, mainly women, were hung or burned here for crimes of witchcraft, believed to be practicing magic with harmful intent on behalf of the devil. Psychologically, the witch-hunts affected not just the women accused as witches, but the whole community; men, women and children. I saw how my Ancestors had stood on both sides of the victim/persecutor line and that I too carried the potential of both possibilities; that I had been hurt but had also caused hurt to others.

As the fear of witches gripped the collective mind, The Burning Times created a wound in the psyche of humanity that we still haven’t recovered from. By facing and feeling the deep emotions of it all, I was finding a way to heal my own little bit and was feeling so much better in my own skin. 

A 13 Moon Pilgrimage that Would Forever Change My Life...

After a year of “conscious menopausing” which included months of deep ancestral work and research, I faced a cross-roads in my life. My savings were running out and I needed to find a place to live that would finally feel like home, a place from which I could fully step into my menopause chapter with clarity and confidence. My ancestors had become my unwavering “spiritual team” and I turned to them for guidance. I could never have anticipated what that would entail!

You are to give up everything you currently know to be home and take a pilgrimage across the lands of Britain and Ireland for 13 Moons to truly know your “indigenous roots. Gather the women for 13 Full Moons to honour those persecuted during the Burning Times.”

I have to do what?!?! Give up my little rented cottage and travel around the country in my little campervan for a whole year, and with next to no money! Really? That felt way too big and scary and for a couple of months I did my utmost to avoid agreeing to it. But there comes a point when ignoring a call from Spirit is simply not an option. And this was the loudest call I’d ever heard!

Setting out at Samhain 2018, the start of the Celtic New Year, and right at the time of marking 12 months of no bleeds, it was perhaps the most magical year of my life and one that would leave me forever changed. I journeyed north, south, east and west, through England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales; visiting castles, museums, historical sites, stone circles, and long barrows. Through the ancestral lens, I walked the land and drank in the beauty of the diverse landscapes - the highlands and lowlands, moorlands and meadowlands, ancient woodlands and wild coastlines, rivers and canals. With each step, my ancestral connection grew stronger and with it, a growing sense of belonging.

Full Moons and Medicine Spoons...

As instructed, I also gathered the women and each Full Moon held a ceremony to honour those persecuted during the Burning Times and share some of what I had learnt about the generational trauma we carried. At the outset, this had been a terrifying prospect which triggered the fear in my nervous system like never before. What will people think? How on earth do I hold a ceremony? What if they go wrong and everyone thinks I’m mad? Who am I to do this?

But the Ancestors know what they’re doing! I had cleared so much ancestral grief, rage and despair through all the drum journeys I had done, and now it was time to clear the fear and terror that had held me hostage my whole life. To clear terror, they said, you have to do what you’re most afraid of, and for me that was leading groups. Yikes!“But how do I hold a ceremony?” I protested. I took a medicine walk and asked for guidance. And just as I was heading for home, there it was! Glinting in the sun in the middle of a quiet country lane was a silver spoon. An odd thing to find in the most unexpected of places, I knew it was the answer I was looking for. As I picked it up I was reminded of the little “medicine spoon” that my Mum always kept in the kitchen drawer, only ever to be used for cough syrup when we were poorly as children. She had one because my Grandma had had one too. An ancestral tradition that seemed like the perfect way to weave medicine into an ancestral healing ceremony.

So I invited every woman who came to the ceremonies to bring a silver spoon as an offering to her ancestors, and wove them into a ritual to anchor in the healing that came from the shamanic drum journeying. For the first couple of ceremonies, only a handful of women turned up - a relief for my nervous system and a chance to build a bit of self-confidence. But with each one, more and more women started to come, with over 70 attending number 13. I had no doubt that as the witch-hunt legacy resonated through our collective unconscious, more and more women were feeling the call to heal it, something which still blows my mind a number of years on.

Through those ceremonies, I felt like I’d been through an apprenticeship in learning the art of holding transformational ritual space for collective healing. I received so many gifts from the ancestors and all the women who came, and will be eternally grateful for such a profound and life-changing experience…which still had more magic to offer…

A Collective Wound Requires Collective Healing...

Before setting off for the year, the Ancestors had given me what felt like another instruction. “Collect the medicine spoons for a creative collaboration project down the track.” I had no idea what this meant but I followed the guidance and invited all the women to leave their medicine spoons with me if it felt right to at the end of each ceremony. Over 600 women had attended one of the 13 Full Moon Ceremonies or 21 additional workshops I had run, so by the end of the year I had a rather large heavy box full of silver spoons!

I officially finished my 13 Moon Pilgrimage at the end of November 2019 and after a month to process and feel into what wanted to happen next, the vision became clear - an experiential exhibition of sorts, that would help more people understand the legacy of the witch-hunts and how to heal the collective trauma. I put out the call to the 600 women who had been part of the ceremonies and was blown away when 50 stepped in to be part of this next chapter of the journey. For the next two years we met regularly on Zoom and I guided a process to support the inner healing of how the witch-hunt legacy played out in their lives. Only a couple of them were artists, but each of them creatively expressed their healing processes That process was then expressed in a creative form and woven into a collective exhibition.

In January 2022 “I AM WITCH - Tales from the Roundhouse” ran for 5 weeks at The Storey in Lancaster, the perfect location in a town that had held one of the most notorious witch trials in England, which saw 22 accused and the hanging of the 12 Pendle Witches. Alongside the Exhibition we held a 3 night live show and a series of workshops designed to help visitors to go deeper into their own work.

With over 2500 visitors, features on BBC and ITV News and national press coverage, I could never have anticipated how positively the whole event would be received. Having never curated an exhibition or done anything like this before it will always remain one of my proudest achievements and taught me so much about the healing power of art.

And the Work Continues...

What began as a personal pilgrimage to deepen my ancestral connection and heal the inherited trauma legacy of the witch-hunts, has now become my passion and purpose in life. Since it all began for me in 2017, there is an ever-increasing wave of “Witch” sweeping the land, as more and more women do their work to heal the wounds and reclaim the gifts of the powerful “Witch” archetype. Through online courses and in person workshops, I continue to help others experience the profound benefits of ancestral healing and “The Witches’ Revival” has now become an annual event at The Storey in Lancaster, offering a transformation initiation into the magic and medicine of the original Witch.

For the Ancestors are there for all of us. A magical life is available for each of us. All we need do is slow down, take a deep breath, open our hearts, and listen.

It feels good to have written my story down. It feels somewhat trepidacious to share it in a blog. But here I am. Showing up, finally, through my words.

If you're called to the "witch work" too, I hope to see you somewhere along the road.

With Love and Magic,
Cali x