The number one game we play when it comes to hexing one another and keeping the brilliance of women down - is to both fawn and attempt to get lower than the other in the power dynamics of relationship.

You must know a woman who is constantly apologising for her existence? 

Or asking permission from outside herself- whether posting on social media or asking a question in public, or even simply interrupting the flow of conversation?

Perhaps this woman is you too? Practically addicted to submission at all costs.

Look out for it next time you are amongst friends or colleagues.  Watch closely as to how many times women actually defer power to others outside of themselves this way.

"No you go first. No you have the thing. No really, please. You."

In really pernicious cases, it can happen that a whole group of women literally compete for ways to the bottom.

Nobody wants to be seen to outshine anyone else. Nobody wants to be seen to be greedier or hungrier than the other women. Indeed, nobody wants to be seen to appear hungry at all.

And so this is a hex that we seem to be willing to apply mutually - like a little, merry, relational  hexing dance.

Uuurgh.

Next time there's one doughnut left on the table. Or one last scoop of guacamole. Or the final glass of champagne. And you find you want it?

Take it.

Don't even ask.

Disrupt the game.

Are you the kind of woman who constantly tries to make everything better for your friends or colleagues? Do you hold back on telling someone the truth - either about their behaviour or your reaction in the face of it? Would you rather take away the heavy feelings and carry them in your own psyche than name the problem and see another squirm as a result?

You potentially come across this kind of hexing online all the time. I know I do. Women's circles are rampant with this type of power hexing. They rescue one another as a default, when in reality it  is necessary sometimes to be cruel to be kind. Applying the salve of feminine empathy is not always the best way to help.

Consider the radical thought then, that the constant coo and "there there" that takes place between women who are upset, defeated or complaining about something in their lives, is yet another way to keep the power at bay.

We are so obsessed with how not to "harm" in speech, actions and even thought, that we often forget how to penetrate another woman and call her back to her own innate self-responsible power as a result.

In other words, we collude in her victim. 

And the hex of feminine powerlessness continues.

(I recognise that empathy is sometimes exactly what's needed. I am simply questioning that we need use it all the bloody time.)

If I give to you, you must give to me by return. In other words, there is a debt created every time we receive.

How unconsciously ingrained is that one?

One of the things I both practice and teach as an initiate of the Feminine Path, is that asking and receiving what you want is actually a divine practice .

Sadly, it is so uncomfortable for women to receive without commerce or unspoken commitment to exchange, that we more often than not refuse to receive anything in the first place, lest it sets us up for expectations later on.

It's like if we receive from another woman, we automatically subsume our rights to any boundaries around giving to her in the future.

This is also true in the ways we receive sexual pleasure, by the way. I come across this countless times with women I coach. A deep hex our culture is that woman is conditioned to "give by return." 

One of the reasons I enjoy the practice of Orgasmic Meditation so much, is because it is simply a container whereby I get to receive sexual pleasure without any promise of giving when it's finished. There is no "OK if you stroke my clit I am duty bound to reciprocate with a blow job (or insert sexual act of your partner's preference here.)"

The point is - I may choose to engage in it.

But I am not beholden to it.

And it is a very difficult practice for a woman to learn to receive like that without giving her fullness away immediately in service to someone else's needs when she does.

Try it next time you want something from someone. Try asking first of all. And then sitting with the potentially intense sensation of receiving it, and saying no if you want to if the giver asks for something too. 

Try receiving a compliment without having to return one also.

Try just sitting in the fat sensational space of having the thing - just because.

See what a shamed spot that is for women? 

Make sense how we collude in hexing one another out of the experience?

Don't feel. Don't speak. Don't want. Don't rock the boat.

Recently someone reported me on Instagram. (In fact, at time of writing I still have not managed to claim my account back. Though hopefully, by the time you read to this, I will have.)

Instagram tell me someone reported a violation.

Now. Given that the last time I violated Insta's Ts and Cs it was because I posted a statue of a Rodin sculpture. (Yes it was female, IG. Yes, she was naked. I mean, Rodin was cool with it. But apparently not Mark Zuckerberg.)

So yes, whilst I cannot promise you that another woman hexed me in this way, I honestly think it is highly unlikely that a dude would waste his time with this kind of shenanigans. (Honestly, men are way more interested in sending DMs like "hey beautiful" than they are policing my online content.)

I would argue that this kind of pernicious censorship is rife against women in particular. Really, if the experiences of my female clients are anything to go by, it is more often than not women who try to keep other women down.

I think this might even be some kind of ancestral hex, if I am honest. Handed down from feminicide and witch burnings. Our mothers and grandmothers and great grandmothers and allll the way down our  lines, women have known it might be dangerous to speak out.

And so the policing begins. 

What else is genital mutilation? What else is banning abortion? What else is putting the needs of everybody else before your own? What else is conditioning a girl to get weepy instead of angry? What else is this continual focus on submission - conscious or otherwise?

What else is all this other than women controlling other women from their own trauma response, convinced that this kind of control will keep their future feminine line safe? Women literally police other women to stop bad things happening.

I was struck by a post from a friend of mine recently.

There she was in all her glitter and glory. About 10, standing in front of her Daddy's  flash car. The gold sequins. The blonde hair. The pearly smile. All of it. 

The other girls hated her, she said in her post. Her beauty and good fortune did not make her popular as you might assume. In fact, the other girls made an enemy of her.

And what for though? Why? 

What if we could all shine that hard? 

What if it was safe to do so?

My opinion is clear on this one - stop hexing. Start shining. And start having the backs of other women to do the same.

So this one could depend.

But in this context I am talking about the man. 

(Non heteronormative readers might wanna skip over this one.)

But for those women who tend to put the male of the species at the centre of their private universe, this particular hex is 100% for you.

I have seen this time and time again. Sadly, I expect you have too. It's like we are so firmly conditioned to see the ring on the finger as the ultimate accessory in life, that oftentimes nothing will get in the way of our acquiring it - most certainly not other women.

This means that women who could threaten the security of your ultimate possession - your man - are seen as dangerous and to be undermined at all costs.

Of course, this leads to more of the next hex - isolation. And heightened sense of threat. 

It doesn't get easier with polyamorous set ups either. In fact, often it gets worse. 

Personally, I never shame women for extra-marital goings on, or being the mistress of a married man. AND, it saddens me. Because I am often prone to wondering what would happen for both women in the infidelity triangle, if they had come together and formed a sisterhood in advance of the sex?  If they had disrupted this hex which puts the man at the top of the triangle? If they had connected instead - what might have happened in such an alternate universe?

Poly set ups that I have been around have pretty much always centred around the women negotiating things. Respecting desires, respecting boundaries. Truth be told, men are often used to and primed to get what they want. But we can destroy this hex if women come together to ensure mutual success in all things. Maybe even relationships too.

I appreciate that this is a radical stance. And I myself find myself in a monogamous marriage - with all it's profound gifts and challenges.

But it certainly is food for thought. How we might run this whole thing differently as women if we wanted to.

This sad state of affairs (and I know it well myself) and is generally borne from a maladjusted set of boundaries. We are conditioned to believe that we don't deserve to have something without having to pay back big time in return.

This can lead to isolation on all fronts. We can end up living alone, parenting alone, working alone. Feeling alone. Because we feel trapped by the expected exchange, we kill exchange altogether.

And our  isolation makes us vulnerable to manipulation or violence for example.

This is a hex women carry because, in spite of our natural inclination towards one another. Sometimes, sadly, creating community with other women can feel like more trouble than its worth.

This is a personal fave.

I see this hex everywhere all the time.

As a woman with a (previous) pretty juicy Insta account (aka MOI), that regularly published posts full of tips for women to grow more orgasmic and powerful and sovereign in sex and life, I can tell you that this did not always go down well at the school gate when I picked up my son.

Or with the elderly neighbours.

Or the religious friend.

Come to think of it pretty much everywhere I went if people knew me online, there was a kind of flushed cheek "Ooh that Julia is a bit of a ride" kind of response.

I have often wondered why that is. Because in my experience with coaching women, sexual energy is just about the most generous and generative force we have available to us. What I mean to say, is that if a woman is naturally full, if she has her pleasure prioritised and at the centre of her life, honestly there is very little that that woman won't give to you.

A woman like that can literally move mountains.

She is - because she is available to herself - available to the world in a truly healthy way.

Perhaps this hex of slut shaming other women stems from the fact that a powerful, turned on woman might be actually dangerous to the equilibrium of society then? (I mean, she might get the alpha male, as we already discussed.)

She will certainly turn heads. And so she may even turn tables - or entire family units upside-down.

Best hem her in then. Best make it difficult for her to reveal herself as a sexual being. Best make her tone it down through laughing at her, ex-communicating her, or judging her out of existence.

The way to bury this particular hex once and for all?

Cultivate your sexual radiance.

(Psst. I have an online course that teaches you just that if you are interested you can find it HERE.)

The ultimate hex women carry forward is that we love to keep each other small.

Celebrating ourselves, showing off our achievements, is a massive no no.

I'd like you to consider this as an opposite example:

2 men go fishing.

One of them catches a MAHOOSIVE fish.

One question:

Do you think they keep that QUIET?

Right.

In fact, they post selfies everywhere. They practically write to the local newspaper.

And yet for women, outshining is the ultimate crime. Remember my friend who became unpopular because she showed off her gold?

No woman would be seen dead posting the "here's a massive fish I caught earlier" brag.

In fact, Mama Gena makes it a habit in her women's communities to have women disrupt this hex by specifically posting brags about their lives.

And the effect is pretty miraculous.

The energy of celebration lends energy to other women to do the same. Pretty soon no woman is hiding and no achievements hidden in the closet. The result is a tremendous and mutual field of permission. We transform the hex to stay small. We encourage one another to do great things instead. And the world might just turn a little differently after all.

Oh this one is so painful.

And oh so easy to indulge in.

Let's just take a breath. And let me tell you a story.

Once upon a time I lived in a small town in the UK. And somebody took umbrage with me over something, as people do. 

So. Time went on. 

Next thing that happened, unbeknownst to me, someone else and from a different little group entirely had taken umbrage with me too.

(Perhaps I was letting my sex shine - I remember this woman in the pub sending the scorn of  "who does she think she is?" in my direction. Or....perhaps I was just refusing submission over something that didn't work for me? Perhaps I was the object of extreme jealousy when I actually GOT a man and he married me and frankly he was sexy as fuck and wore a tie dye sarong and looked a bit like Jesus?)

Either way, it turns out that in this little town and over the years quite a few women had taken umbrage. 

The gossip was unbelievable.

To be honest, I look back and see this experience as just a hazard of the job of being a dangerous woman. I have always been the outspoken type (can't you tell?) I have frequently resisted the female "rush to the bottom" hex.  I tend to laugh in the face of women's disempowerment fictions.  I am empathic as hell - I will love you and journey with you into the abyss and back - but I will not partake in the lie that you are not creating your life.

Eventually, I left that little town. The burden of proof that I was not, in fact, an asshole, was too much to bear. But I did leave with the knowledge that when women in particular are disempowered, they are sadly inclined to gather together in their rightness. Often they will draw together whole armies of right, in fact. They will even formulate lies and turn them into truth due to the sheer weight of numbers of people that hear it.

This really is darkest hex of all. Women with uncleared resentments. Or jealousies. Or personally unfulfilled lives. Will work together to make the hex real, heavy and impenetrable by gathering others into the field of their nasty gossip.

Voodoo dolls are frankly nothing in comparison to a group of women hellbent on destroying someone's reputation.

 Don't indulge in this kind of bad magic.

To end, I leave this hex for your contemplation. And for balance. Because I opened with the way we hex one another by "racing to the bottom" and partaking of the mutual submission game. 

But there is  an equal and opposite type hex, which is when women become unconsciously entitled to what they want. Or they take command of a situation with little skill or care. Let me explain.

Women like this are usually not the "compete for submission type", but instead they sadly manipulate other women to subtly force for what they want. Running roughshod over another's boundaries is a way this happens. Refusing to take no for an answer. Drilling into a woman's guilt and shame in order to influence outcome in a way that denies her a choice is another example.

Unfortunately, this kind of hex works. But it does nothing to build feminine community that really, truly turns all this pain and difficulty on its head for evermore.

Because women who hex like this will use their determination and rightness over connection at all costs. Which shoots everybody in the foot because in connection lies the power.

Another way this misplaced or unskilful dominant type of hex works is by imposing our reality or truth on another.

This can be especially difficult for women who have a lot of sight. Witches, teachers, healers, artists in particular are often gifted with the capacity to see into the energy field another human being. 

This does not necessarily mean the truth should be shared however.

 As a woman who grew up having to "read the room" in order to survive, I have a particularly well honed sense of other people. Many years later when I became a coach, I was finally able to appreciate this upbringing as a marvellous gift. I brag - I am a hugely talented seer into people's nervous systems and psyches. It does not take me long to feel the places in them that need help and how to guide them with that.

However, every time I feel into something, I have check my own ego as to whether it is appropriate, safe or helpful to share from this "inner knowing". Thoughts and beliefs are so powerful - you can literally ruin another's wellbeing by depositing the wrong train of thought at the wrong time in another's psyche.

With great power comes great responsibility. 

To share a truth or inner knowing from a place of wanting to "energetically kill/defeat/overcome" another is sometimes the way to go. (Basically, I use this if another person is trying to hex me.)

But mostly, it's a kind of ego showing off, which recruits another into a reality which may not be the best path for them in that moment. 

What I am trying to say here is that knowledge is power. But to use power to serve your own ego, rather than to assist the call of another human being's pain, is an abuse of power. And therefore a hex.

For a woman such as myself who coaches women around eroticism and empowerment, I want to be clear that even as I help women rise , I also endeavour teach them not to use that power to hex another - consciously or unconsciously.

We have to be vigilant in the service of love. Go gently into the night.