We Are The Grandchildren Of The Witches They Couldn’t Burn

We are the sons and daughters of the sons and daughters of the witches they couldn’t catch.

We are also the children of those who survived only by hiding, running, suppressing, and numbing.

We are the descendants of atrocity.

I have watched, deep in vision, as my Mothers’ ancestral tribe was annihilated. A once proud Celtic warrior tribe wiped from the face of the earth – the women taken as slaves.

Cowed. Dispossessed. Disempowered.

Do you know how much shame you carry? How many unshed tears, how much swallowed-down rage and undigested grief?

The old paradigm is shifting, and we are witness to the beginning of that. A new paradigm is being birthed, and it will take time. In human years – many generations.

For those of us with awareness to see it, being a mature and responsible human at this time often means to process what others cannot and could not.

It means processing the fear, the guilt, the shame, the grief, the rage and the hatred that our ancestors could not.

This is painful and it can be debilitating.

You may be labeled all kinds of things – mentally ill, addicted, depressed, anxious, lazy, a failure.

You may be stigmatized.

Some turn to spirituality to help make sense of their experiences. And yet there is so much confusion in and around spirituality – most people seem to think that it’s about wishing away all the friction in life and gliding along without feeling anything uncomfortable.

Without any grief, or rage, or fear. Without insecurity or arrogance.

When actually it is – right now – about feeling those things more. About facing into them, loving them, and integrating them.

You cannot wish away the past (the cause, ultimately, of all feeling other than pure, unconditional love).

You cannot change the fact that your ancestors were deceived, poisoned, enslaved, slaughtered, hunted, burnt, raped, pillaged, and betrayed.

You cannot change the fact that until now, in this place, in this space, your present moment experience of life has been shaped by that very past.

And by the fact that our ancestors were denied the opportunity to heal.

“At this day” wrote Reginald Scot in 1584, “it is indifferent to say in the English tongue, ‘she is a witch’ or ‘she is a wise woman.’”


You cannot change the past. But you can heal it.

Yes, you can heal the past, and I am telling you with my hand on my heart, with my knees on the ground, and with every fibre of my being:

Only by healing the past can we step into presence.

I know this because I have tried many, many ways.

I am an advanced Yoga teacher. I studied many healing methods, energy healing, this healing and that healing… martial arts, meditation.

In the end, it is our subconscious that fucks us up, disempowers us, causes us to be victims. Nothing else.

Nothing else.


So to clean the subconscious it is very simple – make it conscious!

Become aware of what it is that you are not aware of.

And what you find in the subconscious is a great deal of grief, rage, and ultimately, fear – and the roots of it all are ancestral.

So we do it for them. And we heal them as we heal ourselves. And believe me please because I have seen it many times – we heal also our children in this process, and we make it so that they do not need to carry such a burden as we have carried.

What I am saying is not new!

The native Americans say that every choice we make must be considered in the light of how it will affect our descendants seven generations later.

In the Bible it is written that the “iniquity of the Father” shall be “visited upon the son until the 3rd and 4th generation”.

And now we have a science (epigenetics) that has proven the fact that unresolved ancestral trauma is inherited!

We are the sons and daughters of the sons and daughters of the sons and daughters of the witches they couldn’t burn.

They hunted and tortured and burnt those wise women (and men too) for 700 years. They set about destroying – systematically, village by village – all feminine wisdom the world over. And they almost succeeded!

Look at the state of the world today – the deep-rooted patriarchy. The desperate attempts to control nature, manipulate the weather, and even conquer space and time!

And yet, here we are. You and I: reading and writing and singing and shouting.

We dance on this earth and with every step we remember who we really are.

We sit in circle and we share our hearts, and we remember that our hearts are the same.

And as we remember, we build a new family, a new tribe, a new understanding between all of our relations.

We pray to our true Mother, the Earth, and we pray to our true Father, the sky, just as our ancestors did – and with every tear we shed, and with every step we take along this path, our ancestors support us.

They stand behind us.

I have seen this clearly.

We always knew it would be a struggle. To be born in this age, in this Kali Yuga, takes guts and heart and fire in the blood.

And that is what we are.

Because yes, we are.

We are the sons and daughters of the sons and daughters of wisdom and courage and love.

We are the sons and daughters of the wise ones that they could not catch.

Aho Mitakuye Oyasin – for all our relations.