Lisa [00:00:00]:

In this episode, I get to speak with Jodi Spencer. She's a crossroads witch, ancestral healer, and former psychotherapist who walked away from the clinical coach to follow the howling of bone deep call of the goddess. Rooted in Southern folk magic and steeped in the wisdom of the underworld, Jody blends shadow work, spiritual alchemy, and ancestral reverence into a path of deep transformation. She's also a member of my Divine Feminine Mystery School, Enlivened. We talk about her journey from a trauma based therapist to full time witch, how not to get stuck in the underworld, and so much more. I know you're gonna love Jodi and this conversation. Let's dive in. Welcome to the Goddess School podcast, where Eastern wisdom meets Western mysticism.

Lisa [00:00:48]:

I'm your host, Lisa Marie Rankine, author, teacher, and Ayurvedic wellness coach here to help you reclaim your feminine superpowers, and I am so glad you're here. Listen, women are magical. They are intuitive, creative, wise, and magnetic. However, in today's fast paced world, these gifts often get buried under a more masculine way of life. Together, we'll awaken those powers. In each episode, I'll take you through sacred teachings like Ayurveda, shadow work, and the mysteries of archetypes and rituals so you can live with more clarity, synchronicity, and joy in all realms of life, like relationships, health, money, and more. So let's dive in so you can make the most of your one mythic life. The veil is parting.

Lisa [00:01:37]:

Let's begin. Hello, beautiful souls. So today I am very excited for this conversation with Jody Spencer. I met Jody. She is a member of my Divine Feminine Mystery School, Enlivened. She's a trauma informed therapist, and she is also a witch, and I'm really looking forward to our conversation today. So welcome, Jody. Thank you for being here.

Jodi Spencer [00:02:05]:

Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to talk about trauma and witchcraft and archetypes and goddesses and all the things.

Lisa [00:02:12]:

Yeah. And who knew that they all go together. And I have to say one of the things that I really love so much about Jody is that she has such this deep, like psychological knowledge and she's also very spiritual and she's very witchy and she's very goddessy. And yet as you listeners will soon discover, she's also so practical and down to earth and she can keep it very, very real. So thrilled to be talking today. So Jody, one of the first things I would love to talk about is if you could just tell us a little bit about your background, and I know that you're moving as a trauma therapist into that of a full time witch. Can you just tell us a little bit about that?

Jodi Spencer [00:02:49]:

Yeah. Yeah. For sure. I have a lot of childhood trauma, and my mother is a psychopath. And so I went to therapy as a young adult. I started going to therapy, and I had a couple of really good therapists that made me wanna be a therapist. And I remember somebody saying something like, hurt people hurt people, but healed people heal people. And also experiencing EMDR therapy blew my mind.

Jodi Spencer [00:03:14]:

I went to the military. I was in the air force for a few years right out of high school, and then I worked in the surface coal mines here in East Texas for about ten years while I was going to school and having babies and stuff. But for about the last ten years, I've been a trauma focused therapist and working with some pretty severe trauma. I worked a lot with, like, dissociative identity disorder. I'm trained in internal family systems, parts work, somatic experiencing, all the trauma things, DBT, EMDR. All those modalities can be really, really helpful, but what I kept noticing and running into, and this was absolutely my experience that I was having, is that no matter how much I EMDR ed it, no matter how much I parts worked it, like, there's just still something there. Like, you can't get it out of your system. You the self worth, the shame, the, faulty relationships, the patterns you're repeating over and over.

Jodi Spencer [00:04:12]:

What we know from the esoteric side is ego work and shadow work that needs to be done. But you're not taught that as a counselor. And so it's also kinda blown my mind that I think about, like, this feels dramatic to say, but it'll always grad school feels useless because then once you get out, which I think a lot of people in a lot of fields would say that, but you get out in the real world and you start working with people. And when you really have a woman sitting in front of you who has been trafficked or had something horrific happened to her, All those modalities are only helpful to a certain extent. Specifically, what I'm talking about is when we talk about trauma therapy and working through the trauma process, you can think of it as the first piece of it is like emotion regulation where you're working with polyvagal theory, somatic experiencing your nervous system, trying to understand why your nervous system's coming on all the time and why your fight or flight system's coming on. And then you start processing the trauma that's using EMDR that's talking about it and getting to the gritty underworld part of it. So, also, I think one of the ways spirituality ties into this is what we're discussing or talking about is the descent of the goddess. This is Inanna stepping down the steps, taking her clothes off to meet Arashka and recognizing, like, as you're getting to that process and that it's stomach churning, it's gonna be hard, but you gotta do it, ma'am.

Jodi Spencer [00:05:34]:

And so then you process the trauma. And then once you've processed it, usually, at that point, people don't really have symptoms of PTSD anymore. You're pretty regulated. You're not getting triggered. You can deal with your narcissistic mother if you so choose without getting so triggered. And that's where I want that's as far as therapy can take you. That's as far as as far as I know. That's as far as therapy can really take you.

Jodi Spencer [00:05:57]:

And then what's next? I've gotta find myself, but I don't know who I am, especially when you've got complex trauma, which most of us do in some way, whether that was a long term relationship, bad childhood. That's where especially doing work with your group and you and Katie Silcox is digging into the Ayurvedic piece of it, and witchcraft has really I'm gonna give mommy Onami credit for a lot of the witchcraft stuff, and she's blown my mind. And that's where I started seeing that last piece. They call it in therapy post traumatic growth and resilience, but they don't really teach you how to do that. They don't really teach you how to help people find themselves, and I think that's where, yeah, this plays in in such a big piece. And I think if you could introduce some of this to people earlier, I was just thinking the other day about elements and how there are so many clients that if I had talked to them from an Ayurvedic perspective about, like, you've got, like, too much pitta going on, girlfriend, Where instead I was saying, like, you're being controlling and you need to and there I'm thinking now that I was so off putting as a therapist where if I'd had this different perspective and been like, we just need to pour a little water on the fire. We need to put a little earth in the fire. It gives you such a fuller toolbox to work with, I think.

Lisa [00:07:14]:

Yeah. Oh, thank you for that. So just to maybe repeat, just to make sure that I understand. So you're saying that a lot of, like, you know, just traditional trauma methods only get you so far. Like, it it helps to heal trauma so you're not in an activated state. Yes.

Jodi Spencer [00:07:28]:

But then You're not getting triggered and stuff.

Lisa [00:07:31]:

But then you're just kind of stuck, would you say? Or

Jodi Spencer [00:07:35]:

Yeah. And you'll hear people say, like, I don't know where to go from here. I don't know who I am. I don't know how to dress. I don't know how to cut my hair. I'm not sure what music to listen to. I don't know what kind of men to date. I don't know what my type is.

Jodi Spencer [00:07:50]:

And sometimes they can actually articulate that because, like, that's what you feel like a blank slate. And especially when you start wiping away all the emotional labor you've been doing for other people with those emotional boundaries and realizing I love asking women, tell me five things you like about yourself that don't have anything to do with what you can do for other people. And they're like, because you wanna say I'm compassionate. I'm gentle. I'm kind. I'm friendly. I do things for people. No.

Jodi Spencer [00:08:18]:

No. No. No. Tell me something you like about you, like your hair or your body or your brain or and they can't. And so, yeah, I think therapy doesn't really teach us how to dig in that deep, and it certainly doesn't teach you how to do ego work and shadow work. I don't know how Jung's work got lost between now and modern psychother I mean, being in modern psychotherapy.

Lisa [00:08:41]:

Yeah. Oh, it's so interesting that you say that about that question. I've noticed that too with some of my clients and students when I ask them about, you know, their positive qualities or what they like about themselves. Like I'm very compassionate. I'm very generous. You know, I care so much about other people. And I always do try to push back, like, okay, but like, what about for you? So it is so interesting as women, we are, we're trained to to say that. And maybe even not even just say it, but I truly almost just experience it.

Lisa [00:09:11]:

Like we, that's, you know, like we just had our dark queen got a circle or it's like, how can we get in touch with these other aspects of ourselves that are also very powerful?

Jodi Spencer [00:09:22]:

Yeah. And I think as women, especially if you're very intelligent, you pick up on it so intuitively, like you notice your husband's glass is empty and you get up and pick it up without even thinking when like that's his responsibility to refill. I mean, that's cool of you to do it, but it's not your job. You shouldn't feel obligated. Or, oh, this is one I hear a lot when you're healing from trauma about how hard it is to just rest or play without feeling like you need to be productive. And my husband and I kinda play this game where, like, if one of us gets up and starts doing housework, then the other one's gonna get up and start doing and so, like, sometimes I'll even say, don't get up. I don't want you no shame about watching the football game. I'm really just moving the laundry because we're so programmed, yeah, what you're talking about to just experience it and actually do it without even realizing what you're doing.

Lisa [00:10:11]:

Oh, I love that you point that out because I can definitely, yeah, see that in my relationship. And I've had friends tell me too, like, I just walk around the house cleaning all day because I don't want it to make it look like I'm not doing anything that I'm actually, you know, taking a moment of rest. Like, how how crazy is that?

Jodi Spencer [00:10:25]:

We're yeah. Like, in the rest is the play thing. Like, how are you gonna play if you don't no. Rest is watching South Park and playing on your Nintendo Switch at the same time. That's rest. Because, also, like, watching a documentary while you, like, do something, but that doesn't count either. Like, we're so not good at resting.

Lisa [00:10:44]:

Yeah. Like I'm going to listen to a podcast and fold laundry. Like, yeah,

Jodi Spencer [00:10:48]:

it doesn't count. Yeah.

Lisa [00:10:52]:

Yeah. So tell me a little bit, I know that you've made some big shifts lately and I mean, there's actually two things I wanna ask you, but I think that they're gonna kind of go together. One is I wanna learn about this big shift that you've made in your life. And then I wanna talk more about, like, well, how do you see the ascent after someone has gone in the underworld and they did the work? Like, how do they rediscover themselves and come back up into this topside earthly realm? So I think they might go together, but, yeah.

Jodi Spencer [00:11:18]:

Yeah. Yeah.

Lisa [00:11:19]:

You can start either place.

Jodi Spencer [00:11:21]:

Yeah. Yeah. You know, I'm a talker. You can just, like, throw an abstract question at me and I'll I got an answer. I'm a manifesting generator. I'm ready to respond. So my path spiritually kinda was I grew up very Baptist. Like I said, I'm from Northeast Texas.

Jodi Spencer [00:11:35]:

If you can't tell by the way I talk, I'm in the tiny woods. So very Baptist, like Calvinist reformed Baptist, if you know Protestantism. And even up and, I mean, I didn't like the church until, like, ten years ago, but I always had this draw to the occult. Like, I remember buying my first copy of the Kama Sutra when I was, like, 17 and buying an astrology book. And even though that was a sacrilegious thing, as a Christian, there's always been this pull towards it. So about ten years ago, I started realizing that I didn't believe the Bible to be totally inerrant. And so I decided that I wanted to figure out what I believed about God for myself, from what I experienced outside of any scripture, the Bible, the bird of you, whatever the thing is. I wanna know what have I experienced of God.

Jodi Spencer [00:12:28]:

And so that's when I started kinda getting pulled into the divine feminine. So that's when I think I found your group with Women Who Run With The Wolves. Because Women Who Run With The Wolves, I think, was one of the first books I found that was this territory, and it blew my mind. I mean, it's so damn sad. I I can't say I've ever read it cover to cover, but just the introduction chapter when she's talking about dragging yourself through the desert in the dry I'm gonna cry talking about it. I can't talk about it. And then, ironically, a couple years ago, I got a parasite during the summer. I was definitely ill.

Jodi Spencer [00:12:59]:

I was still working and doing sessions with clients as a therapist. I was coming home and crashing, and so I was stuck in bed a lot. And I started just spending a lot of time on YouTube. And then I started, like, eking over into dark goddess stuff. I think I found rewilding with Sabrina Lynn. I love her so much. And I started learning about Collie and the wild woman, and I realized I was a wild woman. And then I thought back to all the times that I've been called, like, wild card and stuff like that, even just because of my hair being crazy or and how it is.

Jodi Spencer [00:13:29]:

I'm a wild woman. I can't get right. You can't beat it out at me. Like, you can't control me. You can't shut me up. You can't make me not say what I wanna say. And so I think I just started diving further and further in the dark God. The dark goddess is who I found first.

Jodi Spencer [00:13:46]:

And I think also because of the trauma I had with my mother, Lilith was one of the first goddesses I really connected with. I think my Christian background helped because she if you know her story, she is like, hey, bad bitch for us I'm not Christian anymore, but well, I'm kind of a Christian mystic, like a Gnostic. She epitomizes independence and breaking free from, like, the patriarchy and stuff and saying, I don't give a shit what happens to me. I don't care if I have to go wander the desert. I'll pay whatever price it takes for my sovereignty. And so, yeah, she was the first goddess, I think, that came to me and I started understanding independence and female rage. There's a lot of anger you go through when you leave the church, and you're mad at Christians and God. I couldn't connect with a god, so to speak, as much as I could the goddess.

Jodi Spencer [00:14:40]:

But, like, finding your group and finding, like, some witchy groups really started helping validate for me that it's real. And then even when you dig into history, here I go. Here's my practical side. Like, the goddess was worshiped far before the Abrahamic religions. How did we lose that? Like, there are all these beautiful ancient, like, big chick Venuses with dump trucks that look gorgeous and have big old boobs and stuff. Like, we've been worshiping the feminine for so long and recognizing her as the creatrix. And then I started realizing that I just I don't like doing counseling psychotherapy as much because it's clinical. I've gotta diagnose you.

Jodi Spencer [00:15:21]:

So that's probably a big part of it. I don't wanna have to diagnose you with stuff, man. This isn't pathological. It's not for forever. I don't wanna tell insurance what we talked about. I don't want insurance determining your care. And, also, the state kinda mandates you gotta be careful about using methods that aren't research research based. And so when you get into witchcraft, I mean, there's not a lot of research, a little bit of research on astral projection and stuff like that.

Jodi Spencer [00:15:47]:

And so, yeah, I've decided to pivot more into that, and it's feeding my soul in a way that it's blown my mind. And it's blowing my mind that how when you get in alignment with what the universe wants for you, it starts clicking along and the ideas come. And and counseling's very stressful. Like, total shout out to counselors and social workers. It's some of the heavy especially if you do trauma, you carry home just so much stuff. I've told my husband I think I could write the scariest horror book ever because I've heard things in counseling that I'm a Stephen King obsessed fan. It blows anything Stephen King's ever written out of the water. You know, it's just horrifying what people do to each other, and it kinda rots your soul.

Jodi Spencer [00:16:32]:

So this is where too I'm learning you can't live in the underworld. I've been there for a while. I've been sitting with people in the underworld for a while. I feel like I've been sitting in that ninth ring of Dante's hell where it's so depressing that it feels like there's no way out. So that's who I think you have helped me more than anybody learn about the love and light part that you gotta pull in. Even if you're a goth I'm ninety's teenager. So even if you're a goth witch, it can't be all shadow and dark all the time. Even Persephone comes out of underworld for six months out of the year.

Jodi Spencer [00:17:07]:

And I think you especially have such a beautiful, feminine, gentle, love and light energy about you that it's helped me see how, yeah, there's that balance in duality. The universe has worked with me a lot on duality over the last couple years. And we don't learn in grad school either how to help people make that ascent. I know how to drag you into hell and, like, dump all your shit on the ground. It's like I picked your purse up and dumped it out on the ground, and you're laying in the pits of hell with this trauma. And I can get your body regulated, but they never really teach you. Like, how do I build who you are so you can stand on firm ground and say, I know who I am. And so I don't care what other people think about me.

Lisa [00:17:52]:

Yeah. So interesting. And you said so many things that I would love to dive into. One was just interesting that you're not taught to bring people back up. And it's kind of like what we think of as just even our medical system right now is that we can do sick care, but we can't really do health care. There's here's another prescription. Just take that forever as opposed to like, what do we need to do to treat the cause of disease and lifestyle of health?

Jodi Spencer [00:18:17]:

You have to go to like a functional medicine doctor to get that or an Ayurvedic doctor. Yeah. Or a Chinese medicine doctor, something like that.

Lisa [00:18:25]:

The only thing he said about you, you know, one of the things that disturbed you a bit about your job was just the pathologizing of emotions. And it does seem like we have a tendency as a culture to want to do that now. And I know that some people truly have these very, you know, horrific traumas. So maybe it's even less about them, but just as a culture in general, it's like we want a label and we want to, you know, have a name for everything. What do you think about that? And like, where did that come from?

Jodi Spencer [00:18:54]:

Well, it's so hard. So for when it comes from the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, the DSM, it's like anybody that says psychiatrist, psychologist, or whatever. It's our bible. And it's the big book of diagnoses. The idea is that if I can diagnose you, then I can pull out a treatment plan. So if I can say a plus b, then I know it equals c, and now I know what to do with you. But it's still a little archaic because it was written mostly by a bunch of old white dudes in the fifties and sixties, and they've updated a little bit. Like, they just, in the last couple editions, took homosexuality out as a mental disorder.

Jodi Spencer [00:19:36]:

And so also when you think about it from that perspective, that means that those dudes were considering anything that wasn't normal behavior to them as abnormal behavior, like women's menstrual cycles and PMDD. Like, no doubt, it's a concept, but, also, I think something like Ayurveda, we would say you've got toxin build up in your body, and we need to start figuring out how to balance your elements or whatever, chugging water, lubricating, moving stuff out. And then another piece I don't love about the pathologizing is I think it makes people think that you're doomed with this forever diagnosis. Like I'll hear people all the time say something like, I've been diagnosed with general anxiety disorder. Well, I mean, that's not the same as, like, I've been diagnosed with MS and you can't get rid of it. Anxiety is your fight or flight systems coming on. That's what anxiety is. That's what PTSD is.

Jodi Spencer [00:20:32]:

That's what complex trauma is, is that your nervous system's misfiring or it's detecting threats in the environment that may or may not be real. And so I think people get it in their head. I'm stuck. I'm doomed. I'm dread. I have this horrible diagnosis, depression. That's a bad one. I'll never get through it.

Jodi Spencer [00:20:49]:

I'm gonna have to deal with it for the rest of my life, and I'll have to be on medicine for the rest of my life. Not necessarily, man. It's not hereditary. You weren't born with it. There's something that goes with it.

Lisa [00:21:03]:

Yeah. That's such a much more empowering perspective. And I mean, I feel like I've even noticed, like, you know, just scrolling through social media. I mean, there's the labels that you've just said, but there's also like, I have anxious attachment. I have hormonal imbalances. I have ADHD where we all want to diagnose every difficult emotion we have to explain it away. And I've really been pushing back and encouraging people. Like, it's also just life.

Lisa [00:21:27]:

Like, life's just not that easy here in the earthly realm.

Jodi Spencer [00:21:30]:

You're supposed to have anxiety sometimes. You're supposed to be depressed sometimes. Yeah. Your nervous system's supposed to fire off during the day. Yeah. Yeah.

Lisa [00:21:39]:

Yeah. It's interesting. One of the things that I have learned from one of my spiritual teachers, a tantra teacher too, that I think is an interesting approach is that when we are experiencing whether it's grief or anxiety, it's not that we need to, like, bypass or push it away, but can we create the space, the container that we can still bring more in? Like, can we hold grief and can we hold joy at the same time? Like, ideally, it's like we're creating space. We're creating a big enough container that we can hold all of

Jodi Spencer [00:22:09]:

it. That's intense. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's hard enough to just hold space for the grief, much less try to duality it with, can I bring that in with it? But, yeah, just sitting in the emotion. And we're also disconnected from our bodies too, and we're just so disconnected from those lower chakras. We're disconnected from our groin and our sacral root and our reproductive organs. And especially if you've had any kind of assault or abuse, then women tend to, like, stay clenched all the time, and you don't even realize you're doing it.

Jodi Spencer [00:22:44]:

You're clenching your hips, and then all those muscles get and I read something today about how your hip muscles are connected to your jaw muscles because all these muscles are connected. So if you've got tight hips, that's one of the reasons you're clenching your teeth at night. We've pathologized so many things where if if you keep doing that, then you're never really gonna fix the problem that was underneath it. You're just gonna keep using it as an excuse of and that's what I see in bad behavior is people using it as an excuse to be a jerk in relationships and stuff like that. Like, that's not fair. You don't get to hide in bed for three weeks and lose your job because you're depressed. Sometimes you just gotta put your happy face on and go to work, man. Yeah.

Lisa [00:23:26]:

Tell me about, like, witchcraft and, you know, modern witchcraft and how how you feel that this can help with a bit of the ascent. I would love to hear about that.

Jodi Spencer [00:23:36]:

Yeah. Yeah. So now I'm gonna get super witchy woo with magic and stuff. I'm Wiccan. I'm probably like a Dianic Wiccan, but I'm not part of a church. I'm a solitary practitioner, and it's really hard probably across the globe to find around Salem, I think it's easier to find covens, but it's really hard to find groups to meet up with. So that's why I started Sacred Circle Coven. It's a free coven that I host on the Mighty, and you can find it at my website.

Jodi Spencer [00:24:03]:

And we have a couple of meetups a month and talk about books and stuff every once in a while and share resources and spells and stuff. But part of it is the idea that I believe all women are witches, and it it ties into that witch archetype that we all have it. And then the other layer of that is that we all have these extrasensory abilities. It's just we're not already we're not really tuned into them because we don't meditate enough. We don't slow down enough. We don't notice the patterns. I saw something today that said that's what a witch is, is somebody who notices patterns. The last time I looked at the clock before we started at sip 01:11, well, to me, that means new beginnings and that's something cool and fun.

Jodi Spencer [00:24:43]:

And that's a good omen where, like, if a vulture flies over you, that's a bad omen. We see patterns where other people don't. So that's part of what being a witch is. Some of it's herbalism, just understanding the way that plants can heal us. I know what so much the Ayurvedic piece is. That's what witches do. So I guess it's the European version to some degree of that. But also there is the supernatural, the paranormal piece to it.

Jodi Spencer [00:25:08]:

Most people who practice the craft, witchcraft, have some kinda extrasensory ability. So I've seen shadow people since I was a kid. And growing up Baptist, I thought I was seeing demons or something. Or if you're a kid and you wake up in the middle of the night and there's a tall, dark figure standing ominously in your doorway and you scream, of course, your parents are gonna be like, it was just a nightmare. You know? They do that kind of stuff. Well, now I know it wasn't just an ominous figure. It's one of my spirit guides that's been following me my whole freaking life. So that's beautiful, but it was terrifying as a child, you know, to experience.

Jodi Spencer [00:25:47]:

And part of mine, I realize now, is that I see energies and I can see across the veil. I could do, like, medium work. I can channel, and I can invoke spirits pretty easily or, like, do possession work, which is that's a a whole different ball of ice. And some witches, like, can have dreams about things that are gonna happen. If you have prophetic dreams, you're a witch. If you're burning simmer pots in your house, you're a witch. If you like natural medicine, you're a witch. But I think too, it's just that being the wild woman in the woods.

Jodi Spencer [00:26:21]:

Like every time I say this two on one, she's like, oh, this kinda sounds good. When I say imagine how cool it would be to, like, live in the woods in your little Hobbit hut, and you just make friends with all the squirrels and rabbits and deer around, and you feed them, and you eat your little roots to use, and you live with your cats, and you write in your journals. And they're like, oh, and make potions. We're all witches, man. We all wanna go to the woods and eat mushrooms and be around squirrels.

Lisa [00:26:46]:

It's funny. So many women from my community have said that and not even in the context of a conversation like this, more just like, I just really want my own cabin in the woods.

Jodi Spencer [00:26:55]:

Yeah, like live off the grid or something. Yeah.

Lisa [00:26:57]:

Yeah. And have my own apothecary. So I think it's so interesting that there is like this archetypal drive, I think, for women to yes. To be reconnected to nature, to have more time to themselves, to, you know, connect with animals and plants. It's really beautiful. Yeah.

Jodi Spencer [00:27:16]:

Well, and the witch too, the the darker part of her is that she's a main bad bitch and that we work with energies and we work with dark spirits. And so I think that's another thing that distinguishes probably witches from other people who do spirit work maybe is that we work with demons. We work with some practitioners work with, like, dark petro hoodoo deities. Trickster deities are a big one. But that ties into that respect and reverence for the darkness and recognizing that the underworld's not a scary place. It's just chaotic and it's dark, but, yeah, you can't stay there for forever.

Lisa [00:27:55]:

Yeah. Quick question for you and keep in mind that I really don't know much about witchcraft at all, but when you talk about demons or like the trickster, and I know like in my community, when we talk about the archetypes, they're usually kind of inner archetypes, although Young did talk about that there's external archetypes too, that we can see in our culture or society at any given time. Like when you mentioned those words, are they inner demons or are they external demons or that external? Okay.

Jodi Spencer [00:28:22]:

Yeah. I work with land spirits. And so I hear, feel, see, experience spirits that are near the land I'm on. And so here in East Texas, that could be Mexican, that could be white, that could be African American enslaved people that were here. The the hoodoo community, it could be Caddo for sure, like grandmother spider or somebody. And so, yeah, that's probably one of the things that distinguishes witches too is not only are we like pagans, but we actually believe that these energies exist and that you can kinda name them by different things. But it's all part of the collective, so I still see it as, like, raindrops of the collective. And it's just those trickster energies, like like Amed Kafo is a trickster.

Jodi Spencer [00:29:15]:

He he had the crossroads, and so he reminds us that the crossroads is the void and that when you're in the void, there's no guarantees and that chaos isn't a bad thing. And he's the kind of dark deity that tricks you to get you to the place you need to be, and so you wanna, like, thank him and punch him in the face at the same time. But, no, we we actually are communicating with these deities or spirits outside. We hear them. We see them. They speak through us. Some people can channel them or invoke them, and then you'll actually hear it in their voice. Like their speech changes.

Lisa [00:29:53]:

Oh, wow. Sounds fascinating. Yeah. How, and I don't know if I'm going back a little bit, like, just kind of going back to the ascent. So somebody's been in the underworld, they're doing the shadow work. They've they're regulating their nervous system. How do you see witchcraft helping in the ascent or maybe you don't, or what would you say like to somebody who's like, okay, time for me to get out of the underworld?

Jodi Spencer [00:30:15]:

So, yeah, the whole thing that I've been learning over the last few years is that ascent. And I think what the ascent is is you've gotta be able to figure out who you are and stand on solid ground. When you know what you are and what you're not, you don't take things as personally. Like, I know I'm kind of a bitch. Jordan Peterson has a beautiful version of the big five personality assessment on his website. It's so good. You should go take it. But, anyway, it it shows that I'm real compassionate, but I'm not very polite.

Jodi Spencer [00:30:47]:

And so I know I'm kind of a bitch. I know I'm kind of assertive, like, to the point of I know I'm too assertive to the point of aggression sometimes. And so being aware of those things, I know those things about me. So when somebody comes at me saying, man, you're a cold hearted bitch. I know. I'm sorry. I'm aware. I'm working on it.

Jodi Spencer [00:31:06]:

Like, I didn't do it on purpose. But being able to sit with that, and I think that's so much of what shadow work is. Like, some of the big dark archetypes that I carry are like the siren where I love to drag men into the pits of the abyss and run their lives in the pits of hell. Like, call you over to the rocks and then bash your ship against the rocks. But yeah. So the yeah. I think is some of it is figuring out those things about yourself and then learning how to balance it. Like, the sirens one I work a lot with with women because a lot of us carry siren energy and you can't help it.

Jodi Spencer [00:31:41]:

You have these beautiful eyes. You make good eye contact. When you talk to men, you put off a sexual energy about you, like a Marilyn Monroe energy. And not that I'm comparing myself to her. She's freaking gorgeous. And you can't help that. However, comma, you can't break up marriages. You don't need to be flirting with other men when you're married, and you've, like, gotta learn, like, yeah.

Jodi Spencer [00:32:02]:

Pull Siren out when you're trying to get a good deal on a car and you're negotiating with the car salesman and he's flirting with you, maybe pull her out then. But, like, in day to day with the guy you office with, nah. Like, we need to keep her tucked away. But and so that helps on finding that solid ground and kinda interrupting some of those patterns when you can recognize us with the shadow work piece of it. And as you put these pieces together and the and the ancestry work, that's another thing I do a lot of. And that'll teach you so much about where you came from and how your people like, I it blew my mind I find out that most of my people have been here in East Texas, specifically in Russ County for about two hundred years. As soon as The United States started buying land from Mexico and Mexico, my grandparents came here. And so I had no idea.

Jodi Spencer [00:32:51]:

That's pretty freaking cool. So a few days ago, I went to the cemetery and started trying to find graves of great, great, great grandparents that I didn't even realize were buried here. And some of them were in tiny little cemeteries that aren't really taken care of. And so that's another thing that witches do is we venerate our ancestors, and we appreciate and acknowledge that I'm gonna get to hear that talking about this. That their hard work is what got you here. If they didn't bust their ass, they've lived the life they lived. And they went to some tough shit, man. Tough shit coming over on ships because they wanted a better life for you.

Jodi Spencer [00:33:25]:

I'm gonna get all be clamped. Anyway and so this is being able to honor your ancestors and being able to honor. They did some really cool stuff, and they gave you really cool DNA. And you carry all of them in you all the time. And so going and honoring the place where they were buried and honoring their lives. Even if that's still in the family tree, you're doing the ancestry work to see. My ancestry is so boring. I feel like I'd mom if I've never even done 23 and me because I figure mine would look like Colin Robinson on what we do in the shadows.

Jodi Spencer [00:33:58]:

Just like, why? But, doing all the ancestry work, I'm super Scotch Irish, like, super, super, super, super Scotland, Ireland, and my husband's all English. They did blew my mind. And he had a lot of cool nobility in his line that I I did. I come from a lot of poor country people. And so you can honor that too that you like, I carry that that country down home archetype in me because I live in the Deep South. That's what my family is. And so even honoring with music, I'm obsessed with music. So listening to the music that your grandparents would have listened to, or I love listening to Delta Blues, that honors the the people who were here before me.

Jodi Spencer [00:34:41]:

That's another step you can step on to start stepping out. I love what you talk about so much about the aesthetic too. I think almost every day when I'm getting dressed, I think about you saying something like, how would Hera dress if she was going to the grocery store today? Yeah. You would be a bad bitch with a peacock walking behind her in some kinda like ballgame. I think that's one of those other steps and trying out different things, being a teenager again and trying different aesthetics and stuff.

Lisa [00:35:09]:

Yeah. I love that so much. It's actually, it's funny. I actually wrote a little bit about that this morning. It's just like, what, you know, when we're younger, we play make believe like I'm I'm going to be an astronaut. I'm going to be a mom, but then we stop. And I think one of the things that, like, I really encourage women to do, and I think this is part of that ascent journey too. It's like, if something's calling to you, whether it is the wild woman or Aphrodite or Hera, like dress up, play with it.

Lisa [00:35:32]:

How are you actually going to embody it? Right. Like, let's just try different things. And, you know, I, I worry sometimes when I think this is another social media thing where people like, oh, I just want to be authentic. And like, yes, we all want to be authentic and we change every day. Like someday I might be Aphrodite, some days I might be like, Colly. Right? Like I don't

Jodi Spencer [00:35:55]:

know, and Yes. Especially with your cycle and the moon.

Lisa [00:35:58]:

Exactly. So it's sort of a moving target. So I would worry less about trying to get to an image of authenticity, whatever that means, and more of like, how do I wanna show up today? Who how do I wanna play? What do I wanna feel?

Jodi Spencer [00:36:10]:

It feels good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's the other big piece, I think, that intuition piece of figuring out and this is where human design, like, blew my mind. I would totally recommend people go look at their human design and pull the chart and then go ask something like chat GPT to help you understand it because it's kinda complicated, but I would never totally had bought into astrology, horoscope, zodiac and stuff until I read human design and it explained me to a tee. And that's part of what had me pivot is it said that I was a hermit heretic. And so I was like, yeah.

Jodi Spencer [00:36:42]:

I am. I can sit behind a computer in my home office and talk shit to people all day and, like, stand up for women's rights and stuff. But yeah, like trying on those different things and like, exactly like you said, like some days I very much feel Persephone, maiden of spring, and some days I very much feel queen of the underworld and I will set you on fire.

Lisa [00:37:04]:

Yeah. And I love, and we can be all of that too. And like, Brian, like

Jodi Spencer [00:37:07]:

if they're already in there. Yeah. They're there.

Lisa [00:37:10]:

Yeah. And I think that, again, that's like the individuation path path. How do we just become more of us and be able to embody and appreciate all aspects?

Jodi Spencer [00:37:18]:

And so when you're pushing a baby out, you're not necessarily Persephone. You're probably Demeter, mother earth, you're mother earth, you're Gaia, you're. Yeah.

Lisa [00:37:27]:

Yeah. Yeah. I love that. And I think it just also gives women permission to kind of explore the different things that they might be thinking about, the ideas they have. And I always encourage people, even if it sounds like, oh, I I don't know how I could do that or why

Jodi Spencer [00:37:43]:

red lipstick or something like that. Yeah.

Lisa [00:37:45]:

Yeah. Just just do it and just try. Well, thank you so much. Is there anything, like, where can people find you and is your coven currently open?

Jodi Spencer [00:37:56]:

Yeah. Yeah. So the coven Sacred Circle Coven, I started it. I planned to launch it later. And then after Trump won the election, I got mad and just went ahead and launched it. And so, girl power. So, yeah, it's open. You can find out all about this.

Jodi Spencer [00:38:11]:

And, also, in the next couple of weeks, I'll be launching and opening the temple of the priestess. And so I'm gonna be setting up in a, like, a a mystery school. And I wanna help women learn how, the different kinds of magic, elemental protection, the history of magic, some of the major texts that you need to know, like the Malice, Malice of Carm, and Rosemary's Baby and stuff like that. So that is the temple of the priestess. It'll be open in the next few weeks, and we'll do our first ritual on Beltane. Sacred Circle Coven, they're both on the mighty, but Sacred Circle's free. And it's my passion project, and it's free for the female the feminine collective. And we have moon circles and stuff.

Jodi Spencer [00:38:54]:

So, yeah, you can find me on my website, jodiespencer.com or jodieaspencer.com. It'll get you to the same place. I'm all over social media. You can find me on TikTok and Instagram, jodie a spencer. But, yeah, my website has everything about all this and, links to get started and join. And I also do private sessions. I love doing ego and shadow work, transformation work. So if you're interested specifically because I love doing intense, I'm blunt and to the point of almost being rude sometimes, but it makes me good at doing shadow work because I will call your shadow and your ego out so fast.

Jodi Spencer [00:39:32]:

So yeah. Also, if you're interested in doing that kind of work, I do that kind of work. And I'm a psychotherapist in Texas. So if you're looking for this kind of work in Texas, then I might be able to take your insurance.

Lisa [00:39:43]:

Fantastic. And I will have all of those links in the show notes as well for people so they can easily find you. But thank you so much for coming on today and, you know, talking all about trauma, witchcraft, and the ascent.

Jodi Spencer [00:39:56]:

Thank you so much for having me. I so love being part of your group. I so love working with you. I've learned so much from you. Everyone needs to join Lisa's group because she's a beautiful soul and she will teach you so much and she has so much freaking depth to her. And I'm so excited that I got to be here and talk divine feminine mysticism. Yes. Thank you so much.

Lisa [00:40:15]:

And, yeah, we do Enliven attracts the most amazing community of women including Jody. We literally have women from 32 to 82, and it's just fantastic. So, yes, if folks are interested, you can get that in the show notes as well, too. Alright. Well, I will see you very soon, Jodi, and I will be back next week, beautiful listeners. Thanks for tuning in to the God of School podcast. I hope today's episode inspired you to reclaim your feminine magic. Now don't forget to subscribe to the show.

Lisa [00:40:47]:

And if you've enjoyed the podcast, please leave us a review on Apple. If you wanna dive deeper into divine feminine archetypes and reconnect with your power, check out my book, The Goddess Solution. It's packed with ancient goddess wisdom for the modern woman. You can find the book on Amazon, and the link is in the show notes. And if you are ready to embrace these practices alongside a global sisterhood, I invite you to join my Divine Feminine Mystery School, Enlivened. It's a supportive space to embody these teachings with a fantastic community of like minded women. You'll find the link in the show notes. Remember, the goddess isn't a deity outside of you.

Lisa [00:41:23]:

She's an aspect of your highest self. You are the goddess. Until next time, my friend.