Stop Waiting for Permission: A Witch Wound Healing Guide

To claim the word witch for yourself, for your practice, is to align yourself with the other—the person who has been othered, the person who feels like they are one conversation away from being told that they are wrong, from being wronged, looked down upon, being frowned upon. All the -upons.

And when we think about the word witch and the witch wound, these different elements of surprise or preconceived notions people have when they hear “witch” can cause us to start waiting for permission in our lives. They can lead us to wait for permission when we don’t even realize we’re doing it.

The Capricorn Invitation

This month’s Capricorn energy—with its new moon and the sun moving through this sign of authority—invites us to consider where we’re waiting for permission. Capricorn is aligned with Saturn, a powerful planet of structures, hard work, and earned respect. It’s about having a view that others don’t have, possessing experienced wisdom that comes from the journey.

For women, particularly those drawn to the word witch, those who might be more highly sensitive, maybe we’ve felt what it’s like to be put into a corner when we don’t want to be there. Maybe we’re tired of responding to the world around us and we want to create the energy with which we move into the world.

The Capricorn new moon invites us to kindly, please and thank you, stop waiting for permission.

The Subtle Nature of the Witch Wound

Here’s the thing about the witch wound—so many of us don’t recognize it on the surface. Especially if you’re reading this, you likely live in a world where you have opportunities. You can get jobs, dress how you want, speak your mind, have a seat at the table.

And at the same time, there are so many societal structures in place that remind us when we’ve gone just a little bit too far. When our hair is maybe a little too much for the workplace, when our choice of dress is just outside the box, when we’ve spoken up a little too much. We’re reminded that we maybe need to ask for permission, to understand where we don’t have the authority to express our knowing, our wisdom.

Becoming Excavators of Our Own Energy

When we’re doing witch wound work, we need to excavate. We need to be like archaeologists or anthropologists, digging down to find bits of rubble and asking ourselves: What is this from?

In an archaeological dig, an untrained eye might find something and think it’s just a stone. But the trained eye sees it differently—that’s not a stone, that’s a tool, a weapon, a bead, part of a spoon.

We want to become expert excavators of the witch wound. We start to recognize the subtleties in our own energy and the energies around us that make us question our own knowing, our own authority, our own ability to claim our own validation. We learn to claim the energy of power without asking for permission to be powerful—to claim it for ourselves instead of waiting for somebody to tell us we have permission to speak up, to be the authority in the room.

The Permission Wound

So much of what happens in our wonderful brains that do all kinds of things to keep us safe (including keeping us protected from experiencing the witch wound all over again, even though we’re experiencing it all day long without recognizing it)—we think we need to be more ready. More credentials. More experience. More practice.

Whether it’s in a skill, education, a workplace, wanting to be a tarot reader or astrologer—so often, the things we want to do in our lives, we have enough experience to do them. We’re just waiting for somebody to tell us we have the authority to do it.

This is the permission wound. We’re afraid of imposter syndrome. We’re afraid of doing it wrong. We apologize for our knowing. We apologize for our authority.

I see this in my own life. Sometimes I start to talk about something and catch myself saying, “Well, what do I know?” Even when I have twelve years of being self-employed, or a master’s degree in education, I find myself backpedaling. Apologizing for my authority. Feeling like maybe somebody else in the room deserves to take the authority more than I do.

Historical Echoes: The Midwifery Example

We can see this historically through the practice of midwifery. Don’t get me wrong—modern medicine has saved my life during my first childbirth, and I’m forever grateful. But it’s also a perfect example of the witch wound when it comes to waiting for somebody to tell you you’re allowed to have the authority you already have.

With the rise of obstetrics came the condemning of midwives (who were largely women), tying midwifery to the devil’s work. What are these midwives doing? What do they know about anything? The actual experience of creating the story around women as witches involved condemning their knowing, their knowledge, their wisdom, their authority—women who had been birthing babies for hundreds and hundreds of years.

In America, we see this in the real shift toward men in power in obstetrics, particularly in communities where Black women and Indigenous women were largely midwives. Condemning their skill, their knowledge, their authority, and taking that power away.

While we don’t typically look out our windows and see this sort of attack happening today, it’s still largely happening in society, in our history, in the histories of the women who came before us. The history of my mother, my grandmother, her mother—where we learned we have to act a certain way, talk a certain way, fit into a box to be safe.

Those histories run through our energy on deep, deep ancestral levels, bringing the witch wound into our lives in ways we don’t even see.

When Structure Becomes Cage

We can look at this power wound, this permission wound as part of the witch wound, and ask ourselves what structures we’ve put into our lives. Structures around more education, more time management, more rules around how our hair looks, our face, our body, our clothing.

These rules and structures we create for ourselves can become cages to our power instead of supports for our power.

The Capricorn energy invites us to ask: What permission have we been waiting for? Why are we waiting? What’s the story looping there, telling us we need permission? And how has that desire for permission—that desire for safety we’ve disguised as structure, disguised as necessity—caged us in rather than supported us?

Capricorn, the seagoat, climbs mountains to see the greater landscape. It reminds us that we have knowing, authority, and power that can contribute to that greater landscape.

Your Capricorn New Moon Invitation

I invite you to consider: Where are you waiting for permission for something? And how can you stop doing that? How can you put your Capricorn hat on and give yourself permission?

The mountain goat does not ask permission to climb the mountain. The seagoat does not ask permission to explore the depths of oneself. You do not need to ask for permission to speak to what you know, to utilize your wisdom, to go forth and be in your world with the knowledge you have.

Maybe you’re on the journey of learning more, experiencing more. What you have right now is valuable. You do not need somebody to tell you whether or not you have enough value to contribute.

Let’s Talk About It

I would love to know: What permission are you waiting for right now? It could be to do something. It could be to stop doing something. Sometimes we have the authority to make a decision, but we’re seeking someone to validate that we have permission to make it.

Where in your life are you waiting for permission? And how can you give it to yourself under this Capricorn new moon energy?

Want to learn more about the witch wound? Check out the Stay Magic Podcast or the Sisters Enchanted YouTube channel. Get on our email list for our seasonal and solar newsletter, and come hang with us in our Enchanted Journey membership, where belonging in a group of people without having to prove yourself is going to help you heal the witch wound in your own life.

Until next time, stay magic, enchanted sister. ✨