Oh, the witches and children of the arid past. How I am haunted by their presence...I cannot forget. I will not forget. To feel them is to free them.
— Zzenn
I see them . . .
I see the witches stripped of their children, thrown into caged wagons and dark dungeons. I hear their agony—the relentless torture of those brave souls whose only crime was their natural beauty and the earth’s magic flowing through their veins. Dragons by birth. The seething envy of Rome.
I see the children through the centuries, suffering quietly in their dark rooms as if in a prison cell. They are left alone to face the hauntings: the ghosts under the bed, the demons in the closet, the face outside the window. These are not mere phantoms; they are ghouls of terror born from trauma, rejection, and the parents' own projected shadow. These little ones become vessels, forced to contain the poison of their ancestors, passed down through the unconsciousness of the generation before them.
I Am the Bridge
“Darken your room, shut the door, empty your mind. Yet you are still in great company - the Numen and your Genius with all their media, and your host of elementals and ghosts of your dead loves — are there! They need no light by which to see, no words to speak, no motive to enact except through your own purely formed desire.”
― Austin Osman Spare, The Logomachy of Zos
I am the bridge between now and then. To know them is to feel them. The agony of the witches and the cries of the children echo within. Through the corridors of time, I see their suffering, and I carry the sacred responsibility to hear them, to heal them, and to bring resolution to their pain.
Their stories live through me—not lost in the mists of time—power drawn from suffering. Wisdom through shadow. Ascent through descent.
People call this depression, but is it not ancestral grief? The living echo of generational child abuse—the "poisonous pedagogy" that crushes a child's spirit—and the inherited trauma from the burning times of the Inquisition. Is it survivor's guilt that stretches across centuries, a weight that asks to be felt and acknowledged?
Will a lifetime of grieving heal the past? Will a thousand years of sorrow mend this ancestral suffering? The healing is not measured in time, but in witness. The grief continues until they are seen within us—until they know, deep in the bones of history, that we remember—for their suffering is our suffering.
“And remember, you shall suffer all things and again suffer: until you have sufficient sufferance to accept all things.”
― Austin Osman Spare
We Are the Gods
Our ancestors cry out, desperate not to be forgotten, terrified that their suffering was in vain. They were abandoned by a so-called god who remained indifferent to their pain. This indifference is the unforgivable sin, a crime perpetrated by the very deity humans imagined into existence and then excused with their stories.
I refuse to be like that god.
I will remember.
I will feel.
I will hear.
I will see.
Perhaps this is the true nature of divinity—not to be a distant, imagined power, but to be its arms here on Earth. We are the gods of this world, the ones who rescue the victims of evil. We are the ones who save ourselves and each other. We are the saviors.
We must accept this role because if it's not us, then this universe is purely evil. There can be no excuse for the agonizing suffering of our ancestors, nor for the continued torture of children trapped today in homes with toxic parents. The responsibility to act, to remember, and to save falls to us.
The Realm of Time
To heal our childhood, we must travel to the land of giants where we were abused and forgotten. Make no mistake, this is inner time travel.
(For more, read my biography “unSpiritual: A Spiritual Journey”)
This journey required me to make contact with my inner child and develop a true relationship with him. I played with him, took him on adventures, listened to his sorrow, and truly felt his pain. This was the work that freed him from the prison my parents had discarded him. Over time, he grew up within me, eventually ascending through the crown of my head and into the ether. When his psycho-spiritual stream finally disappeared, he left me with a gift: the ability to see the Soul Star shimmering above my own head.
It was during this process that I remembered the Lady in Black appearing atop the palm tree. Looking down at me silently, my ancestral witch mother, my sister, and the crone who blessed me with my heritage. She became my guardian angel—dark, forbidding, beautiful, and haunting. And yet, so much pain came with this ancestral thread.
As I worked through my personal childhood trauma, I felt a deeper pain emerge, one so profound it was beyond my current life’s understanding. As a child, I was haunted by the demons of this trauma; I suffered recurring night terrors well into my forties. In my visions, I cried over the suffering of children and agonized over the witches in my own ancestral bloodline.
A sadness so deep that a cure is unworthy, impossible, unwelcome,. . . yet wished for upon a star.
Resolution and Healing
My night terrors lessened as I healed my inner child, releasing the trapped psycho-spiritual energy locked away in the time track of my life. The more tension resolved, the more my inner realm reorganizes itself like water swirling around rocks, finding its own level. “Tension is the doorway,” my Witch Mother whispered as she guided the way to integration.
And now, I no longer have night terrors.
My suffering is integrated, present, sufficient.
The inner journey is a dive into the depths of the soul—not only our individual soul, but the collective one. We are not solely our own. We are an accumulation of thousands of lives that came before us, embodying the ancient animal powers that comprise our very being.
"The soul is the ancestral animals. The body is their knowledge"—Austin Osman Spare
Becoming ourselves means owning the current of our inner realm—the unconscious, the great Leviathan that lurks beneath the surface of our egos. We approach this daunting journey through innocence, love, radical acceptance, wonder, and falling in love with the beauty within. This, my friends, is what tames the great Dragon in the dark waters.
The only thing to fear is our own pretentiousness, our insincerity, our arrogance, and the foolishness that drives us into the deep, lusting for results.
And this, dear ones, is exactly what you must do: be willing to take the risk, to fail, to expose your underbelly. This is the only way to develop trust in yourself and become accustomed to the powerful currents that move within.
I leave you with a Wizzan Riddle…
I am a beast of lore, with scales of ancient might. My breath is a furnace, a blazing, fearsome sight. Yet the child in my presence is never touched by harm, for I am the shadow that protects them from alarm.
What am I?
—Zzenn
Read Zzenn’s Story: unSpirital: A Spiritual Journey
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"I remembered the Lady in Black appearing atop the palm tree. Looking down at me silently, my ancestral witch mother, my sister, and the crone who blessed me with my heritage. She became my guardian angel—dark, forbidding, beautiful, and haunting. And yet, so much pain came with this ancestral thread." I love the way you phrase this, and I'm quite familiar with this ancestral pain. I think all dragons are, either subconsciously or consciously. Why many of us tend toward melancholy or wearing black. There is much to grieve still.