FINDING YOUR PATH: DECOLONIZING

Welcome to the first of my Finding Your Path guides where I deeper dive into the core aspects of what your practice looks like. The reason I have decolonizing as the first one listed on my "How To Find Your Path" blog post is because it will become the foundation from which you launch your practice from. Not just because it's a political statement (though it is one), but because it's a practical one. The systems you grew up inside are actively interfering with your spell work. Think of it like this, you're trying to cast in a house with all the windows sealed shut. You can smell the rain, you can see the clouds through the glass, but nothing gets in and nothing gets out. Understanding why those windows got sealed, and how to open them, is the whole point.

In the spirit of my ancestors, I share this as a story told to me by elders, updated and expanded through my own practice. Some language has been updated so modern western practitioners can actually receive it, and some details have been left out. (Not gatekeeping, just context. Some parts of this story land differently depending on where you're standing, and I'd rather give you the version that helps you than the version that gets dismissed or misappropriated.) This is my best attempt to act as a bridge.

This is the story of what we were, what happened to us, and how we get it back.

ANCIENT WISDOM

Long ago, although not so long in the scale of the Earth, there was a time when humanity were stewards of the land. "Work" as we know it didn't exist. We cared for one another and built societies around nature's cycles. Because energy and magic move through those cycles, we thrived. We had shelter, food, time to tell stories, to create art, and to heal. It was not without its challenges, but it was happy and balanced.

Across the world there were different societies with different cultures and origin stories, each shaped by their environment. Elders even say different species of humans, interdimensional beings and interplanetary beings/ star people. After all, we came from the stars. (Specifically the Pleiades Star System, but for the sake of this story, let's stick with Homo Sapiens.)

The earth shapes us as it cared for us, and we shaped it as we cared for it. We see evidence of this. People in hot sunny climates developed darker skin and curlier hair to protect from the sun. People in colder places had lighter skin and long straight hair to shield from the wet and cold. While our environments shaped us physically, what made the people resilient was what we have in common. We learn through play, by watching and imitating. We recognize patterns and teach others what we learn. We create tools to increase our survival options, making unlivable environments livable.

We adapted not just our bodies, but our homes, food forests, and rituals. We built communities where survival depended on cooperation. Not just with each other, but with plants, animals, the ecosystems and the cycles around us. At this time, energy was simple and flowed freely. Our magic was easily predictable and easy to see how it worked.

We created language, imagined futures, and shared knowledge quickly, so we didn't have to wait for evolution to catch up. Every winter, we sat around fires and told stories to teach, to warn, to inspire.

No matter where your ancestors came from, they were storytellers. Through stories, they explored belonging. Our place in the cosmos, our connection to the land, how we came to be, and why we exist. Stories reminded us of our purpose: to bring balance to nature and to care for the Earth. They spoke of our kinship with animals and plants, and even of abilities modern minds might dismiss as impossible. Songs carried the energy within us, while myths and allegories gave voice to the stars and planets. Seasonal celebrations marked the cycles of birth, growth, death, and renewal, reminding us that all life moves in rhythm.

The root of all of this is the source of our power: knowledge and collaboration.

In these traditions, what was seen in the mind's eye was as real as what was seen in the world around us. Storytelling taught us how to sense the energy within ourselves and how to move in harmony with the energy flowing through all things. In truth, we are not so different now. The difference is that we weren't just using the logical side of our brain like we do now. We balanced both logic and creativity. We chose to trust our own energy and bring it into the world through discipline, collaboration, and creativity.

MAGIC

Magic was never complicated. It's how we understand energy. The sun feeds the plants, the plants feed the animals, and the animals and plants feed us. The more energy available, the more we can turn our thoughts into action and shape our reality. Whether that's getting more food by having more energy to follow herds of animals, putting it towards patience to follow migrating plants (yes, they migrate, very slowly) and watching what they do to understand how they work as medicine. When we want success, we feed spirits that aid in success. When we want health we feed spirits to bring in health.

Simple concept, high-level explanation, but ultimately: energy travels through intention. Not just ours, but every living thing's. Some people can see it, some people only see the physical results of it (what western spiritual practices call divination). But for those who can see, it's clear that energy travels along the natural cycles and systems that we and other living things build and support. When our intention, combined with other parts of earth that share our intention, influences the direction of energy, that is magic. Which means it's found in everyday actions too, like baking bread or planting seeds. The craft is just the creative, fun side of doing it.

And while life was shorter then, we knew how to process it through our stories, songs, rituals, and art. We turned trauma into meaning and found healthy ways to cope. We shared knowledge freely. We survived not just as individuals, but as part of the collective body of humanity, itself nested inside the larger body of the Earth, nested inside the larger body of the ever-expanding Universe.

THE FORGETTING

But then something shifted. People started to believe the land belonged to them, instead of the other way around. We forgot balance. We forgot how to listen to the animals, to the wind, to the stars, to ourselves. We abandoned the old calendars that tracked cycles of energy that we built systems around. We were taught not to trust our instincts, visions, or spirits.

Our fear and doubt built walls in our mind to blind our sight of energy.

That forgetting became the root of our suffering.

CONTROL

For Westerners, this began in the Bronze Age in the Middle East. Cities were built around temples, and inside those temples: money, science, religion, medicine, politics, magic, and education all lived under the same roof. Each of these temples had a different deity dedicated to it. The politicians realized that if you ruled the temple, you ruled the town. So they spread lies, through song, art, and stories, to villainize the other deities so that people only trusted one. One that could rule all of the towns.

This didn't happen overnight. These were smart people who understood that they could keep all the power if they controlled money, science, religion, magic, medicine, politics, but most importantly, knowledge.

They knew knowledge was power, so they hoarded it. And eventually, the church emerged as the ultimate institution of control. Secret societies and family lineages positioning themselves as priests, kings, and merchants, backed by the church and the public support it bought. The people started to act out of fear, because if they did not comply, they were killed.

The church, which was once meant to guide one's spirit and energy, became a tool to control them. The name of "God" was spoken not as a word of love as it once was, but as a word of fear. They took what was viewed as the "cosmic birther," the "divine creator," the "source of energy," the "collective consciousness of the universe," and weaponized it into an allegorical man that reflected their own greed, dominance, and power. The people were told that to obey these rulers was to obey the heavens, and to disobey was to risk eternal fire. The church declared itself the voice of the divine and unseen, and in doing so silenced many other voices, and many other truths.

(Now, in a time long before this in the Americas, we had our own times where religious folks abused power. They could see spiritual energy and see how it could be used against others for their own gain. While we didn't call it "magic," their abilities allowed them to wield it in ways that caused great suffering to the people. It wasn't in balance. We defeated them and triumphed over many generations, but not without great loss and sacrifice. I share this because you are not alone. This is not the first time this happened, and will not be the last. We persevered before, and we can do so again).

CRUSHING FOLK PRACTICES

As the church continued to rise in power, small folk communities, ones that still lived close to the land, were targeted.

Healers, midwives, storytellers, spirit-workers, people who challenged their power were hunted and branded as "witches." Villages once built on sharing were forced into obedience or secrecy. Knowledge that didn't serve the powerful was burned or locked away. Only a select few were even taught to read or write.

Some families held onto fragments in secret grimoires, or shifted back to oral tradition. Others practiced behind the mask of Christianity and even embraced the new identities that the Christians assigned the old gods through demonology. But much was whispered in shadows. And those who were born with the ability to see re-learned the old ways in secrecy through trial and error.

EXPANSION AND OPPRESSION

As kings, priests, and merchants grew greedy, they sailed across seas. They claimed lands that already had peoples, languages, seers, and spirits of their own. They called it "discovery," despite the land never being lost. They brought with them weapons, disease, and a hunger for gold, spices, and crops that could be sold. They became a cancer to the earth. The peoples of the Americas, the clans of Europe, the nations of Africa, the islands of the Pacific were taken, broken, and remade in the image of this empire that spread across the lands. Creating imbalances everywhere.

And then they reveled in the darkest trade of all: slavery. Human beings, stolen and sold, shackled in ships, stripped of ancestral names, forced to work for slavers to survive. Many westerners say they were treated "like property." But that treatment was reserved for their women. The enslaved were treated the way colonizers treated animals. They were beaten, butchered, raped, and eaten, with their bodies made into decor and trophies and their children violated in the most unspeakable and depraved acts. Generations lived and died in bondage, building wealth for the few. While those enslaved were denied their own freedom, their descendants would fight for centuries, and still fight today, just to be seen as fully human.

There is something you cannot forget about these people in power. As out of touch as they are with everyday life for the average person, they are cunning. They know that empathy is their downfall. They know the many could rise against the few. So they continue to rely on the tried and true ways to maintain their position of power. Hoarding knowledge, wealth, spreading lies, and feeding the spirits of fear. Building new cycles and systems to control our energy and power. Religion, Racism, Patriarchy and Capitalism are the largest of these systems, pitting the ignorant against one another.

They told poor white workers they were "better" than their neighbors who had different skin color. They told men they were "above and entitled to" women. They told citizens to fear immigrants, despite their own ancestors being immigrants themselves. They were told to mistrust and despise the people who believed in their very same spirits. They used every difference: skin, language, and belief to keep the people divided. They know that if the people ever saw they were the same, the governments, the churches, and the corporations of the corrupt would crumble overnight.

THE MONSTER OF CAPITALISM

Today, unbridled capitalism became a monster that destroyed the land. A system where profit mattered more than people and animal, it facilitates the abuse of children and even more than the very air. Water that flowed freely from the sky and the earth's rivers was bottled and sold.

We stopped learning the lessons of what it means to respect the hunt and grow our own food and medicine. We stopped learning how to build relationships with everything around us, including people who are different from us. To live, most have to sell their labor for scraps, while the owners of factories and corporations hoard riches beyond measure. These factories destabilize the climate. The hots becoming hotter, the colds becoming colder, the storms growing wilder. Still, this monster continues to pit neighbor versus neighbor with misinformation and lies, deeply wounding humanity.

LIES

One of the greatest weapons this monster wields is the lie. We are told that lies are bad, that truth is the highest virtue, and that honesty is the only path to goodness. But this teaching was not meant to protect us. It was meant to protect them. If we are afraid to bend or reshape the truth, then our truths become easy to exploit.

In the beginning, when languages were simple, lying was nearly impossible. Words had only one meaning, and what was spoken was what was meant. But as cultures mixed through trade, migration, and conquest, language grew more complex. Multiple words for the same idea, or multiple meanings hidden in a single phrase, gave us the ability to conceal, twist, or redirect.

Lies became tools of survival. Children lie when they fear punishment. The oppressed lie to their oppressors to stay alive. Communities lie to outsiders to protect sacred knowledge. Even in nature, animals use deception (camouflage, mimicry, false cries) to endure. A lie is not always a betrayal. Sometimes it's a shield, a strategy, and even a seed of freedom.

And the monster knows this. It lies endlessly, reshaping stories to pit us against one another, to keep us foolish and ignorant, to protect its hoarded wealth, to keep us afraid. But notice, too, how the people lie in return. We resist through hidden languages, double meanings, codes in songs, and truths whispered only in safe circles. Our lies keep our magic alive.

The question, then, is not whether lying is good or bad. It's why is the lie told, and whose life is it protecting?

RESISTANCE

The people who are negatively impacted by these systems recognize this monster. So we resist, and have been resisting. Enslaved people rebelled and sang songs of freedom. Workers built unions. Women demanded equal rights. Queer folk loved openly despite danger. Indigenous nations carried their languages and ceremonies through centuries of violence. Folk practitioners took the names "Witch" and "Pagan," words that were once slurs used to create fear and villainize us, and reclaimed them as our own.

Those who knew the old ways developed magical practices within western culture that reflected these systems, to help new generations develop personal will and reclaim their power. As those in power built their concrete empire, within its cracks, flowers grew in defiance.

The internet became a blessing. The education that those in power tried to suppress and gatekeep behind money was given freely by those willing to teach. More and more people see that racism, patriarchy, classism, and all forms of hate are not natural, but inventions. They see that God is not a weapon of fear, but a word with many meanings, or none at all, depending on who speaks it. They see that the earth is not a resource to be drained, but a living entity in need of care.

The people are remembering.

THE THRESHOLD

Change is slow, and the descendants of these kings, merchants, and priests will not give up their power easily. The wealth gap between the poor and the rich grows larger. Even now, propaganda still seeks to divide.

We are at a threshold: destruction on one side, renewal on the other. We need a society that remembers balance, where no one is above another, where we care for the earth and share in its gifts, and understand how energy moves through it once again. To heal it, we need to heal ourselves and find balance in the systems that our society is built upon.

Religion doesn't have to be bad. It brings like-minded people together with a shared framework for building community and working with the same spiritual energy. Technology doesn't have to be bad. We can use it to make our lives easier and find innovative ways to find balance. We can pass laws to prevent corporations from abusing it and creating two permanent classes, because at the rate we're going now, we will end up in another cycle of expansion and oppression.

Capitalism doesn't have to be bad. We can get rid of mega-corporations and hedge funds and create a healthier ecosystem of small businesses with fair practices taxed fairly. (Personally, I'd rather see a non-corrupt FALC, Solar Punk, Egalitarian, matrilineal, Socialist Society. But that's just me.)

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOUR CRAFT

Witchcraft is not just about spells for love or money. It's about understanding how energy flows through nature, through ourselves, through communities, and through the systems and ecosystems we create and support. These cycles are the paths our magic takes in order to manifest.

When witches speak of "power," they are often referring to a practice of being aware of how we spend our energy, where we place our attention, and how we shape relationships. In a world shaped by colonial systems that thrive on control and hierarchy, reclaiming your energy takes back your power. Instead of giving it away to structures or people that drain you, the focus shifts to protecting your time, honoring your boundaries, and being intentional about where you invest yourself to manifest the life you desire.

Part of this decolonization means retracing your ancestors' paths and identifying systems your own family and communities have created. Community and connection are at the heart of reframing your mindset from a colonial one. Power is not about keeping others dependent, but about lifting one another up, cultivating balanced interdependence, and valuing reciprocity. By reclaiming this knowledge, their stories carry the keys to healing. Your ancestral power exists outside of hierarchy. It allows you to face and heal the imbalances within yourself so that you can pave a better path for your future descendants.

At the time this was written, we are in a time of renewal. Your magic is not just for you. It's part of the collective energy of collaborative renewal.

Don't get me wrong, this will be the hardest part of your practice. You are essentially doing shadow work for your lineage. Learning where you come from and what your family has done or been through can be hard to face. But when you understand the why behind it all, their stories and their values become YOUR story, and that story allows you to take these lessons and build something better. At minimum, it makes your spells more effective.

HOW TO USE IT IN YOUR MAGIC

If a spell isn't working, look here first.

Most blockages aren't spiritual. They're systemic. You're casting into a current that's running against you because of something built before you were born. A belief pattern, a fear response, or a relationship dynamic. Understanding this doesn't make magic harder. It makes it finally start making sense.

The most common issue I see: love spells done by married heterosexual women where the person they married was raised to believe a woman is "beneath a man." They do the love spell and it's clear he loves her (from his perspective, he does) but he treats her poorly. His energy is put into actions and desires that directly counter her wellbeing and make her feel unloved from her perspective. Being able to identify this allows her to look at the actual situation and navigate around it. Instead of another love spell, a road opener spell might be more effective, to help him be open to learning and deconstructing what he was raised to believe. Sadly, even then, some of these systems of energy are so established our spells won't budge them. This knowledge allows her to pivot, and focus on doing spells for self-love, gaining closure after moving on, and finding new love with someone who actually loves her the way she deserves.

Another common one: abundance spells for money. People do abundance spells for wealth and see very little movement. (Some people fear-monger that someone will die and leave an inheritance. That's rarely, if ever, the case.) Usually you just get more of where you already put your energy. You have to first understand the system of money and the mindset of the people who are succeeding in it. You'll need an income, pay down debts, avoid frivolous spending, and invest. If your job isn't paying enough, you can create rituals to build discipline around learning new skills and finding a new job. You can do spells to find people who can help you build a new resume. You can do spells to influence the people you interview with. Once you have the job, you need to save and invest. Money has its own energy, and it doesn't look like abundance. As a seer, it looks like trust energy, which makes sense, because we give it and are trusting that we will receive goods or services in return. Where you spend it is where that energy goes. Put it with itself in an account where the intention is to build wealth, and you will build wealth. Spend it on clothes, and an abundance spell will get you an abundance of clothes.

THE BOTTOM LINE

You don't have to fix the whole system to do good magic within it.

You just have to know where the walls are.

When you know the cycles, the patterns, and the energetic systems you're entangled in, and the energy that flows through them, your practice transforms from isolated spells into something that actually has traction. Decolonizing your craft is figuring out what was yours to begin with before these systems from the monster framed how you view the world.

Start there. The rest of you practice builds from this.