WITCHES AT THE POLLS

Is that broom just for astral travel, or to help her clean things up?

Art: Pchyburrs

I was speaking to a friend of mine yesterday and he said something interesting.

“I see you’re not writing about politics as much” he said. “Gone back to all the Healing of America kind of stuff.”

I couldn’t get his comment off my mind. I understand what he’s saying, of course, but I also understand that how he sees politics — in fact, how most of the world does — is not the way I see it. American politics as we think of it now is a somewhat antiquated, superficial conversation that does little more than stir the pot. Most political journalism today — much of it very good, don’t get me wrong — is basically data collection. Trump did this today, or he did that today. Most of our politics is little more than a running conversation on what it will take to defeat him.

There’s got to be more to politics than just treating symptoms. We need a serious re-envisioning of what’s possible, if we’re to create fundamental change. Millions of people realize that just defeating Trump will not of itself defeat the forces behind him. There’s a larger struggle going on and all of us can feel it.

As dramatic as this moment is, there’s a larger drama behind it. It’s hard not to compare this to a James Bond or even an Austin Powers movie, where the bad guys meet somewhere and actually plan things. There has to be such a place, and they’ve been meeting there for years. Behind the President’s absurd impulsivity lies a group of people who are anything but. There is strategy there; a long game that’s been playing out for a very long time. Our Defense Department clearly doesn’t know how to fight a war strategically, but whoever is behind all this had very specific plans for how to bring down America.

Whoever these guys are, they are masters. They are disciplined and they are heartless. If anything makes them laugh, it’s the DNC. They see traditional political organizing as the stuff of amateurs. On the level of metaphysics, they are worlds ahead of us. The forces of evil are not so naive as to discount the forces of consciousness. They hypnotize; they lure; they play on people’s deepest vulnerabilities; they go right for the jugular. What the Left laughs at, they take seriously. What the Left takes seriously, they laugh at. My God, I wish the Democrats would grow up.

It’s a set up for mockery and derision for a Democrat, much less a Democratic woman, to say more is going on here than meets the eye. But be that as it may, more is going on here than meets the eye - including that the witches are gathering. That phrase does not refer to candles and spells, mind you. It refers to wise women who have had enough, who will no longer stand idly by, who are done with pretending that the men who’ve been running things for ages know what the hell they’re doing.

They are women who are healers, artists, therapists, midwives, nurses, spiritual counsellors and spiritual seekers ….you know, the kind who the political elites would have us think are too unqualified to even weigh in. Yet the power of those who see through the veil of materialism are exactly the ones who could have taken this warlock down. That was then, of course, and this is now. But we still can. And we’re going to.

I had lunch both yesterday and today with such ladies. One is a former American politician who knows the game inside and out. The other is a therapist and spiritual healer from the Arab world who sees international possibilities from above the battlefield. Both are very sophisticated, yet done with pretending. Women such as this don’t have the need, or the time, to keep mimicking the language of a dying order. They see it as an evolutionary kindergarten in which kindergarteners are lighting matches. They’re not trying to impress either corporate managers or traditional political activists, though they easily could. They feel free to discuss their shamanic visions, their archetypal understanding, their mythic revelations, their prophetic visions. These aren’t women who know nothing. These are women who know everything.

A few years ago I was talking to a group of progressive activists and the name of the late author Barbara Ehrenreich came up. Ehrenreich was one of the most important progressive voices of the last half century.

“Oh I love her!” I said. “And did you know she wrote a book called Witches, Midwives and Nurses?”

You would have thought I had taken my clothes off on top of the buffet table. One of the gentlemen looked at me with such disdain, and informed me that not only had Barbara Ehrenreich written no such book, but that obviously this conversation was above my pay grade. At that point I was so tired I just told him he might want to look it up. Not only had she written the book, but it was seminal in her recognizing the systems that were operating centuries ago, and are operating today, that put our world at such risk.

It doesn’t matter anymore what people such as he don’t know, or won’t recognize, or don’t respect. Something new is evolving. The Great Mother is in labor now. She’s a collective energy, just like the patriarchy is a collective energy. She understands misogyny and she has endured it. But at this point she doesn’t really care. She’s an expression of something miraculous unfolding, as wise women meet who they are supposed to meet so that together we can reseed the world. She’s in Africa, and Latin America, and India, and the Middle East, and Europe, and Asia, and North America, and everywhere else, much like a magnet drawing unto itself the magnificent design of a transformed world. She is drawing up the blueprints. To put it simply, the old ways of thinking cannot handle the mess we’re in. She can.

No, she’s not political in the old sense. She’s the politics of the new.