Commentary by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
A recent issue of Vogue Magazine featured a glowing article claiming that “every woman is a witch whether she knows it or not” and suggests that “awakening your inner witch” is the way for women to become empowered in today’s world.
In a June 19 article by Christina Perez, the magazine featured a third-generation hereditary witch named Lisa Lister who authored the book, Witch: Unleashed, Untamed, Unapologetic, which is described as being a modern-day handbook for those who have “heard the call” to witchcraft.
“For so long it’s been a term that’s been used to demonize, stigmatize, and repress women. But right now, the word is being reclaimed,” Lister writes.
“The part of us that’s been anesthetized, domesticated, tamed, and kept numb by food, shopping, alcohol, and drugs is now awakening within us. We are re-membering the dis-membered parts of being a woman—who we all were before patriarchy put all our fierce and feminine powers into the darkness, called them taboo, and then taught us all to be afraid of the dark.”
So how does one go about awakening the witch within?
Lister claims it has less to do with Wicca and more to do with connection and trust in one’s self. “A witch is a woman in her power,” Lister states. “She’s wise, a healer—someone who is aligned with the cycles of nature and the phases of the moon. She’s in touch with the dark. She knows how to witness, how to let things go, how to follow her own counsel.”
Maybe she practiced shamanism or voodoo in the past, but Lister claims today’s witch doesn’t have to do that. She can be “any woman who wants to channel her innate powers and intuition to manifest her goals and desires.”
For this reason, Lister claims that “Every woman is a witch, whether she knows it or not. She’s cyclic, she’s powerful, she can embrace nature to heal herself and her community. In other words, she is magic.”
The article ends with a ritual for re-awakening your inner witch which consists of making a triangle with the thumbs and index fingers (which is a yoga mudra known as yoni) and place it over the womb. We then focus on our “third eye” and chant three times, “I call back my power now.”
In between these chants, the woman is to focus on a “bright white light” coming up through the soles of the feet and coming to rest in the womb. This is to be done three times, then the woman is to hold her power there and repeat three times, “It is safe for me to be powerful.” Lister claims the “mudra seals in the power” at which time the woman is to bring her hands to her heart and say, “So mote it be.”
What a dangerously conflicted message this article sends to women!
First, it makes the inane claim that women have been anesthetized, domesticated, tamed and kept numb by food, shopping, alcohol, and drugs – implying that we’re somehow being forced into submission to a patriarchal agenda by . . . shopping?? Are men forcing us to check out the sale rack at Macy’s? Are they making us eat, drink and take drugs (other than birth control)? Maybe in Lister’s world, but not in mine.
Lister goes on to claim that our inner witch is awakening from a patriarchy that put all of our “fierce and feminine powers into the darkness” as if that’s a bad thing. But in the next breath, she’s applauding the awakened woman for being “in touch with the dark.” So should women be upset that their powers are associated with darkness or proud of it?
And notice how the ritual calls for the mudra to be placed over the womb, which is where we call our power to return. What power does the womb have after it has been suppressed by feminism’s worship of the gods of “choice” which demand that it be stripped of its ability to reproduce either through the use of birth control or abortion? If the womb is the seat of a woman’s power, why are feminists so determined to make sure it doesn’t do what it’s designed to do – make babies.
Even more disturbing is how Vogue publishes this ritual and encourages women to call upon unnamed powers to return to them. It’s obviously not God’s power that they’re calling upon. Who do you think is going to answer this call?
This is an incredibly irresponsible article that reveals the dangerous desperation of feminism today which feels that it has to resort to the occult to maintain it’s power.
With this kind of distorted and conflicting messaging by a major woman’s publication, it’s no wonder there are so many confused women running around in pink hats.
It’s up to us to set the record straight, which is why I never cease to thank God for the gift of Women of Grace. And I’m not just talking about the Study program. Women who hear this message form a special bond among themselves – what we call a sacred sisterhood. This is how we spread the vital message to our sisters that it is only when women embrace – rather than reject – their femininity that the peace of this world will be saved.
More power to us!
Enjoy this sacred sisterhood with us next week in Malvern, Pennsylvania at our Women of Grace retreat. It’s not too late! Click here for more info.
