WITCHY SISTER by Krista Katrovas

The poem, Witchy Sister, came to me as most do, in the night…

 …when all the house is asleep, when my two cats have finished kneading the blankets around me.

This Halloween season I cannot help but to think and connect to my "Witchy Sister," embracing the things that once belonged to her.

Witches and Shamans are keenly connected to energy. They cultivate awareness of sending out that, which only serves the greatest and highest good of all.  If what we send comes back ten fold, let us send only positive light, healing, love, joy, and positive thought.

This is why every spiritual path is called a practice. I feel my Witchy Sister guides me each day, as a yogini, as a Shaman Practitioner, and also as a fellow Solitary Witch. Blessed Be. 

'Witchcraft' photograph by Katarina Silva

Witchy Sister

I’ve never met her
in person.
I met her
after she died.

Much like how we meet
great poets
like how we came to know
the great Emily D.

Only she was never famous.
She worked in a locally owned bookstore.
A solitary witch
with tarot cards,
crystal balls
and owl medicine.

She wore long flowy velvety coats
bore a silver goddess necklace
with the Star of David
etched on each side of the moon.

When my Shaman friend said
she passed unexpectedly
he journeyed to her spirit
and came back with a message.

 “I’ll be her Owl Medicine teacher,
if she needs me.”
I journey to Snowy Owl
asked her opinion, advice,
she approved.

I Googled the image
of this local solitary witch
I’d never seen in life.
She so willing to connect,
even in death,
to help deepen
my connection to owl.

Two days before meeting my soul sister
I wore my, “witchy,” boots to dinner,
something I almost never do,
and a stray black cat,
at nearly midnight,
walked up to me
in the parking lot
skinny,
with vertebrae poking from its back,
begging for love, attention, food,
I took him home.

When I saw her smile,
in the image I saw online,
with her long white hair, 
then read of her love of books,
it was as if I were being reunited
with a sister I had always known in heart,
but never knew in physical form.

Her picture now rests
under the owl that she once owned
and on Halloween,
I dress as a Solitary Shamanic Witch,
maybe my truest self.
I commune with her,
the one I never met,
and hold my black cat
that came to me
only two days before her death.

I wear her necklace,
gaze into her crystal ball,
read tarot she once held,
embrace spells
she cast years back,
open her medicine bags,
knowing as I do
that sisterhood is not defined
by shared blood,
by marriage, or family,
but rather by heart
and belief
in something more
than magic.
Something more than things,
more than sharing common ground.

Sisterhood is born
out of ones ability
to suspend disbelief
to believe wholeheartedly
that hope has wings
that it exists
in places
we can’t physically see,
touch, smell,
or taste,
and we only hear
when we take away our ears
and listen fully
with
all
our
heart. 

~

Krista Katrovas (E-RYT) has dedicated herself to the practice, study and teaching of yoga since discovering it in 1999 after dancing rigorously as a dance major in college. Krista has had scores of articles on Yoga, Wellness, and Spirituality published in nationally regulated magazines. She has a regular column at Elephant Journal here. She has taught Yoga in Prague every July since 2009 and has been sought to teach in Kuwait, Canada, Virginia, California, Kentucky, and Florida. She calls Kalamazoo, Michigan home, where she teaches Yoga, Meditation, offers Spiritual guidance, and practices Shamanism. She has cats, though also loves dogs, all animals. Her power animal is the Snowy Owl. Visit her yoga website here.

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