Who am I and what do I know about magick?

Rebecca Auman - An ancient witch devoted to your journey of rediscovery

My ancient lineage

I grew up in North Carolina, the daughter of a Methodist minister. For very real reasons, I kept my gifts under wraps. My grandfather, a seventh son of a seventh son, had powers that drew folks from miles around. He was revered as a healer. His wife, my grandmother, was intuitive. As a woman, her skills weren’t valued. Eventually, being thought crazy, she was subjected to a lobotomy.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been able to read energy and vibration. Sometimes it was just a sparkle surrounding something to which I should pay extra attention. Other times I could see words come out of peoples’ foreheads. I felt these were messages from the universe. Messages with meaning.

When I was in 3rd grade, my father, a southern preacher, stood before me and my classmates during Sunday School to give us our brand new bibles. My father read bible verses aloud to see which child could find them first. 

I was always eager to please and delighted that I could see the bible verses he was getting ready to say just as he thought them (before he spoke them). They literally came out of his head. The result: I found all the bible verses first. I was winning. Immediately my mother emerged. I was in trouble. 

“Stop that,” she scolded, “It looks like you are cheating. Even if you know things, especially if you know things, you must not speak them. You must not let people know what you see or know.” 

This “seeing” happened to me several times that year at church and school. And finally, because of the reprimands, it went away. I didn’t “see” or “speak” for a very long time.

This was the legacy I inherited, and for most of my life, I thought it was better to shun my history and hide my talents.

Sacred glimpses

Decades later, when I was pregnant with my own child, a friend came by with a gift - Dreaming the Dark by Starhawk. He’d just been to a festival and told me of her magick. He read tarot cards for me for the first time from the Daughters of the Moon deck - a round and colorful deck with images of powerful women. Later that evening as I tried to sleep, the images of those women visited me. Something was unlocked in me. I could see again. Did tarot hold the key?

The following day, I set up a magickal haven to delve into the cards. I began to seek alternative healers and psychics to learn more about their powers as I rediscovered my own. That was 30 years ago.

I was liberated and often got in trouble. As I sat in meetings, I would sometimes blurt out things that other people were thinking. I was disruptive. And at the same time, my gifts allowed me to expertly anticipate others' needs. Sometimes before they even knew what they wanted. This made me an exceptional fundraiser, and over the course of my career, I led teams who raised over $2 billion dollars across multiple campaigns. 

I’m proud of my professional successes, but they took a toll. While I continued to get to know my intuition - accepting that I knew, I still struggled to use my voice. I continued to say what others wanted to hear, rather than what was true. I was still a people pleaser.

Eventually the incongruence of living a life that I thought others expected (including getting married, when I knew I was queer) and speaking what others wanted to hear caused disabling burnout. I eventually left my career and took time off to regroup. There were days where I could barely accomplish anything.

Slowly, I began to remember, from some ancient source, who I am. I began to listen to the whispers and surprisingly, people came to me and asked me to help them heal from similar corporate overload and burnout. 

Alignment and destiny

When I think about my corporate life, I have some shame and grief and anger. Knowing what I know now, how could I have done it differently? I did what everyone wanted me to do, rather than taking time and space to lead from my center and do what I knew to be right.  I started out with good intentions and practices. I knew what I wanted, but I got lost among the pressures and competing demands.

That's why I do this work. I want to help women have a whole life. I want to help women to remember who they are. I want women to remember how to trust themselves again. I want them to have the support that I didn’t have.