Spirit Guides
Spirit guides.
When I first heard that term at the beginning of my witchy journey, I balked at the idea, passing it off as a weirdo new age thing. In my ignorance I believed no one could ‘actually’ have a guide, especially not one they talk to.
Maybe people who think they have guides just wanted to feel special? omg cringe
Whilst I’d personally had visceral supernatural experiences and wonderful spiritual evidence for many other woo-woo things, this was one I just could not get around. It felt weird, and uncomfortable to me whenever the topic came up.
That is until I met my mentor C.B.
C.B. is a psychic-medium who decided to take me under his wing and advise me through my tarot and psychic development. He couldn’t have come at a better time, and I still turn to him for advice many years later. When he brought up the topic of spirit guides, I shut it down, but he knew better. C.B decided to offer me some guided meditations he’d created. “Trust the process” he said as I quickly agreed to try them.
What happened next, blew me away!
After setting aside some time for the guided meditations he offered, and sending out a silent prayer to not be interupted I pressed play on the first audio file.
This first meditation took me through some lovely grounding and chakra clearing which I was relatively used to doing. I felt lighter and more in my body after doing this.
The second night began with a light chakra clearing, and then shifted gears to guide me in love and opening up the heart space. I felt warm and tingly after that one.
On the third night I was excited to see what he had in store for me, and boy was I in for a surprise as the guided meditation took me on a journey I was not expecting. CB guided my astral self, up and out of my room into a space of my own imaginative creation to meet my spirit guide.
My reaction almost threw me out of the meditative state.
“Trust the process” I mentally reminded myself, as this was uncharted territory for me.
I had envisioned a wonderful sacred space, filled with trees and small pools of crystal-clear water. The space was warm and quiet, soft, and inviting. CBs voice guided me to look up and see someone or something walking towards me, and my brain conjured up the image of a beautiful dark-skinned woman, dressed in flowing blue with long dark hair. She came and knelt on the ground with me in my safe and sacred space.
“Ask them their name” came CBs voice and I distinctly heard “YE-MAY-AH”, each syllable pronounced clearly and phonetically to my utter bewilderment before I was guided back into my body and the real world.
Shocked, and certain that I’d just made up a person with a random word for a name, I quickly googled the word YEMAYA and what do you know, there is a literal Goddess [called an Orisha] from the Yoruba religion of West Africa. Not only is she depicted with dark skin and long hair, but she rules over the ocean, rivers, the moon, motherhood, is a protector of women and associated with the colour blue. At the time I was a new mother, with a lot of trauma coming up from the birth and parenting process resulting in post-natal depression and anxiety and the relief I felt at feeling like I had someone looking out for me in that life area, and maybe even guiding me through these times was immense. Blue also happened to be my favourite colour and I secretly wondered if that had been a clue or a sign all along.
I quickly sent a message to CB, gobsmacked but still not really believing it to be true. His advice to me was to wait 3 days to receive confirmation.
He said, “you will see or hear something to validate that it is Her” and soon after I went to sleep with my mind buzzing, full of hopes, doubts and excitement.
Two days later, I was at my mundane job in the building industry, reading through my personal emails when I saw one come in from Ethony Dawn the Tarot reader. She does fun little pick a card readings in her emails so I opened it up for some daily guidance and proceeded to pick the card that I was drawn to before scrolling down to see what it might be.
When I tell you my jaw dropped!
I couldn’t believe my eyes. The card I had picked was titled Yemaya. The image showed her depicted in blue, kneeling, with long dark hair. KNEELING just like in my meditative vision!
Shivers and goosebumps covered my skin, and I felt a prickling, cooling sensation run from the top of my head over my whole body. This was the validation CB had spoken about! Tears pricked at my eyes, and I couldn’t wait to tell CB all about it. He laughed and kindly said “I told you so”. Just like that, my fears, concerns, and scepticism with spirit guides had vanished completely and I was totally on board.
Since that moment, I have discovered that I have more guides on my team than I initially expected. Not all of them are fancy deities or even remotely human. One feels more like black light energy and is difficult to pin down as he feels so erratic to me.
Another is an ancestor of mine.
Each time they have made themselves known to me, usually through meditation, dreams, or an intuitive hit, and I have always received validation in one way or another within 3 days.
More recently, one of my ancestors, a great grandmother who also happened to be a devout Christian in life, came through as a vision whilst I was in the flow of creating a new service for my business. Curious, I stopped what I was doing to take a moment to check in. Surely this religious ancestor wouldn’t want anything to do with my heathen ways. As I thought this, I could see her nodding in my minds eye, and heard the word ‘Tarot’. She wanted to help me with my Tarot? Surely not. It didn’t click straight away that she might be a guide too so I didn’t even think to wait 3 days for validation, instead I pulled out my trusty RWS deck and said aloud “If you really want to help me uplevel my Tarot skills, show me the high priestess” and I shit you not (technical term for ‘no cap’ for my gen z audience) as I shuffled the high priestess FLEW out of my hands and landed face up in front of me.
Well – cue the goosebumps and head tingles once more as I sat flabbergasted at what had just happened.
Even after years of doing this work, Spirit still manages to surprise me when I least expect it. Safe to say this ancestor has since been added to my ancestor altar and I have seen a significant upleveling in my tarot reading since she’s come on board with me.
So, when life gives you severe scepticism and weird vibes about something spiritual, don’t discount it immediately, at least not without trying to see for yourself. For me I think the issue was my religious trauma showing up in an unexpected way.
Deconstructing is complex and takes many, many years to unravel but boy am I glad to see that religious tapestry coming apart at the seams because what it was covering is far more magical, beautiful and uplifting than I could have ever imagined.
Here is a condensed video version of this story which was filmed and uploaded 2 years ago, back when my relationship with Yemaya was still very intense and it didn’t feel right to share her name with the public.
I do not teach others how to work with Yemaya as that is not my place. She was a guide who stepped in during the intense initiations into motherhood that I had but She was not someone I actively sought out. I recommend sources based in Santeria and Yoruba for more information on Yemaya, noting that Santeria is a closed practice.
Looking for guided meditations to help you with your spiritual practice?
Check out my podcast “Meditations - A Suburban Witchery Podcast” or my meditation playlist over on YouTube.
Not yet confident in your ability to interpret the psychic information you receive in mediations, dreams and so on? My Psychic Class will cover all of this (and more) so you can feel sure that you’re not making it up when it comes to meeting your spirit guides.
This class replay is only available for the month of July 2023
Meet Hana
Hana O’Neill, the Suburban Witch is a professional Tarot & Astrology reader, Intuitive Coach and the host of the Witch Talks podcast.
