2024 a year of sacred memory, dreaming dragons, and original prayer

Week 34--in which we ask the greatest mystic witch of all time for courage and grace  

Friends, soul writers, mystics, witches, and lovers of prayer,

The word witch landed in my heart and my life on August 2, 2020, through a most unlikely vehicle: an endorsement for a new edition of my first book Writing Down Your Soul. For the new edition, my publisher asked me to gather fresh endorsements.

So I turned to the women I’d been teaching prayer intensives with in 2020.

When 2020 started, I had no way of knowing that Covid and quarantine were on the way. But on some preconscious, mystical level, my soul knew something was about to change. Something big.

And prayer would become not just lovely or important, but essential.

As 2020 opened, I felt compelled to offer prayer intensives on a concept I’d been exploring since prayer artist arrived in 2018. There are obviously countless prayer practices beloved by millions around the world.

But after two and a half years of total devotion to prayer, I had arrived at a realization that there are five Original Prayers.

1. Myrrhophore Anointing
2. Ancient Goddess Rosary
3. Radical Forgiveness in the Hawaiian shamanic prayer tradition
4. Labyrinth, especially the ancient 7-circuit feminine womb labyrinth
5. Tree of Life

Each one of these prayers generates a powerful energy field. As you pray, you rest in that field. It is the prayer that does the work, just as my theme song says, “You are not praying; you are being prayed, prayed at the speed of love.” Only by praying can you begin to comprehend this profound and paradoxical teaching.

Each of the 5 Original Prayers has a special purpose, a core experience that enfolds you as you rest in each of their sacred fields.

Together, the five generate a fully embodied, whole and sacred human.

1. Myrrhophore Anointing
   to prepare the field of the body—physical, subtle, mystical
2. Ho‘oponopono
   to release the field of relationships—past, present, and future
3. Goddess Rosary
   to receive in the field of Her ancient mysteries
4. Labyrinth                     
   to rebirth in the field of Her womb
5. Tree of Life
   to become whole in the field of the sacred marriage of love

So when the publisher asked me to gather up new endorsements, I knew exactly who to ask and Rabbi Tirzah Firestone, who brought us our first prayer intensive on the Tree of Life, was at the top of my list. Tirzah responded immediately. Her endorsement stunned me.

I began to cry and scream: “She sees me. Tirzah sees me. Somebody sees me!”

Wouldn’t you react that way if you received this:

“Janet Conner, prayer artist, scholar, and twenty-first century witch, is a spiritual teacher who knows no bounds. In Writing Down Your Soul, she shows us how to transform ordinary journaling into an ecstatic dialogue with the Divine. I try to follow everything Janet Conner does because she is always on the cutting edge. She has an outsized talent for nourishing today’s profound spiritual hunger with ancient practices, like those found in this special book.”

Rabbi Tirzah gave me an endorsement to treasure. But she gave me something even bigger: the title witch.

I knew nothing about this sacred word. I had never called myself a witch or even thought about the word. But thanks to Tirzah, I threw myself into what has turned out to be the adventure of my life: how to become a whole and holy witch.

By the end of 2020, I had found my personal stamp of witch-ness: I knew I was a Mystic Witch.

And by the end of 2021, I knew I had to change everything I do, everything I read, everything I offer to share what I was learning about witch.

Witch was once the holiest and most beautiful thing you could call a woman. But thanks to the misogyny and fear embedded in religion, witch had devolved into the worst thing a woman could be called.

Ready or not, it was my job to restore witch.

And so I began. In June of 2021, I opened my first witch event: The Return of the Witches: Jeanne d’Arc Listening Pilgrimage. In the pilgrimage we met 13 women denigrated as witches across 3,000 years and half the globe. But, as the subtitle implies, our leader was the greatest mystic witch of all time: Joan of Arc. (the pilgrimage is available on demand)

The Return of the Witches painting by Lori Sweet

In April, as I was putting the final touches on the pilgrimage, Joan woke me in the night and dictated this prayer. I have not changed a word. And I never will. We now say this invocation in every gathering of every intensive. AND, when Jennifer DeVille Catalano is with us, we get to bring Joan into our circle en francais!

Although everyone in all my intensives knows this prayer, I don’t think I’ve ever shared it in a newsletter. So here’s my Sunday gift to you. Speak this prayer aloud to feel the rhythm in your body. And notice how your heart responds to the powerful call for courage and grace. If there’s anything we need right now, it’s courage and grace!

Invocation to Jeanne d’Arc

©Janet Conner 2021

Jeanne d’Arc  Jeanne d’Arc
woman of mystery
Jeanne d’Arc Jeanne d’Arc
woman my heart

You listened to your voices
I am listening to mine
and you call me, you call me

Daughter, go on—go on, go on, go on
Be not afraid. I go before you
The path is clear. The crown is yours

Jeanne d’Arc  Jeanne d’Arc
woman of mystery
Jeanne d’Arc  Jeanne d’Arc
woman my heart

Give me the courage, grant me the grace
to see what wants to be seen
to hear who wants to be heard
and to do what must be done

Jeanne d’Arc  Jeanne d’Arc
woman of mystery
Jeanne d’Arc  Jeanne d’Arc
Queen of my heart

Joan is famous for saying, "I am not afraid. For this I was born." Add this to your prayers and see what happens!  

to walking with courage and grace, not fear

Janet

website: janetconner.com

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