#we are aradia

Before I called myself “Witch” I was a strange girl with a penchant for the bizarre and spooky. Having been a seer and am empath all my life I was fascinated with the otherworldly, turning to the more well known of esoterica and occult to feed my fascination. When I was 9 I got my first tarot deck, and when I was 13 I found a ouija board in my stocking on Christmas morning.

There’s a lot of controversy around the topic of Ouija boards, or spirit boards. Some decry them completely, insisting that they’ll never bring anything but trouble, others swear by them as a means of contact with non-physical beings. Personally I believe that a spirit board is like any other means of contact: you’ll get what you’re putting out, consciously or subconsciously. Unfortunately, as a troubled newly-teen the energy I was putting out, whatever my intent, was confused and negative, a perfect target for anything that feeds off those lower vibrations.

It came through at first masquerading as the grandfather I’d never known, who passed away a few years before I was born. It wasn’t long before it became obvious that it was no dearly departed family member I was interacting with. Of course it lured me in at first with pleasantries and secrets, for weeks the contact seemed light and playful. Until it began spelling out crude and invasive comments and desires, things that made my skin crawl. When it began to manifest it was as a dark, creeping shadow, the sensation of something cold getting into bed beside me at night, and once a full body apparition of what looked like a young man with dark clothes and pallid skin, the whites of his eyes were black, and he was at least 8ft tall and menacing. It tormented me for months, it fed on my anguish and did it’s best to cause me as much fear and pain as it could. Nightmares kept me from sleeping, and I didn’t want a thing to do with anyone else, the sounds of my loved ones voices were grating and ugly to my ear. I was angry, and I was scared. I began scour the web for banishing spells and clearing rituals, trying each to no avail. The negative entity began mocking my attempts, getting bolder in its attacks.

One night, when poltergeist activity had made a mess of the room I used for my ouija sessions, I found myself at my breaking point. None of the advice I had found online or in books had helped, and I felt it was time to appeal to something closer to that unseen world. I poured out a circle of salt, and sat myself in the centre with my board. I was so tired and stretched so thin that tears were rolling down my cheeks as I called out for the help of something positive, someone greater than this darkness that had been following me. I could hear the entity knocking about the room, around my salt barrier, things were falling off of tables and floorboards were creaking with heavy footfalls. Then, suddenly, silence. My sob caught in my throat, and no fresh tears gathered in my eyes.

“Is someone there?” I asked, hands shaking on the planchette.

“Yes”

“What’s your name?”

“A-R-A-D-I-A”

I didn’t recognise it, and I wouldn’t until I saw it again a full three years later.

“Can you help me?”

“Yes.”

She proceeded to spell out a simple, three line incantation that I was to repeat that night when I was in bed, and the entity was sure to be hanging around, ready to continue its harassment. I thanked her profusely, sure, despite my past failures, that this would be the thing that saved me.

I felt her leave, she took the stillness of the room with her, but the knocking and footsteps were gone as well.

That night, when the being came back, rattling my furniture and running what felt like cold fingers over my skin, I shut my eyes right and repeated the incantation three times. The first time the rattling only got more intense, and my fear swelled, with the second I heard heavy breathing in my ear, angry and hot on my neck, but as I finished the third all activity stopped. More than that, the heavy blanket of darkness that had been weighing me down for moths had lifted. I felt a flutter of hope in my chest, and such relief passed over me that I cried myself to sleep. I dreamt only of bright, white light, no nightmares haunted me.

Years later, when I had realised my path and sought a deeper understanding of the occult and witchcraft, I came across the title of a book that brought that interaction with that helpful entity flooding back: Aradia: Gospel of the Witches.

Aradia took my pain and transformed it into power, Aradia started me on my witchy path without my even realising it, Aradia loved me before I even knew her name. And now we need her, to invoke her power and lift the darkness that covers this world.