Religion to Witchcraft!

*Trigger warning; rape, sexual assault and self harm are briefly discussed in this episode*

Join Hana as she shares her journey from devout religious worship to full blown witch!

Hana's story will challenge your opinion and beliefs surrounding what you would typically consider witchcraft and being a witch, while also taking you on her journey away from God!

Thank you for sharing mama!

Transcript

UNKNOWN: 0:00

Bye.

SPEAKER_00: 0:05

Welcome beautiful mamas, I am your host Shea Harrison. This podcast is a place for Springfield and local surrounding area mamas to share their stories about life, motherhood and everything in between, completely judgement free. I am so excited to be able to share these stories with you and give women an opportunity to be heard. So if you're ready to laugh, open your mind and be part of a supportive sharing community, let's crack on. Welcome beautiful mamas, I am your host Shea Harrison. This podcast is a place for Springfield and local surrounding area mamas to share their stories about life, motherhood and everything in between, completely judgement free. Alrighty. Hello. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for coming on. I'm super excited to be sharing this story, but journey with you. So as always, I will just get you to introduce yourself for our listeners and then we'll crack on with your story. Perfect. Everyone. I am Hannah and I am 32 years old. I had to think about that for a moment. Relatively new to Springfield. We moved here in February. We're a defense family. Oh, really? Yes. My husband and I both ex-defense. Oh, my husband's in the Air Force. Yeah. So were we. Obviously. And this is our third interstate posting in the last three years. Oh my goodness. Fun times. We have two children. Yep. Aurelia, who we call Ray, and she's five. Yep. And Toby, who is almost two. Oh, cute. Almost two. Yes. So that's us. And I am, I guess what I do for work, I'm self-employed. I'm a professional witch, tarot reader, and astrologer. Which is super, super exciting. We were just discussing this before we started recording. I'm really excited to hear about your journey to getting to this position. I find it so interesting. Yes, my journey is unique, but not as rare as some people might think. And I urge those with any religious background just to keep an open mind because religious trauma is real. I do have some. A lot of people have some. But there are some people who are still very happily in the church and I have nothing against the church whatsoever. Majority of my family is still Christian. But I do not count myself that way anymore this is I guess a little bit of my my pathway to getting there which some some of those movements were forced upon us and some were explored and how I got to here because it's a big shift it's a huge shift to going into something that is considered wrong and evil and everything unholy yeah from my youth yeah so yes it's it's very interesting did you have any questions before I start no no let's crack on from the beginning all right In the beginning, I was raised in an Assemblies of God church. So that is a Pentecostal church, very evangelical, which means the main gist of the church is to spread the word of God as far and wide as possible. So it's all about planting churches, missions, trips, encouragement to bring people into the church and convert as many people as humanly possible. That is the goal, right? Now, being raised in that... we we didn't have a typical relationship with other churches or other denominations of churches it was very much instead of just every sunday we would go twice on a sunday sunday morning and sunday night we would have small group which is a prayer group on a wednesday that would be at a local family's house either our neighbors our friends up the road or at our house friday nights once i was a teenager was youth group and then again sunday so that's four times a week at least in my teens. Yeah. Three times a week when I was younger. Yeah. That's a lot. That is a lot. The entirety of Christmas Day was spent at church, putting on a Christmas Day lunch. Do you get Santa? Yes. Okay. Yes, someone would dress up as Santa. Not that I'm like, oh my God, Santa's the be-all of religion, but... Yeah, we didn't miss out on that. I mean, I think Santa is heavenly, almost like, not controlled by Christianity, but associated with Christianity. Yeah, yeah. Right. So... Christmas day that was that was kind of my life the only friends we had were in the church yeah the only family friends we had were in the church

SPEAKER_01: 4:16

yeah

SPEAKER_00: 4:16

and because we didn't have a lot of family here my uh my grandparents on my father's side they are immigrants from from Holland so it was just them and their two kids so that's all we had and then on my mother's side very interesting story for another day okay she found out she found out in her 30s she was adopted

SPEAKER_01: 4:37

Oh, in her 30s.

SPEAKER_00: 4:39

But found out that she was adopted by her grandparents and her sister was actually her mother. And her grandparents, her parents were actually her grandparents. I know. Let's get your mum on as well. Let's do it. Let's get everyone aboard. She's local too. She moved up with us. Oh, that's cute. But yes, so she has an interesting story. But a lot of her family was either much older or much younger than her. She was kind of the only one in her age group. So it just, and they weren't always super close and we weren't close with them.

SPEAKER_01: 5:07

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 5:07

being her parents, being grandparents, they died quite early.

SPEAKER_01: 5:10

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00: 5:10

So we didn't have a lot of family, so the church became our family.

SPEAKER_01: 5:14

Yes,

SPEAKER_00: 5:14

okay. My dad was raised in it by his parents. They came over from the Dutch Reformed Church and then found Pentecostal churches. And then my mum came into, she converted into the church, which a lot of people do because something's happened. There might be a trauma that they feel guilt or something like that about, or they want community. Community is a huge draw for the church, right? And when you're in it, The community is everything. And you form these relationships and these bonds with people that they feel, keyword feel, they feel far deeper and richer than anyone else because you share this spiritual belief. Yeah. Right? Now, the problem with any church, and this is not all churches, okay? My church in particular was very much about this community aspect. But there were caveats to that. If you don't play by those church rules, Right. Absolutely. Yeah. And that's kind of what happened. that's not okay that's you know sinful in the eyes of the lord you've been married in the church you have to stay together you have to work through it and a lot of the advice that mum got from her close friends was oh you don't think i've thought about that oh you just have to deal with it you just have to find you know something else to put your attention on or find this or do this so mum threw herself into hobbies of course and stayed and then we had my brother which was great and she always thinks she's like if i didn't stay i wouldn't have had your brother fair but obviously things were not comfortable and i don't think they're going to get any better as most of us know yeah that that's usually a warning sign and when you don't listen those unmet expectations become resentments and they just drive a wedge and we didn't realize there is such an act of happy families that happened not only in our family but since leaving i've realized how many other families went through it so just this act this facade that you put on and the theme in the church and it was really really really crucial once i got to my teenage hood right going into high school you'd walk into church and people could say things like didn't you wear that the other week yeah and i was like um yes thinking you know i like this outfit yeah i bought this outfit so i could wear it to church all of my purchases for outfits were for church yeah okay it was the purpose behind every single outfit i bought i i'm an hour massive outfit repeat i always have been i'd like three dresses that i've just worn on cycle but it's it's normal right yeah i think i think so it's sustainable yes so they'd say you know didn't you wear that say three weeks ago yeah well that's not very respectful to god is it that's is this people your age yes oh yeah this is people my age people my mom's age would say things like oh you're very brave to wear that to church because you've worn it already no this was more um it was it was too girly or it an interesting fabric or she showed her shoulders and there was no rules around that yeah right but you know it maybe it showed a little bit of cleavage it didn't matter really what it was it was just this like cattiness that went underneath everything yeah little things like people aren't happy people aren't happy and they focus their attentions on other people yeah right and it is this appearance of looking good for god yeah right um this idea that you know as a teen girl you you're married to Jesus until you find your husband. Oh my God. It's really cringy. It is really cringy, but that's just my beliefs that, you know, it's not for everyone. Yeah. I mean, I don't think the idea that I think the purity culture that came along, along with it was really detrimental to me personally and to a lot of women and to men as well. And we had so many young people get married, like really young in the church to their first boyfriend because that was pressured on them. and as any normal human being with hormones you want to do things that are not allowed they're forbidden they're sinful and therefore the only option is marriage yeah and it's also the norm like you've seen your parents do it you see your friends do it a general generation but like an age group just older than yours so that's just what you perceive as to be oh everyone else is doing it this is just what we do exactly so and i don't personally i think young marriages they just you can't have gone through everything you can't of experience life enough and then that in itself can breed regret and unhappiness later on you need to know who you are before you you know choose your person so some people have

SPEAKER_01: 10:50

that some people have a good awareness from an early age some don't

SPEAKER_00: 10:53

but not to the level that you see like the percentage that you see in the church yeah so you'd see people that were pressured into marriages earlier than they really should have been all of that all of that jazz the other thing was some of the messages around you know, the pastor, the children's pastor at youth group would stand up and they would do things like, you know, pass around a rose and everyone has to smell the rose. And by the time the rose got back up to the pastor, all of the petals were falling off. They were bruised. It didn't look as pretty anymore. This is you. If you, Oh my God. Exactly. That's terrible. Do the same with a piece of paper. So everyone's crunched the paper up, open it up again, do it. You know, can we ever get this paper as flat? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And they'd talk about things that they were not qualified. They'd never studied counselling, trauma counselling, psychology, any of that. There was no ethical agreements to keep things to themselves. I have no doubt in my mind they were all keeping notes on each person.

SPEAKER_01: 12:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 12:22

And it's just this really weird, I guess, enmeshment of every part of the church. So then if you ever thought about, oh, my gosh, what if I don't go to church next week? I'm not feeling it. What is everyone going to think? They're going to think I've backslidden They're going to think I'm this horrible person. They're going to think this, this, and it becomes about what people think rather than your spiritual practice or your devotion to God. Now, the type of church that it was, not everyone might be aware of it. They talked a lot about spiritual gifts. So they talked about speaking in tongues. This was an expectation that you had received the Holy Spirit into your life if you could speak in tongues, which is known as glossolalia. It is a way of speaking– a different language that you don't know, but it's not a true language. It's like a personal language between you and God. Some people would have the gift where they could interpret this for other people. Some people may have the spiritual gift of healing hands where they can lay their hands on someone and heal them, which we would see happen. So some people might say it is the power of prayer. Others might say it's the power of suggestion, placebo, those sorts of things. And I don't discount either of those I think it can be both but when you see it it's very hard to deny as

SPEAKER_01: 13:43

well

SPEAKER_00: 13:43

so that keeps you tied to the church as well obviously it's true because this thing has happened

SPEAKER_01: 13:47

yeah

SPEAKER_00: 13:48

yeah you saw it with your own eyes yeah it's not even

SPEAKER_01: 13:50

just

SPEAKER_00: 13:50

rumor exactly yeah I remember each church session you would there'd be a call to the altar which is if you have it in your heart if you have any sin in your heart and you want to give your heart to Jesus and be saved and ensure you're going to go to heaven like confession no Not confession. You just had to, it's like personal confession, I guess. You're not having to tell what your sins are. But just if you feel like there might be something wanting and you had to give your heart to Jesus in order to get into heaven, that's the crux of it. Come up to the front and we'll pray with you. And so, you know, at the age of five. I was going out there because I felt so guilty and shameful for all the sin in my life at five to go give my heart to Jesus. And it was congratulated and yay, well done. And so I remember this one time, the first time that I went up there and you get prayed for and you'd see people falling over. Someone would catch them, but they'd fall over whilst they were praying. So it was like this, they've been moved by the power of Christ. I remember going up there and feeling the pastor pushing on my head as he was praying. And I'm like, is he trying to push me over? And I was like, is that what happens? Maybe that's what happens. And it was just this real confusion. I know what's expected. Okay, I'll fall down, right? Sometimes people would be shaking, jumping. It's very strange if you didn't grow up in it to see any of this happen, this spiritual fervor. It's very, very interesting. And so I was lying there. And even at the age of five, I knew I wasn't able to get up yet because the music hadn't changed. They put this certain type of tone. And now I know that it can be almost like a musical manipulation where it makes you feel sad or it makes you feel this. It gives you these feelings based on the tone of the music. That's what they do in the movies. Like what you do in the movie, right? You know a sad scene's coming up. You know a jump scare's coming up. You know you're supposed to be excited and happy. So you knew just by what the band was doing

SPEAKER_01: 15:50

what

SPEAKER_00: 15:51

was expected. So it was this extra form of control. And a lot of the time when you're getting these... goosebumps or I felt like I wanted to cry sometimes in the worship songs and mum would say that is the power of the Lord and now I'm like I think I just like live music yeah yeah like you just don't consider it could be anything else so i was lying there at the age of five and praying with all my heart you know god please come into my heart please save me you know a because i'm petrified of hell and demons and that is very traumatic for a child to be told that oh yes all those monsters are real they're demons they're whispering in your ears very very traumatic so lying there you know praying praying praying and it was almost like a little movie screen turned on in my head and i saw this image of like dirt floor and all these children and i could tell they were it to me it looked like one of the 40 hour famine oh yeah commercials right just this little snippet of these children looking up at me and my hands in front of me and i knew they were my hands but they were obviously older and it didn't last very long but it was very very clear and i'm lying there going didn't i just get a vision Do I just get a vision from God? And that is accepted and promoted and wanted, basically. It's a spiritual gift of prophecy. And when I woke up, I told the pastor and we told my mum and said, you know, I've had this vision. I'm going to be a missionary because that's the only option. Why would God give me a vision like this if I'm not going to go and preach to the masses over in countries that need Christianity, right? Need God, yeah. Which my grandparents did. They were missionaries throughout Papua New guinea india indonesia so i had that's the knowledge i had that's what i interpreted as i'm going to be a missionary i then had another vision later on i think i was about eight where i was on a stage talking to a lot of people i'm also going to be a preacher obviously that is my life path

SPEAKER_01: 17:56

yeah

SPEAKER_00: 17:56

yeah so i'm thinking i've got these these two key visions from god about my future And this is my spiritual path that I am on. So I was very, very serious about my religion. Very serious. I've had this proof. How could I not be? So I was head first in the church. Then we get to high school. High school's a bit tough. I went to a private Christian college. So again, all my friends are Christian. It was science averse. So we didn't learn evolution. Evolution is evil. Evolution is from the devil. That is what the devil has come and spoken into men's hearts to make them dismiss Christianity. That's the work of the devil. Do not ever look into evolution. You know, the world... You know, like 50 years ago, you can see that it not has its place, but it

SPEAKER_01: 18:49

would have been

SPEAKER_00: 18:50

around. And, I mean, this is going to affect a lot of people and their career choices from that school. Yeah. And you pay a lot of money to go to that school. Yeah. So school was interesting. I think I felt the normal– teenage things that you want to do and experience and and i was really drawn to you know all these tv shows and movies that i wasn't allowed to watch our films were very heavily controlled you know gpg that's it um it had to you know even when i was really young snow white was like no there's a witch in that you can't watch that snow white smurfs uh-uh it's got it's got a warlock that's witchcraft gargamel evil can't watch that right what about harry potter oh my god no way my mum was asked to because my primary school wasn't christian we didn't have one close by um and my mum wasn't working so the the private one which was my high school was also a primary school wasn't an option at the time yeah and my mum was asked by another christian mum at the school to come down and basically protest the fact that they had harry potter in the library and i remember going oh they have harry potter in the library i think i was grade four maybe grade five when they came out i'm thinking i wonder if i can can just read a little bit and I remember reading it in secret in the library but I wasn't allowed to like it was there I felt so much shame for that because especially because I liked it yeah I'm not supposed to like it yes um also I remember reading you know goosebumps under my friend's bed and I loved it I loved it my mum used to get phone calls in grade three uh that Hannah was telling ghost stories at school and she'd frightened some of the other kids really badly and you need to have a talk to her. And I was like, Oh, sorry. I just really enjoy that. And that was wrong. Ghosts aren't real. Spirits aren't real. You know, that's demonic. So then I get to teenage life and teenage life was really tough. I now know I have ADHD. I didn't know at the time, right? Obviously girls were not diagnosed. There were no studies in girls. They didn't know the differences in girls and boys and the different types of ADHD inattentive versus attentive. So I found school really, really hard. And I'm, was clever very clever so it wasn't an issue of not knowing what I was doing it was the overwhelm that came with it I basically had chronic overwhelm you know why is everyone else doing this so easily why is it so hard for me why can't I do that what's wrong with me and that was the first thing I went to what's wrong with me and that developed a lot of things I think that mixed with the guilt and shame from church the excess responsibilities that come along with being in that church the focus on image in the church and you know the women that were on stage they were beautiful like gorgeous all the women and the men dress very very well I can pick them out of a crowd now like oh yeah they go to church they have a look about them they all looked gorgeous and they were all very in control of their looks if that makes sense so I started dyeing my hair blonde at the age of I reckon 12 wearing makeup in a way that you wouldn't get in trouble at school and developed an eating disorder which very quickly turned into self-harm as well which oh my gosh that warred with me and my religious upbringing why am i doing this thing this must be demons this must be demonic how old are you at this point 12 when that when they developed yeah yeah and that lasted a very very long time yeah now the church didn't believe in psychology yeah okay it was prayer counseling basically and my mom did the right thing she did take me to a psychologist a psychotherapist um like a full assessment at the royal children's hospital she was very very concerned when she found out

SPEAKER_01: 22:39

yeah

SPEAKER_00: 22:40

two years later so it had been going on for a long time

SPEAKER_01: 22:43

yeah

SPEAKER_00: 22:44

so she did the right thing there but it wasn't working nothing was working is

SPEAKER_01: 22:47

that because it was toying with like your foundational beliefs

SPEAKER_00: 22:50

and potentially yeah yeah and i think it was just a lot of things that were just unaddressed right yeah yeah uh unknown and i didn't at that point i didn't want to get better this was my coping mechanism take away my coping mechanism what am i left with

SPEAKER_01: 23:03

yeah

SPEAKER_00: 23:04

so she ended up taking me to this other church wasn't our church it was another church and I thought that was because she didn't want anyone at church to know which I don't think she did want anyone at church to know but she took me to this other church where I didn't know what was happening I didn't understand and I was about 14 and they all circled around me everyone placed their hands on me and they prayed that the devil would release its hold on me and I remember the woman who was leading this prayer circle which felt like an exorcism it was very commanding you know devil you will leave this child alone and It's very scary, especially people you don't know. And then to think, oh, my gosh, do I really have a demon attached to me? Is this actually what's happening? And the woman that was leading it, she knew something. She knew about an area where, trigger warning again, I was self-harming. I had carved a word into my body that I believed about myself. And she knew that. And she couldn't have known, right? So that to me was– It's not an invisible location. Yes, exactly. It was– my mother didn't know. It was very secret. So to me, I was like, okay. okay, that's proof that God gave her that. So this must be evil, right? Like it was just this weird proof. It makes sense though. Like you said, the proof's there. Exactly. So I had all these like little proof things, right? So then when I hit 15, my mum decided to leave my dad. Right. Now this blindsided everybody. So she, I remember she, I came out one night, she was sleeping on the couch, which was like so naughty. on if anyone was ever on the couch with my dad because my mom had really bad neck problems and could never do the couch and usually he was the one snoring but suddenly she's on the couch and i'm like uh what's wrong and i didn't know at the time i am intuitive i just picked up something was really really really wrong here and i don't know what it is so obviously mom must have cancer she must be dying that's the only logical explanation and when she when i said that she said oh no no no sweetheart your father and i have just decided to to separate. That was worse than mum potentially having cancer because how could you possibly do that? What's going to happen? That's not allowed. What do you mean? You guys are perfect. We're the perfect family. What do you mean?

SPEAKER_01: 25:21

Yeah,

SPEAKER_00: 25:22

okay. Absolutely shocking. I didn't know but my mum's, one of my mum's ex-boyfriends from before she was in the church had found her in the phone book, called her up and said, you know, hey, I just wanted to catch up. And she told my dad, she's like, oh, one of my ex-boyfriends he's found me i'd love to like catch up and she met with him and she was like oh my and he he said to her what have they done to you who are you what she's what is this and it just shook her free from a lot of the cage she built around herself

SPEAKER_01: 25:52

yeah

SPEAKER_00: 25:53

yeah she couldn't describe that to me as 15 years old yeah she was still processing it herself so all she knew is he's right this isn't me i'm not happy still not happy i could maybe be happy with him so the fact Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 26:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 26:33

So it was very, very, very traumatic. It was very messy. Yeah. Worst possible thing that can happen when you've already got someone, a child that's self-harming and got an eating disorder, all that. So that got worse. Yeah. And for a long time, I was like, it's obviously because of me. I put too much pressure on the family. And so then that got internalized as well. So there's like all this internalized shame and guilt and all of that. Plus, if we're not a Christian family anymore, how am I going to go and be a missionary and a preacher with a broken family? That's not okay. Then it ramped up because all of the parents at church and everything started to find out. And my mom and I got kicked out of church. So they pretty much said, mom was on the women's ministry. And they just turned around and said, you don't think you guys can actually come back here and mom was like oh all right i see what i see what you're saying so she was out and then the fact that i was living with my mom apparently i was living with sin i was a teenage girl i'm gonna live with my mom my dad doesn't talk periods that's not gonna happen yeah yeah and my dad was moving out to his to his sister's place in the country like way away from all my friends so i'm still at school and all of the other kids at school especially the ones that went to my church were told you can't hang out with Hannah anymore her family is broken she's living in sin she's a bad influence do not talk to her do not hang out with her so that social like high school is hard enough add that onto it I've lost my entire church community family friends from like that felt like family like actual family because we didn't have much right so we did Christmases together family holidays together everything together gone instantly turned their backs they didn't No one checked in to see if I was okay. How are you coping with the divorce? How are you coping with this change of schools? Nothing. So I had to change schools because of it. It was so bad. Did you go to a public school from there? I went to a, it was a private school, but it was a Catholic school. Yeah, okay. And it was, it didn't feel like a Christian school in any way. Wildly different. Everyone was like, oh yeah, like our parents have been to church like once a year. Yeah, yeah. I was like, what do you mean once a year?

UNKNOWN: 28:47

What?

SPEAKER_00: 28:47

Are they going to hell? It was this huge shift I had to then come to. So all of that, right? There's probably more in that story, but it was very messy. It was very hard. And I'm still at the time battling with, shouldn't I be back at church? Do I need to find a new church? Because I've got this spiritual pathway I'm going to. But then now I feel so broken. How could I ever get to that pathway? Yeah. This big sort of thing. So I just kind of went, you know what? Maybe I just forget about it all. Maybe I just push it down into a neat little box inside my brain and I don't open that. I lock it and just pretend it never happened. And I'm never going to be that. And maybe there's something else I have to think about. out so i'm like oh crap what am i gonna be what am i gonna be that was a big big question so anyway i go through life and just sort of figuring things out as you do and by the time i got to 20 i had been i'd had a few long-term relationships that hadn't worked out they'd always cheated on me after two years or something like that again solidifying the what's wrong with me aspect had this uh boyfriend that i was seeing we traveled we went over to Cambodia and he ended up with a horrible horrible falling out and I sent him home and then I came home from this like what was supposed to be a romantic trip to be like no we actually broke up and I was really ashamed about it like people are going to think what's wrong with her again and I thought you know what stuff it I'm just actually going to go back and I'm going to leave Australia I don't actually want to be here anymore I don't want anyone to know me to know my history I just need a fresh slate so I went back to Cambodia because I really enjoyed it there and I ended up working at a children's orphanage and I was going to go there for three months went there and one day when I was teaching because I was teaching English I turned around and realised it had a dirt floor and all these children's faces were looking up at me and I was like This is that vision that I saw. And even right now I'm getting shivers again. It was such a wild moment to think I'd misinterpreted it. I'm not a missionary, but I am in another country and I'm helping these children, but it has nothing to do with God. what about the other one what else have i misconstrued i thought i had this power of prophecy and then i thought i must have been dreaming it all the whole time because everything that happened and i still wasn't sure by the end of getting kicked out like is the church real is christianity real maybe i just don't like churches maybe god's still real all those questions and they continued for a long time and suddenly i had this validation that no what you that experience was real just interpreted it wrong so okay that's interesting started following my got a little bit more what you have to do when you travel and ended up moving to Canada. I was like, I'm still anti-Australia right now. I don't want to be around anyone who knows me. So I moved to Canada for two years to do a working holiday visa. Lived in like the most beautiful little Christmas town called Banff in Alberta and met my husband who just so happened to be from two suburbs away back home. That's crazy. With multiple mutual friends. I was like, no, I don't want an Aussie. No people. Yes. And he grew up kind of Catholic, similar like, oh yeah, dad would sometimes go to church, whatever. But it wasn't super ingrained and he was very science minded. Like he had done university degrees in psychology and very, very clever. And anytime I said something, he would say, well, where's the published peer reviewed article on that one? And he really made me stop and think and challenged a lot of my views and my beliefs, which was fantastic. And so I started researching because he was like, well, go find it. I was like, I can do that. He's like, yeah. And he'd say something about evolution. I'd be like, oh, no, I have no idea. He'd say, I don't know, go teach yourself. So I found the Khan Academy, did a whole course on evolution, what it is, what it means. And my mind felt like it was just being, like, blasted open in terms of my worldview. Yeah, yeah. It was wonderful spending time with people. I love those, like,

SPEAKER_01: 32:54

moments. How did I not think of that before? Yeah, exactly. Like, that

SPEAKER_00: 32:56

feels

SPEAKER_01: 32:57

so not stupid, but stupid

SPEAKER_00: 32:59

for not considering it. I love those moments. Yes. And, you know, I started– realizing I guess my feminist ideals that I had and how anti-feminist the church can be and rooted in patriarchy and what I didn't know what that word was before and suddenly it's like wow that makes a lot of sense so it's sort of this exploration of the real world but the spiritual world hadn't really changed yet yeah so then along those travels after Canada I decided to go down to Louisiana traveling by myself we were still together obviously but I was traveling by myself I wanted to work in Louisiana because I always felt I felt drawn to it. It's such a cool place. And I worked on this goat farm in the middle of nowhere. Yeah. Town of 100. Middle of nowhere. And I was staying in a caravan out the back. And I think it was the first or the second night that I got there, I woke up with something called sleep paralysis. Yeah. I'd never had this before. Yeah. Now, usually sleep paralysis is when something's sitting on your chest and it's so heavy you can't get up. This felt like someone holding my wrist down on the bed and I could move my head, I could move my chest, but I could not get up. And it felt terrifying. I went straight back into the church in my head. I was praying, turned on all the, by the time I could get up, I turned on all the lights, turned on my Christian music and was just like, absolutely not. This must be demonic. This is what else could it be? Right. That felt so evil. The next night, again, praying before sleep, God protect me, all of that. And I, I saw something sit on the bed, like the butt imprint of something sitting on the bed. down on the bed terrifying like i didn't sleep i was like what am i doing what is this this place is haunted or something i don't know what's going on and so i told the girl so she was like the grandchild of the people i was working for i told her i was like i feel really silly saying this but i have to know has anyone ever said anything about staying out in that caravan and she's like oh what have you brought with you from new orleans didn't skip a beat she believed me instantly didn't make me feel silly and she said no one said anything so it must be attached to you I was like that feels fantastic thank you my first fear is confirmed fabulous and she said my friend's a witch I'll get him to come down and firstly I was like a witch yeah Witches aren't real. And then I was like, but in the church we believe they were real. Other things were real. They are real. There's a demon here. Yeah, it was this weird like, is this okay? Is this wrong? Is this evil? Yeah, yeah. Secondly, he, what? Yeah. He's a witch. She goes, yeah, he's a witch and a nurse. And I was like, you are breaking open lots of gender. Yeah. Answers in my brain. Fun fact, witch is a gender neutral term. Oh, yeah. So just so everyone knows, even though we associate it with women. So he comes along. Comes into the room, did some divination using a pendulum. I didn't know what that was. I was just like, what is he waving this weird thing around for? Turns around and said, yep, there's something here. It is attached to you. What I can do is cleanse the space, ward it, which is like putting up a block, and you'll be fine. I was like, I don't know what any of those words mean, but do it. Fine. Yeah, yeah. Try. As long as nothing's touching me again. Yeah. Because obviously me praying, it still sat on my bed like it didn't work. Yeah, yeah. So try this and we'll see. Anyway, that night, went to sleep. Lights on still still. yeah and I heard scraping on the roof but nothing inside yeah it felt like something was trying to get in and couldn't and in my head I was like at the time going it's just a tree in the wind yeah it's just a tree and then of course when I left in the morning I've turned around very slowly and I'm like oh there's no trees close enough yeah okay okay cool well at least I know it worked yeah right it it worked that's interesting cool, file that away for later. So that was my first encounter with a witch and my first very spiritual encounter, like supernatural. And looking back, I think that was less malevolent than I perceived at the time and more like this wake up. There is more here that you're made for and that you can experience and understand in the spiritual realm. So fast forward, I'm, you know, now I'm watching Harry Potter all the time. Love Harry Potter. I'm, you know, diving deep into anything I want to read fantasy, witch novels, Anne Rice, like absolutely giving myself permission to explore and loving it. And at the same time, I remember thinking tea leaf reading could be fun. That could be fun, right? Hmm. That's in Harry Potter. Surely that's nothing bad. I'm just going to brew a cup. I love tea. I'll brew a cup of tea and see if I can read the leaves. And in it, I accidentally predicted the conception and birth of my daughter. Luckily, I kept a little record because I was like, oh, that's so funny. like this arrival of you know someone that we don't know but we're really close to and and two fish i think that means pisces i have no idea i don't know anything about zodiacs and we had a little girl we conceived about a month later i thought i was infertile we've been trying for over a year conceived about a month later and when i had her she was pisces and i didn't realize till i looked back and i went oh my gosh looking back at that cup that's that's my daughter and i was like do i have a do i have a gift here is this a thing so again allowing myself to dive a So learning, you know, a little bit more about tea leaf reading. As I'm sort of allowing this to happen, I hear this voice in my head, and I'm not kidding. I did think I was going crazy, but it was like this thought was dropped into my head saying, buy a deck of tarot cards. And I was like, ha, no way. That is evil. Do I want a demon popping out? Do I want a portal to hell opening up? Absolutely not. No way. And so I ignored it, and it was almost like it was getting louder until I actually told my husband, I said, I feel like I need to buy a deck of tarot cards, like something's telling me to. He said, okay, so go do it. I can't do that. Don't you understand? He's like, all right, so don't do it. I'm like, no, I feel like I have to. Men, my husband does that. So he wasn't a help at all. No. It took, I reckon, about a year, a year of me, you know, formulating this. I think, actually, sorry, I think the voice had started after the Tealief reading before my daughter. So I think it took birth to really allow me to just explore. Yeah. So I did. I went and bought a deck of tarot cards and I have never gone a day since without using them. They opened up this world that I hadn't, it just flowed so easily. A lot of people, it is difficult to learn. I feel like I barely had to learn. I, within a couple of months i was offering you know i'd obviously done myself and my husband and then very hesitantly asked my mom because she was going through something else like i think i can help her but how do i tell her i'm using these things that are evil yeah and told her and she came and sat down with a notepad took notes and listened and i was like oh my gosh i'm actually helping and then i'd offer some friends going through some issues and then i ended up going online and finding a facebook group where i was like i want to practice anyone who wants a reading don't care where you are in the world just tell me a question i'll awesome cards and i'd do 20 30 readings a day for people online on the internet for free

SPEAKER_01: 40:06

yeah

SPEAKER_00: 40:07

and all i got was positive feedback like how did you know that this is the most incredible reading i've ever had and i was like what is going on here and so we'd had my daughter i was on maternity leave and at the same time going through postnatal depression now these tarot cards were actually helping with that giving me some good something to focus on but also some really good coping mechanisms i was meditating daily which really really helped i was medicated as well because that's necessary

SPEAKER_01: 40:31

So

SPEAKER_00: 40:32

I'm going through all of that. I'm getting better. But I'm really, something is not right. I'm not happy. And I thought having a baby and going on maternity leave would be the best. So this is going to be amazing. A lot of people think that, but it's not for everyone. Absolutely not. Well, I'd only had the church, right? Where it was this glorified, that is what women do. That is what we're here to do, to have children. And to have a baby and then go, I hate this. What have I done? Was brain rattling. like how do you begin to cope with the mum guilt that comes along with that thought that's not like that's the depression yeah exactly it's not a true exactly it's also the ADHD yeah of I can't cope this is overwhelming this is I don't have the coping mechanisms for this yeah and you know my other ones are not okay like what what do I do here and then having a husband in the Air Force he was away yeah isn't that crap I had that conversation with one of my girlfriends the other day oh my gosh so I was left alone for a lot of that time with no adult communication most of the time. So a baby all day for four months, no, recipe for disaster. So there's a lot of things going on there. In the end, though, I ended up finding astrology somewhere along that way and started, you know, it peaked my ADHD hyperfixation. I started looking into it, reading into it, and discovered that my moon, so for everyone listening, we all have not only your sun sign, which is your star sign, that's where the sun was in the zodiac, the time of your birth. The moon goes through each of the zodiac signs every two and a half days. So we all have a moon sign and that's our emotional landscape. Now, my moon is in Scorpio, which firstly, very intense emotional sign, very related to huge ups and huge downs, huge transformations in your life, very, very low lows, very, very high highs. And I was like, well, that relates with my life completely. Lots of, you know, rebirth, you know, redoing your life over, start afresh. So yeah, that tracks but it was in the 10th house now houses are like the area of life the 10th house is Korea and the interpretation with that is without a career your emotions are untethered and you will not feel validated you will not feel fulfilled and your mental health will suffer and I was like whoa yeah I'd been a bit of a workaholic and now I have nothing a baby is not my job you know and even though I thought I want maternity leave for as long as possible suddenly I was like okay maybe I shouldn't maybe I should go back to work so I decided to go back part-time and suddenly my mental health went like through the roof I'm feeling so much better and I was like okay cool that's great wow that worked that's really interesting what more can I learn so I started diving in deeper and deeper also using these tarot cards realizing I'm helping people and then the opportunity came to move to Perth and I thought I don't know anyone in Perth I can be anyone in Perth. And I'd said to my husband, I was like, I think, I think I want to open my own business. And he's like, do it. What are you going to do? I was like, tarot reading and astrology. And he's like, do it. Absolutely. You're, you're allowed to give it a go. Best time to do it. I was like, okay, cool. So I did. And that is just, I guess the start of it is how things started to really fall into place. Um, I got a mentor. I realized that I am very, very psychotic. as are we all we all have those access to those abilities just in varying degrees and we have different specialities and all of these sort of skills that i'd learned were really really helping people my fulfillment went up besides dye my hair pink which i'd always wanted to do and it was not allowed it looks amazing thank you no one in the church has pink hair i love that everything's pink though hannah's wearing pink earrings pink glasses pink lipstick pink blush pink hair

SPEAKER_01: 44:29

like it's just fabulous

SPEAKER_00: 44:30

yep absolutely And I decided to call my business Suburban Witchery because I lived in the suburbs, right? I wasn't this like witch in the woods, you know, that people go and see. I wasn't this like really urban, I guess, vibe. It was suburban. I was an everyday mum, right? Doing everyday mum stuff. But I can also help with my witchy tools, which is, you know, like, hey, this crystal is really good for this. And this tarot card reading can help with that. And your astrology can help you find your career. And it helped me find mine. And it's, you in my chart I'm an Aquarius rising very much about astrology being a part of my role that I'm here to play I'm here to spread a message to a lot of people like there's all these really intricate things in the chart that just point me to where I am and delving into I guess witchcraft which I was so scared of that word for so long I used to say I'm a little bit witchy yeah I'm just a bit witchy like I like my herbs and herbal healing and you know tea leaf reading and then that can maybe give us some information and then sort of realizing that a lot of this was quite witchy and someone said are you a witch and i was like i don't know maybe yeah maybe and it took a long time to own that word yeah because it comes with a lot of trauma not just from the church but from society yeah right and i had to really think what do i think a witch is and i'm like i think a witch is a person who takes back their own power chooses their own way and doesn't rely on an outside authority figure or organization to tell them what to believe

SPEAKER_01: 46:01

I

SPEAKER_00: 46:02

believe what I believe based on my own experiences so it was a lot of trial and error a lot of you know people saying oh you know there's you know Lemurian starseed things and I'd look into it so it's like I'm open mind I'm just checking it out and I'd be like you know what it's not for me that I don't feel it in my gut but when someone talks to me about spirit guides and having a team like our ancestors on the other side I'm like yeah yeah that that tracks I've definitely had like communication from them in dreams I've definitely had guidance in the way of signs around me yes that feels like a part of my spiritual understanding of the world and the witchy side as well of just leaning into the seasons and the way they change and the different marks things like the winter solstice the shortest night of the year longest night of the shortest day of the year you know leaning into that and recognizing it before that i never even noticed it existed what i was not in flow with the world at all now i'm like i understand the flow and the cycles that we go through every year annually every month with the moon so the lunar month the year uh the cycles like the equinoxes when things are in balance and why they take us through certain cycles at certain times to help with their own development like it is just like this rush of knowledge that just suddenly everything makes sense

SPEAKER_01: 47:17

you know

SPEAKER_00: 47:18

and so now this is what i do full-time for a career i'm professional which not in terms of like i do spells for people yeah well that was when you say professional which i know that that's not everything but that is the first place like i'm Not over a cauldron, but reciting like some form of a poem kind of thing and cursing someone who's pissed you off. It could be, right? Yeah, yeah. But in terms of what I do, I guess it is crafting things with intent for myself. But for my clients, it is sometimes helping them craft a ritual to let go of someone. Yeah, yeah. Because the essence of ritual and church is very ritualistic. Yeah. Incredibly so, is it sets you into a different mind space. Yeah. And sometimes you need a tool to visualize this, you know, thing happening. So whether it is, you know, I don't do it on behalf of people, but I'll advise them like, hey, you've just gone through this horrible breakup with someone that was extremely toxic and abusive and you can't stop thinking about them, right? That's, you don't want to be tied to them forever. So potentially consider something like a cord cutting ceremony or ritual, right? What it's going to do is it's, you're imagining and you're visualizing severing this energetic cord with this person. You may want to do that by having two candles lit and you imagine you as one and them as the other. And they're tied together and the candles burn through that cord. And that helps you visualize the act of what's happening, right? Same ways that people burn their ex's clothes in a trash can. That is witchcraft. Saying no is a spell, right? There are so many different ways, you know, words, spelling, that is spells. So I think the intent behind what we do becomes our form of witchcraft. And it's just that form of power and control that we take over our lives yeah rather over the lives of other people yeah that makes sense yeah so i mean the services that i do i provide astrology readings for people astrology reports i do one that is a kid's astrology report so it's for kids under the age of basically 11 would be i guess the top 11 12 because after that they're probably more on the adult one but the kids ones are made for parents and so they are hey your kid has this in their chart which means ordinary ways of motivating them are not going to work like my kid she has a pisces mark If I tell her to hurry up, there's a quickest way to get her to slow down and stop what we're doing, right? Yeah, yeah. She is not motivated by me saying hurry up. Yeah. I need to be very time aware with her because she has zero concept of time and is not motivated that way. She's motivated by things that are magical and things that are helping people. Like, hey, it would really help me right now if we got into the car. What do you reckon? Yeah, yeah. Yes, we'd love to help you, mum. Yeah, right. If I'm like, hurry up, we've got to get in the car. No, don't. Yeah, yeah. So little things like that that might be really interesting for your kid. How they learn. We look at their Mercury sign. How do they learn best, right? Not all kids learn the same way. We all know this. Imagine you had this like little cheat sheet on how your kid learns, right? So that's what I've crafted that one for because I think it's really useful for parents. Yeah. The other one's the adult one. So that's figuring out your own career, your own parts of your personality that, you know, we often forget who we are because society conditions us a certain way. That's what happened to Maman. in the church what happened to me in the church I never had a chance to develop my own identity until after the age of 21 right I should have been allowed to explore that as a kid and it was just always shut down so everything I liked was wrong which is very hard to deal with so yes this is I find astrology is almost like permission to be who you are yeah okay tarot is fantastic for decision making if you feel stuck giving you guidance on where to go

SPEAKER_01: 50:57

yeah

SPEAKER_00: 50:57

what might be the cause of feeling stuck yeah right what area of your life is is doing that because we can't always see when it's that close to us yeah so that's that's that aspect and the other thing i do is help people tune into their psychic abilities and learn those psychic abilities so i have a course on that

SPEAKER_01: 51:13

yeah

SPEAKER_00: 51:14

because it's it's just such a wonderful thing once you figure out what works for you and how these things come through to you yeah you know some people are really heavily visual so they'll receive visions like like i do other people i've got one student particularly and she didn't realize till she went through my core that she's got clay gustants that is her strongest psychic skill that is the ability to taste things that are not there oh wow so i let's say i did a psychic exercise i'm like okay i'm gonna hold up a card you can't see what's on it and i want everyone to tune in and see what you pick up whether that's a color a feeling a scent something like that just tell me what you think and she would always get you know this side of my tongue is tingling uh i relate that to something sweet it feels meals tart i think there's apples on there yeah right and there'd be apples on the card oh wow i'd do another one where i'm like i'm drinking a tea i want everyone to try and guess what's in the tea and she'd be like oh this section of my tongue i think that's the bitter section because we end up having to go through and find out where the sections of the tongue were where it was giving her information she goes i think that's the bitter section and i'm also seeing like this new sprout with a little yellow flower bitter i'm not really sure and i'm like well it's dandelion root yeah it is a bitter it's a bitter herb yeah yeah because the The root part is bitter. But dandelion is the first flower of the season that pops up. And the fact that she saw that was fantastic. I'm like, you got all that information. It could have been anything. It could have been anything. And you got that. That's very, very, very good. So now she tunes into things with her taste and with her sense in her mouth. Yeah. We use all of them at different times. But we usually have one that is stronger than another. So figuring out what works for them is part of the fun and the magic in that, I guess. But, yeah. think my whole life now feels so much more aligned in control uh less swayed by other people's thoughts and opinions yeah because i've seen what that does

SPEAKER_01: 53:12

yeah

SPEAKER_00: 53:14

yeah and that is my journey that's amazing i find that really um like eye-opening particularly the witchcraft part um so that's thank you for

SPEAKER_01: 53:24

sharing Yeah, that was so, I loved hearing about you talk about being in alignment. That's definitely something that I struggle with and I know lots of mums struggle with it postpartum, having children and losing themselves and not feeling like they even know what to do. So

SPEAKER_00: 53:41

that is so exciting. Thank you for coming on. You're very welcome. Thank you for having me and being open-minded to explore these sometimes touchy topics as well. Yeah, no, I don't think so. I think it's all very interesting and very exciting. And to finish with a quick this or that. Okay. So tea or coffee? Tea. Wine or spirits? Spirits. Day or night? Night. Summer or winter? Summer in Australia, but although this is going to be my first Queensland summer, so I don't know. That might change. The winter here was phenomenal. However, if we're in Canada, winter. Yeah, absolutely. No. Movies or books? Books. Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings? Harry Potter. I just feel like I need a caveat because I've kind of promoted Harry Potter a little bit but like JK is dead to me oh okay yes we did we

SPEAKER_01: 54:31

have touched on Harry Potter a

SPEAKER_00: 54:33

little bit quite a bit through the podcast but I'm very cognizant now of trying not to purchase anything and send money that way because the harm there has been significant unfortunately however if anyone does love Harry Potter and doesn't want to promote JK Rowling or their things there is a fan fiction I can highly recommend oh okay then it's called All the Young Dudes it's online on a website called archive of our own and it's like it's about the Marauders so it's about Harry's parent like Harry's dad oh okay and like making the Marauders map and everything is hands down it's way better than Harry Potter hands down one of the best books I've ever read I'm reading it for the third time this year yeah right

SPEAKER_01: 55:11

oh

SPEAKER_00: 55:12

it's so good so yes listen to that or you can find it on YouTube as well as an audiobook yeah that is my recommendation fantastic that was great alrighty then well thank you so much we'll wrap it up there thank you