Witch Hazel Magic - Day 234 - What Does Witch Mean to Me?

20181206_233343 - Preparing witch hazel to extract.jpg

Witch Hazel Magic
Among the most healing plants
Grateful for your touch.

First and foremost, I am dedicating this post to my father, H. Edwin Donaldson, who died eighteen years ago today.

Thank you for everything.

I am also dedicating it to our sweet and lovely dove, GIR, who I found dead in his cage today. Love you, buddy, and I'll miss you.

Our friend Joan, from whom we adopted him, had him for at least the six years that I knew her before she gave him to me, and we've had him for at least nine years, including two years in Florida and the past seven years in Tennessee, so he was at least fifteen years of age, if not older.

He was a love, throughout. Nearly all year, as I walked out onto our front porch, I was greeted by his song, which I will dearly miss. And I know our other doves will as well.

Naturally, Truffle has delighted in harassing GIR since we got her, mainly because his cage was situated directly above our porch railing, and she could just reach the bottom of his cage.

So a part of me is sad because perhaps I could have prevented this, perhaps I could have moved his cage, as I always wanted to, as I know that being constantly harried by a kitten couldn't have helped his stress level.

Yet another part of me knows that it is what it is, that what happened was what was meant to happen, and that I gave them both the best lives I was able to give them, and that he probably lived a longer and happier life than he might have elsewhere.

Still, I miss him, and always will. And I feel responsible to Joan for not protecting him better than I might have. RIP GIR.

So what does "witch" mean to me? A lot.

And the connotations are mostly positive.

I've been an empath my whole life, I grew up in a haunted house in a Los Angeles suburb, and when we moved from there, when I was aged twelve, whatever was in that house appeared to follow me - and only me. At least, in the following house, it only interacted with me. But it was benign, meant us no harm, and that was clear to us all.

Years later, when I moved into a 1930s Spanish-style home in Old Tampa, with my then-fiance, which was without question the most haunted home in which I've ever spent time, much less lived, again . . . it was entirely benign, and meant us no harm.

At varying times through the years, I was occasionally called a witch, usually as a compliment, by people who were for whatever reason not able to tap into the same energies that I felt innately from childhood.

And, on the few occasions when the word was used as an epithet against me, I fell back on an acronym given to me by my older sister, from a slightly different context:

Woman
In
Total
Control of
Herself.

Yeah. ^^^ That. ^^^ It works for me.

So. Witch. I spoke to a medical intuitive earlier this year, who was helping me to release some ancestral stuff, and when I mentioned to him that I have memories of being burned at the stake, more than once, his comment was, "Oh that again," and laughed. Evidently not an uncommon theme among strong empaths.

A number of the members of my meditation group in Florida have a serious black and white thing going, which brought out a series of jokes and discussions regarding our former lives in the convent together, as several of us have had dreams and/or memories of being nuns . . . and nuns and witches have been linked together many times throughout history.

Coming from a long line of inconvenient women who are/were into herbal healing, for which more than one woman, not to mention at least a few men were targeted, which was also often part of the link between nuns and witches, the idea of witches, not to mention past lives, has always resonated with me.

Having studied a fair amount of science and history over the years, I have a slightly differing viewpoint regarding past lives than most, which also ties into my being a natural empath, and my ability to discern different energies.

I agree with Rupert Sheldrake's theories regarding morphic resonance, and we are learning more and more from quantum physics that all possibilities - and none - exist in the same space and time, just in different dimensions.

And bearing that in mind, Jesus, or Yeshua, as just one example, has a massive morphic field, simply because of how many people in the world are aware of him and his story, whether or not they self-identify as Christian.

And I've always taken issue with the Dire Straits lyric: "Two men think they're Jesus, one of them must be wrong."

I disagree that one of them has to be wrong, and the more I've learned about morphic fields, the more strongly I feel this. I consider it entirely plausible that two or more people, possibly far more, could tap into the morphic field of Jesus at the same time, each having their own entirely legitimate experience.

In all my reading, regarding the ongoing research into the field, I've found no compelling reason to think otherwise.

Clearly, as a child, I was wide open to realms that most people cease to be aware of at a far younger age. And I remained open to it long after some in my family ceased to even be willing to talk about it, though to be fair to them, none of them really tried to dissuade me, as they understood that my experiences were real.

Then, when I was thirteen or fourteen, I saw the film "Fiddler on the Roof," with Tevye, and a light bulb went off in my brain.

When I saw him arguing with God, and talking to Him as though he was standing next to him, it was a revelation: in true Episcopalian fashion, I had always been taught that you pray on your knees next to your bed, and that's that. But to have an actual conversation with God? That had never even occurred to me.

And, pretty much from that day forward, that's what I've done, and it has been life-changing. And led directly to my favorite time ever that I've been called a witch.

When Marek and I started dating, I had been split from my former husband for almost two years, and divorced for just over a year. My divorce became final on my dad's birthday, which I took as a sign that he was still lending a helping hand, which he continued to do until he knew I was safe.

At the time, I was in the middle of refinancing my house, in an effort to continue my education. In the middle of this, we had a freak storm that dumped several inches of rain in just a few hours, and half my house was literally at ground level. And I had a home appraisal scheduled for the following morning. Oh, crap.

I walked into my office, which was in the lower side of the house, and saw water beginning to seep under the walls. And all I could think was no, no, NO, not now! Please not now!

And, for the first time in years, I went straight into my bedroom, hit my knees beside the bed, and prayed for a hole in the clouds to open over my house, for the water to recede, and for the appraisal to go really well the next day.

By the time I finished praying, the rain started to slack off, and continued to lessen over the next few minutes, until it finally stopped.

When I walked back into my office, the water was already receding back under the wall - a feat that came pretty close to defying the laws of physics, as it had never happened before that quickly, and typically would have consisted of the water evaporating, not physically withdrawing from the room.

Even stranger, when we checked the Weather Channel, the rain was still solid over all of Pinellas County . . . except for a small, visible hole in the clouds, just over my house. For real. And, as the clouds continued to move toward the east, the hole over my house remained.

At which point Marek turned to me, shook his head slowly, and said in a low voice, "You're a witch."

The truth is that, in my experience, what works in prayer is the same thing that works with people: to be polite, and ask nicely.

I don't make demands of God and the Universe. I ask nicely. And, far more often than not, I get what I ask for, which has prompted Marek to call me any time he is stuck in traffic, or in really bad weather, to ask me to move it out of the way for him. And it works.

And the funny thing is that it works so well that, recently, on more than one occasion, he has thought about calling me, and the issue clears up before he even makes the call. God and the Universe love to play with us, especially if we're willing to play back. ;-)

Which brings me back to witch hazel, which as one writer has stated, is "One of the few products that's both FDA-approved and endorsed by real witches."

I mentioned in a comment on my previous post that it is believed to be the Mohegan tribe that first introduced early English settlers to the use of witch hazel saplings to dowse for underground water.

An article in The Atlantic enumerated a number of other uses for witch hazel by indigenous tribes:

"The Osage used witch hazel bark to treat skin ulcers and sores; the Potawatomi steamed twigs over hot rocks in their sweat lodges to soothe sore muscles; the Iroquoi [sic] brewed a tea to treat dysentery, colds, and coughs. Since then studies have found active compounds in witch hazel such as flavonoids, tannins (hamamelitannin and proanthocyanidins), and volatile oil that give it astringent action to stop bleeding. The same witch hazel bark tea that was sipped to stop internal bleeding was also injected into the rectum to reduce the pain and itching of hemorrhoids."

Another author noted further uses by the tribes: "Native Americans used the seeds medicinally and to divine whether or not a patient would recover from a certain illness," and then gave a number of examples of eleven magical uses for the plant, including: "Consider making a wand from Witch Hazel branches. A Witch Hazel wand is especially potent at protection and warding, as well as banishing negative forces. A Witch Hazel wand is also effective at locating water."

As with the many more mundane uses of witch hazel, there are many well-known spiritual uses for it as well, from drawing love and/or clairvoyance, to banishing negative energies and forces, to healing broken hearts.

Even Harry Potter's world was replete with witch hazel,which was favored both for making wands and highly regarded brooms.

Alas, I'm still awaiting my letter to Hogwarts.

This post, and all those from now until the end of 2018, I am dedicating to the work of #tarc and #yah, aka Hive account@rhondak's nonprofit Appalachian dog rescue, and Hive account@sircork's international charity Hive account@youarehope.