— Allie Barbera, The Village Witch Haven

On this week’s episode, Allie and I got talking about how social media sells witchcraft as gorgeous altars and $300 crystals. I love a pretty crystal as much as anyone. (I have fallen victim. Repeatedly.) But I can take a candle from the dollar store, set my intention, infuse it with Reiki, and it works just fine. This goes way beyond witchcraft, too. The next certification, the perfect logo, the right course: those aren’t the source of your magic either. You are.

When I started working through my ancestral history, I had a sense that something about the witch trials was there. So I kept digging (as one does).

I found my great-grandmother’s maternal line at the heart of the trials. Not on the side I’d hoped for. They were the persecutors.

I would have loved to find a lineage of healers who bravely held their ground. Maybe there were some. Quakers also run deep in my lineage, a group known for aligning with the persecuted, but that’s another tree branch for another day.

I wonder if my ancestors accused out of fear of their own power? Or was it simply greed? That’s something they don’t share in old court records.

What I do know is that it was a heartbreaking truth to sit with, and… it made a lot of sense.

So much of my own practice has been a long, slow work of quieting voices that weren’t mine. The voice scoffing, “Who do you think you are?” or, the one whispering “She used to be such a good girl. What happened?”

I’d always assumed the fear of being seen was passed down to us from the ones who were burned. It never occurred to me that it could also come from the ones holding the matches.

This matters even if you never open a family tree. The voice in your head that aims to “keep you in line” watches for anything too bold, too visible, too much, and it shuts it down, in you first and sometimes in other people, too. That flash of judgment when someone else posts the thing you had drafted, but second-guessed yourself? Same voice, just facing outward.

It thinks it’s keeping you safe. It learned that from people who truly believed it.

Learning our ancestors’ stories isn’t about guilt. It’s about choosing which cycles end with us. I can honor where I came from and still decide which patterns end with me.

Try this today: Write down one rule about being seen that you inherited. (One of mine, from my Appalachian roots: “A shut mouth catches no flies.”) Next to it, write who that rule was trying to protect, and what it’s costing you now. Then write the rule you’re choosing instead, and keep it somewhere you’ll see it. Bonus round: if you catch yourself in a flash of judgement or jealousy towards someone else’s boldness this week, get curious about whose voice that really is.

If this issue stirred up an old family pattern or two, this is where we release it, and take some massive action towards a new reality.

The Really Big Risk Challenge provides you with Reiki and hypnosis-backed support to break the self-sabotaging cycles that keep you small, and to finally take the leap on the idea, offer, or business you’ve been circling, with community and accountability alongside you.

It’s $47. Join once, and keep the recordings, transcript, and Pyre Proof Journal for life. No blinking red countdown timer, no fake spots. We begin Dec 2, so next year is your healthiest, most harmonious year yet.

Our first episode is live! Allie is a village witch, intuitive mentor, and the founder of The Village Witch Haven here in Charleston, where she works with tarot, numerology, mediumship, and the Akashic records. She’s also a lifelong entrepreneur who loves a color-coded calendar (fun fact: rituals are a warm shade of blue), and she’s living proof that magic and structure can live in the same house.

We talk about how she tells intuition apart from fear, the low-stakes “parking lot test” she uses to help students build self-trust, why a boring booking system might be the most magical thing in your business, and what Pyre Proof means to someone who has seen a past life end at the stake.

Allie’s one-on-one mentorship for witches opens to the public this month at villagewitchhaven.com.

Or listen on your favorite podcast app

New episodes drop every Wednesday.

Book a Reiki or hypnotherapy session ($99) if you’d like personalized support in releasing past patterns. Book here.

Apply for Reiki attunement ($395) if you’d like me to teach you how to support yourself for the rest of your life. Apply here.

Keep showing up for yourself, your community, and your world. When you do, you give other people permission to do the same. Until next time, live unburnable.

— Epiphany

P.S. Know someone who’s into the woo and demanding better for the world and themselves? Share this newsletter with them! We’re building a coalition of kind humans who are #unburnable.

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