On Halloween people dress up as superheroes, cowboys or witches. Children go from door to door and come home with bags full of candy. Adults enjoy their chocolate bars with cold beer and good company.
The dead rise from their graves, wandering along the dark streets. It’s the night when the veil separating the living from the dead is the thinnest and when communicating with the dead is the easiest for Rachel Levesque.
She plans to light red or orange candles with her friends and to do a ceremony during the last hours of October. Levesque considers herself a witch.
“Most people assume a witch with bad stuff or with people who work with bad demons. Unless you are a dark witch, we don’t do that. I consider myself a healing witch,” she said.
“What we do, what we practice, is we live off the land. It’s being like in a church but being outside. We give thanks to everything, we praise everything, we believe in many gods.”
Healing tinctures
She grew up in Grand Falls, two hours north of Fredericton, and her family was strictly Catholic. As a girl, she would go with her grandmother in the forest to pick wild plants or tree mushrooms. Her grandmother taught her how to make ointments and healing tinctures out of lavender, aloe vera or healing herbs.
Levesque studied anthropology at UNB and even went to a dinosaur site in Korea.
Although she hasn’t continued her anthropological career by working at a print shop in Fredericton, her undergraduate degree gave her an understanding and love for research.
“I went into medicinal plants, because I took a course called ‘How to become an outdoor woman’ for five years in a row through the forest rangers,” Levesque said.
She didn’t forget the effects of various plants, but she had pushed her knowledge about them away for a long time. During the course, she remembered what she had learned from her grandmother and thought, “Hey, my grandmother made cough syrup out of that.”
She continued studying different plants and said she’s highly researched when mixing tinctures and ointments. She writes all her recipes and findings in books she publishes for friends and those interested in them and hands them out during holidays she celebrates.
“In there, I have some recipes, some of them are healing recipes for tinctures and ointments. Some of them are regular food like vegan food. There’s a story about the holiday themselves. Not all of them are in this field, so they’re curious to know about what the holiday is about.”
Talking to angels
Levesque gave a copy of one of her books to her employer who was curious when she told him she’s a witch.
It had been a regular day at work when Levesque felt an earthquake coming. She told everyone to get out of the building. Her boss looked at her and asked why. She answered there’s an earthquake approaching. When he refused to listen to her, she said firmly, “We’re getting out of this building. Now.”
Shortly after the ground started shaking. From then on, everyone referred to her as “Spooky Rachel.” That’s when she decided to tell them about her beliefs.
“That’s what I consider myself. I mean, I’m more than just one thing, just because I do different things. But, I consider myself a white witch. I help people. I heal nature.”
As a white witch and reiki master teacher, Levesque heals people with energy. Using different chakras, she said, it resembles a regular massage. However, she doesn’t massage the tissue, but puts her hand on the patient’s tense muscles.
“It gets really, really hot and the energy goes through to remove blockages. So, if you’ve have been in an accident or so, it would help to remove those and then the energy would flow,” she said.
To receive this energy, she calls on gods to help her. Levesque said growing up she spoke to angels and they responded. When she talked with the local priest about it, he told her to not think about these sort of things, although people in the Bible communicated with angels.
“The Bible didn’t resonate with me,” Levesque said. “They would say one thing, then another. It just didn’t make sense to me.”
Billions of lives
Constant neck pain and visions she had also didn’t make sense to Levesque. She kept seeing herself working with plants and helping people. Then, she would see herself being accused of witchcraft, brought before trial and being hanged.
That’s when she found out she’s a witch and learned she had lived at least five past lives.
“Most people wouldn’t believe that, but you have lived many, many lives,” she said.
“People are afraid to ask. And people who are curious are more open to ask question [and] starting to experience stuff themselves which makes them ask other questions.”
Giving people the opportunity to ask questions was what Andrew McNamara had in mind when he organized “five faces of faith” in late September.
“I think it’s important for people to learn about other religions’ point of view by personally seeing and learning from a live person … Books are one thing, but being able to interactively ask a person helps people learn depths of things even more meaningful,” said McNamara in an email.
A Shaman, Hindu, Muslim, Jew and a witch offered their views on afterlife and their gods at the forum. McNamara chose these five beliefs because they are “already a part of billions of lives across the world. So, there is something obviously solid and true about them to have so many involved.”
McNamara said the panelists and the audience were respectful. But he hoped for a better turnout.
“Some people may have been turned off by [the] witchcraft aspect,” he said, adding posters for the event had been taken down in some buildings in the city.
“The belief that is still most feared from ignorance, witchcraft, is really just very normal people’s different belief on life.”
Powerful souls
Shakti Shiva was one of the five panelist. Like Levesque, she also believes in reincarnation and being good to nature. Yet, unlike Levesque, Shiva has one god, planet Mother Earth.
Shiva discovered her god through a suicide attempt. The mother of three and grandmother of six said growing up was difficult. As a little girl, she talked to deceased people and dead animals.
“Everybody thought I was insane,” she said introducing herself to the audience.
Shiva said she was lonely, but her god made her discover a path in life that saved her.
“My god has taught me that I am who I say I am. She has given me the strength to carry on when life has not been pleasant. She has given me the wisdom to guide others and to hold other women in my arms and teach them that we are sisters on this planet and not enemies.”
Following the seasons and respecting nature, Shiva said she became “one of the most powerful souls on the planet.”
Ceremony
Levesque said she knew she had to do ceremony a month ago. She called her friends and siblings from earlier lives, Terri and Robin, to meet at a beach between Saint John and Saint Andrews to offer prayers to the water.
“The main part of the ceremony … was basically to help cleanse the water. Because the water is polluted these days because of everything that goes in it,” said Levesque.
She said every element or holiday has a different ceremony. When most of Fredericton residents unwrap Christmas presents, Levesque celebrates the tree. At the end of this ceremony, she burns a log and scatters its ashes outside, to close the circle.
During many ceremonies, participants write little notes, she said.
“The first part is what they would like to let go. And the second one is what they want to attract in their life. We do a little fire and we burn them all up, which basically means it brings your prayers all up.”
In the last night of October, she will light up candles, saying different prayers and talking to angels. She also plans to go out with her friends dressed up in costumes just for fun, but not with a pointed hat or broom.
“The majority of what [people] know, they got off TV, “ she said.
“And it’s not really true at all. I don’t fly on a broom stick.”
