In Witchcraft we don’t really have a “Heaven” or a “Hell” we have light and dark, and pockets of life in between, we also have what we call The Akashic Records.
Akasha is thought to be the oldest of all the beings in the universe, and the idea of Akasha is that she is a living being who sits at the center of this universe keeping an eye on everything and everyone. In her mind, buried in the confines of what makes Akasha whatever Akasha is, is the records of everything that has happened, would happen, could happen, and might happen, called the Akashic Records.
Guarded by Angels these records are designed to keep track of everything that has ever happened in the universe, and access is supposedly only granted to those who intend to add to, and protect the records with their everything.
I had a dream once where I was standing in front of the great white castle the contained all the records in the universe, and I remember waking up thinking “that was fucking awesome,” I did indeed see Angels, and I did indeed feel completely and utterly inferior.
I also had a dream once about RZA, this was back in the 90’s when I was still little, and RZA was telling everyone who would listen that he was a living God, his name was literally “Rza The God,” and I remember being incredibly curious about what made him a God.
In the dream he took offense to this question and threw glass in my eyes in return, I realize now that as I had the dream while taking a walk near the Army Base across the street from my house that the “dream” was likely brought on by the meth hanging in the air from the meth lab down the street. As an adult this took away the majick of the dream / vision, but ever sure, my childhood self reminds me that just because there’s a scientific explanation for why I saw what I saw, doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen.
When I was a child I used to believe that in order for you to have a story worth telling, you had to be famous. You had to achieved something that mattered to people outside of yourself, for your story to be worth telling, but over the last several weeks I’ve been trying to encourage more people to step outside of themselves and tell their story.
Recently a friend of mine asked me how you get to the place where you are ready to start moving on from the trauma and abuse, and the honest truth is that I didn’t start to feel like I was ready to move on from it until I started sharing my story.
Until I started talking about the fact that I was gang raped by racists, that I was raped by men who thought it was perfectly acceptable to rape children, that I was sexually abused by men who thought that because we were friends they were therefore given automatic permission to put their hands on me.
It was only when I started sharing my story publicly that I found others who not only understood my confusion at being sexually assaulted, but then worked to teach me the language of that abuse so that I knew how to convey what I had been through.
It wasn’t Doctors or nurses who taught me how to say things the way that I do, it’s the people I follow or who follow me on Twitter that taught me everything that I know about abuse and coercive control, it’s the people in my Krisya Ohana, and my budsista’s group that taught me how to rip open the wounds of my past so that they could heal properly.
I have a scar on my foot from where I stepped on a piece of glass, for years there was a lump under the skin that caused a great deal of pain whenever I would walk anywhere, I had to have surgery on it a second time to remove the scar tissue. Healing from trauma and abuse is like that, sometimes you have to keep cutting open the old wounds to remove the scar tissue so that the wound can heal differently, and stronger, then it did the time before.
Not everyone is capable of sharing their story, for some people the trauma is too deep, for some people, the wounds are just too scary to open up, the demons that are hiding within the tissue of scars. It takes time and it takes reformatting your brain to remember that telling your story as much as it may feel like it, is not in fact about you.
I tell my story because I would like to return to that place where I am surrounded by Angels looking at the hall of records, I would like to see the work that I have put into the world on those sacred shelves just so that I can say “I did that, I lived that, and I shared my experience with the universe.”
For some people it’s about making sure that other people don’t experience the same pain and trauma that you’ve been through, it’s about saying “here are the tools that helped me, so maybe they will help you too,”
Sharing your story is about ensuring that the people who come after you, will have the keys to the same kingdom that you are searching for. It’s about ensuring that your legacy lasts long after your physical body is gone. No matter what happens my story is on the record now, and there are people out there in the world who have read the book of life lessons that I have written and they will use those life lessons in their own journey.
We are story tellers by our very nature, as long as there have been humans on this earth, there have been stories. Stories are our human love language, they pass on lessons yes, but more than that they help us connect to each other. They help us find common ground and they set the basis for how we live on this earth, how we behave and exist.
Everyone should feel safe telling their story and the reason that they don’t is because they think their journey doesn’t matter as much as mine or yours or someone else’s.
One of my favorite stories to tell is the time I got the witch tattoo on my left forearm, I remember the artist Phil Terrace got to the very last line in our second session and I started to cry and scream at the same time and I said “you can stop now, I’m done, that’s enough.”
What I was really saying was the kind of physical pain I was experiencing throughout the tattoo, had echoed my emotional pain perfectly and I was officially done with dealing with the reason that I wanted the tattoo in the first place. He laughed at me and finished it anyways, but once the tattoo was done, I realized I was no longer angry at the woman who had inspired the tattoo. I was emotionally spent, because the physical pain had given me a release from the emotional trauma.
I tell that story, specifically, to people who consider cutting their own skin with blades or knives, because I know what it feels like to need physical pain because it validates the emotional pain that we’ve experienced in our past.
I always recommend people get tattoos instead of cutting themselves, purely because, I remember after being raped, I was walking home and I was trying to cut my skin with my nails. I heard a voice say “tattoos are prettier than scars”, and that’s absolutely truth.
More than the fact that they are pretty, the tattoos remind me every time that I look at them, that I had experienced some shit and I survived it. I wear them like badges on my skin, reminding me that I am stronger than I thought, because if I can get through being raped for 22 years, I can handle a couple hours of physical pain while an artist injects my skin with their artwork.
The stories kept in the halls of records in Akasha’s mind aren’t just those that are written down by us, they are written down by the keepers of the history of the universe, so whether we write them down or not they are still in the hall of records.
I guess I just figure that if anyone is going to tell my story, it should be me, because I’m the only one whose lived my life and experienced the shit that I’ve been through, so who else can tell the world about my journey than myself?
Your story matters because your life matters, so don’t ever let anyone tell you that you don’t have a story to write, and don’t ever let anyone tell you how to write your story. You’re the only person in the entire universe that can tell your story from your perspective, so don’t you think that it’s about time you start putting the shit on the record so that you can make room for the new stories?
Sending all my love,
Devon J Hall
Loud Mouth Brown Girl 