The Mystic & the Witch
April 12, 2022I felt dizzy, lightheaded, like I was about to faint.
I lay down on the couch and heard the word “remember.”
Remember, remember, remember—except it wasn’t a verb. Or maybe it was. But it was also a name.
Remember Allerton was my tenth-great aunt, and I’d recently been reading about her—how she came over on the Mayflower and married a man named Moses and settled in Marblehead, Massachusetts. My husband and I had visited the town some twenty-one months earlier, but I knew nothing about Remember then.
I had no idea she’d ever existed. Let alone that she’d lived there, in that town, that the box where she kept her Bible was on display at the local historical center. But on that brisk October morning, as the stacked wooden heels of my black boots tapped the concrete sidewalks of Marblehead, I felt something in the air. I felt it in my bones. I tried to shake it from my mind, and for a time, I think I succeeded, but now, here she was—echoing in my ears, appearing in spectral form in my mind’s eye, delivering me a message: You have to remember!
And she whispered about witches and mystics.
She told me about the ways they are similar and the ways they are different:
The mystic sits in quiet contemplation and lets themself receive information. Lets the knowing return. Simply lets the magic flow through them.
The witch takes the magic and bends and weaves it, playing an active role in shaping reality.
These two archetypes are the yin and yang of magic.
And she spoke with force and earnestness as she told me, You mustn’t leave one behind for the other.
For you are both.
A mystic.
AND A WITCH.
And I opened my eyes and the world was still and my head was no longer spinning but instead, it was settled. Balanced. Deep deep inside my body.
A blooming seed of remembrance.
To learn more about the duality of mysticism and witchcraft, click here.
