The Christian to Witch Pipeline - [My Story]
Buckle up sunshine and get ready for storytime with Hana
And no, this isn’t like my kid themed youtube videos where I literally read witchy stories. (Which are totally awesome and you should watch them btw)
This is MY story.
How I got to where I am right now…
From good Christian girl to bad ass Witch Woman!
From fervent evangelical to passionate ex-vangelical!
From being assigned Christian at birth to helping others deconstruct!
We will take a few shortcuts along the way though otherwise I’ll max out my wordcount and your attention span.
In the beginning, there was church.
Lots of church.
I attended an AOG (Assemblies of God) church which is a Pentecostal branch of Christianity.
Pentecostals believe in being ‘Baptised in the Holy Spirit’ and ‘Speaking in Tongues’.
Things I didn’t know were weird until I was a young adult.
Seriously.
In my opinion now… the Pentecostal church is probably one of the most psychically active churches out there. It gave me a very good spiritual basis for what I do now if I’m being very honest.
There were….
- Faith healings (akin to energy work)
- Spirit work & Spiritual warfare (essentially protection magick)
- Speaking in Tongues (like new age light language)
- Gift of prophecy (visions of the future)
and many more…
There was also a lot of fear mongering, high control of behaviour, emotional manipulation and information control to say the least.
One Sunday service, when I was a pre-teen, I went up for the altar call and was prayed upon by the pastor.
It was customary to ‘fall down’ in prayer when the pastor prayed over you (often with a very fervent push to the head) and we would have volunteer ‘catchers’ to make sure folks didn’t hit the ground too hard.
It was during one of these moments that I cried out in a genuine desire to feel something, anything from God.
And I received my first official ‘vision’ from “God”.
This vision was of me in a foreign country, with kids staring up at me, and my young christian child mind immediately jumped to the conclusion that
I was going to be a missionary.
I told the pastor what I’d seen, and was told I had the gift of prophecy.
Another time, a few years later. I received another vision during a state of ecstatic prayer. This one was of me on a stage, “preaching” to a large group of people.
Again, I made the presumption that I was going to be a preacher, because…. why else would I be on a stage?
I recall turning to my Mum and asking her if women were even allowed to be pastors, since it was so rarely seen in our church.
Fast forward to when I was 15 and my parents split up.
Obviously, that’s not allowed.
I was hit with the choice. To live with my Mum or my Dad. As a 15yr old girl, I chose my Mum, who by the way was in the Women’s ministry, had attended bible college and held charity events at the church to feed those without families on christmas day for years….
The next time we went back to church, the head pastors wife came over and said to us … “Oh, you don’t think you can come back here do you?”
Bitch.
Of course, the pastors kids attended my christian school.
News got around.
Shunning is an understatement.
Friends.
Family.
Friends who were as close as family.
All gone.
Not allowed to speak to us. Not allowed to interact.
Don’t go near them, they’re ‘living in sin’.
UGH
What did that mean for my visions from God though?
Were they still a call to ministry? How could that be if I wasn’t even allowed in the damn church?
Fast forward 5 years of rebellion, self-destruction, seeking, exploring, questioning and I honestly wasn’t much further along in actually deconstructing, I had just buried everything deep within me.
It was at this time I went on a holiday with a boyfriend to Cambodia. Ended up breaking up with him on that trip (that’s a story for another day) and on my last day, alone in Phnom Penh, I chose to hire a local guide to take me on a tour of their favourite spots.
“What do you think I should be seeing?”
After an amazing lunch, and a local market he suggested I buy a bag of rice for a local orphanage that his brother helps out at.
What a great idea!
Next thing you know I’m standing in a classroom full of Cambodian kids, all staring up at me and the memory of my pre-teen altar call vision sucker punches me right in the gut leaving me speechless.
I wasn’t supposed to be a missionary!
But… it was a legitimate vision of the future.
Why the fuck did that happen?
This was the first crumblings of God.
When I started to think maybe something else could be at play here and the Universe didn’t work the way I was told it did.
I ended up working in that orphanage for a couple of months, following the breadcrumbs of the universe and trying to figure out who the hell I was, and what I was here to do.
Teaching kids English did not turn out to be my calling.
But volunteering in Cambodia turned into a love for exploring overseas and applying for a working holiday visa in Canada where I met my husband.
Canada, turned into a WWOOFing (volunteering on farms in exchange for food and board) holiday in Texas and Louisiana and subsequently my first sighting of a ghost, followed by my first intensely supernatural experience (haunting and negative attachment) including full blown sleep paralysis and meeting my first real live witch!
[If you’re reading this as a christian or baby exvangelical and this makes you freak out, don’t worry - it sounds scary but it was a necessary catalyst and it is not the norm.]
That experience turned into paranormal investigations, ghost tours, and tarot readings, psychic conventions, seeking out mediumship readings and reading (inhaling) every damn book, podcast and blog post I could find on all this gestures wildly … stuff.
and what do you know, it brought me right to where I was supposed to be all along.
Right. Here.
Until next time,
Brightest Blessings,
Hana the Suburban Witch
P.S. If you too grew up in a high control religion, specifically christianity. I recommend you check out my newest class on deconstructing the rapture doctrine. There is a wealth of information and practical steps you can take to start healing and moving forward.
Looking for more stories on others who have come along the Christian to Witch Pipeline?
Check out the The Christian to Witch Pipeline with Matt Stine episode on my podcast Witch Talks with Suburban Witchery.
Meet Hana
Hana O’Neill, the Suburban Witch is a professional Tarot & Astrology reader, Intuitive Coach and the host of the Witch Talks podcast.
