Said my fellow witch @ella.rankine after a remote theta healing session:

“The Mother crept in at one point, and sat in front of you, and was a bit like, ‘tut tut. Have patience’. And she had this pointed stick, and suddenly, she was pointing at your chest, and saying, ‘you need to Breathe’.‘

You need to Breathe with the Earth; and you need to Feel; you need to feel the Wind; and you need to Become the Wind. You need to unlearn everything you’ve learned’.

And then she said,

‘And you need to DIE.’

And suddenly, it was almost like… Well. She was quite wild. Wild and hollering. ‘You need to DIE!’ And she had that pointed stick thing, and she drove it into your chest, and as soon as she did that, you started purging, and there was all this stuff coming out until you were completely cleansed of whatever that was. I got the feeling they were attachments to old structures in your psyche, and old ways of being (in a very controlling, perfectionist way).

And there was a real letting go – of that old life from years and years ago; of those structures, those old ways of being, and all the rest of it; there was a real letting go of all that. And that was what was purging itself”.

Ha. The Shaman’s Death. Oh, how I’ve run from you. Time and time again in ceremony, I’ve petulantly refused to let go of my false identity; of my tired old stories I believed made me ‘me’. And then I’ve spent the rest of the year in a state of wild anxiety; my fingers clinging on to the cliff-edge as I yelled at the Universe, ‘no! No! I don’t f***ing want to!’

But what I know now: It’s not like you forget who you were before

And it’s not that you don’t retain some parts of those identities.

You just move into newness, somehow

You become who you were born to be

“It was funny after that”, Ella continued. “All these sounds started coming out of my mouth, and there was this circling, rocking movement. It was like she was creating a Mother’s womb – an energetic force field – and she was just holding you, and saying, ‘you’re held. You’re supported’. And all these shamanic sounds were coming out, and it was her singing to you.

‘Remember’, she was urging. ‘You need to remember your tribal roots’.”