This time of year carries a certain electricity—cool air, thinning veils, whispers of the unseen.
For many women, this season stirs something older than costumes or pumpkins.
It awakens a memory—sometimes barely conscious—of power once feared, hunted, and nearly erased.

Before “Witch” Was a Curse

Long before the word witch was weaponized, it simply meant wise woman.
Healer. Midwife. Herbalist.
The one who knew how to draw medicine from roots and rivers, how to read the sky for weather and the body for signs.
Her spirituality was earth-based and embodied—a direct relationship with the cycles of nature and the Divine Feminine.

These women held a way of knowing that needed no priest, no intermediary, no sanctioned temple.
And that made them dangerous to systems built on hierarchy and a singular male god.

How the Hunt Began

As Christianity spread across Europe, church and state sought to consolidate power.
Centuries of witch hunts followed:
Inquisitions. Torture. Burnings. Drownings.
To silence the feminine ways of wisdom, entire communities were taught to fear their own healers.
Historians estimate that tens of thousands—perhaps hundreds of thousands—of women were executed between the 15th and 18th centuries.

The message was clear:

A woman who listens to her own knowing is a threat.

The Trauma We Still Carry

You may not consciously remember these times—
but if you’ve ever felt an inexplicable distrust of organized religion,
if you’ve hesitated to speak your spiritual truth for fear of ridicule or exile,
if you’ve found yourself dimming your light so you won’t be “too much”—
you’re not imagining it.

It’s the echo of collective trauma.
For generations, survival meant hiding the very gifts that once defined us.

Even now, many powerful women—leaders, creators, healers—
find it easier to lead in the boardroom than to show their sacred, intuitive self.
Because somewhere in the body lives an old warning:
Visibility is dangerous. Silence keeps you alive.

Naming the Inherited Fear

This fear is not weakness.
It’s an intelligent survival strategy passed down through blood and story.
Honoring it is part of healing.

So if the thought of church pews makes you tense,
if you carry an unspoken resistance to male-deity language,
if you’ve felt the quiet ache of a spirituality that wants to root itself in the earth—
know this: your response is valid.
Your body remembers what history tried to erase.

A Gentle Invitation to Step Forward

The call of this season is not to rage against the past,
but to reclaim what was once ours—safely, consciously, and in our own time.

• Light a candle for the women who came before you—the healers, the midwives, the herbalists whose wisdom could not be permanently silenced.
  
  

• Place your bare feet on the earth and whisper the truths you’ve been afraid to speak.
  
  

• Let your voice carry prayers or poems or simple words of gratitude for the line of women whose resilience lives in your bones.
  
  

This is not about rejecting every tradition of faith.
It is about protecting the sacred within you
and allowing the divine feminine to be seen and heard once again—
not hidden in fear, but expressed in power.

Your Power Is Not a Threat

You are the daughter of witches and wisdom keepers.
The descendant of those who knew how to speak with the earth,
who carried medicine in their hands and mystery in their hearts.

Their stories live in you—not as chains,
but as a call to remember:

Your voice is holy.
Your truth is needed.
Your power is the blessing the world has been waiting for.

This season, as the veil thins and the nights grow long,
let the memory of those women guide you.
Honor the fear—they survived because they were careful.
But do not stay hidden.

The world your ancestors dreamed of is the one you are here to create.
And every time you speak your truth,
you free not only yourself,
but every daughter who comes after you.

For the women who carry an ancient ache to reclaim what was lost:
your power is not dangerous.
It is the medicine of our time.