The Magick of Non-Linear Time in Trauma Healing

Soul Alchemy at the Edge of Memory

Time is not a straight line. It folds, spirals, loops. For the witch, the Shaman and the mystic, time is the breath of the cosmos, expanding and contracting in rhythm with unseen forces. For the trauma survivor, time often becomes a trap. One moment fractures into many, each echoing in the body like ghosts haunting the soul, all vying to be heard.

In the metaphysical, this is understood. The Hermetic axiom “as above, so below” applies not only to planets and stars, but to memories and wounds. The moment of trauma does not remain in the past but becomes its own orbiting moon, exerting a gravitational pull on the psyche.

Healing, then, is not about moving forward, but moving inward. We are not just recovering, we are reweaving time. In this act, the wounded self becomes the Shaman, the alchemist, the one who steps outside the clock and speaks to their past and future selves like spirits in a ritual circle.

The Fracture

It began, as these things often do, with a sensation I couldn’t name. Not pain, not exactly. More like time breathing in reverse. I was washing a dish when it hit; a sudden tightness behind the ribs, a soundless, upending vertigo. The room hadn’t changed, but I had shifted somehow, as if I were being watched by my own past. The spoon in my hand was from a different year. The air had that shimmer of places remembered only in dreams.

Some call it a flashback. But this wasn’t a memory. This was presence. A piece of me was still there, years ago- a young girl curled inward upon herself as if that could protect her from the devasting loss that had just occurred. Heaving sobs racking her small, fragile little being, going unheard by those around her. Still living in the present moment but also that of when the original wound occurred, a looping of time in the shadow of it was born.

That was the day I realized healing couldn’t be linear. Because trauma isn’t. It doesn’t politely recede into the past. It roots itself sideways—in the body, in the breath, in the half-second pauses we can’t explain.

That night, I lit a candle not just for grounding, but for calling. Not a deity. Not a guide.

I called myself. The version of me who had never left that moment. The fragment frozen in psychic ice.

I whispered through the flame: “I’m coming back for you.”

And I meant it.

Not metaphorically. Not symbolically.

But literally—through the pathways of memory, dream, and magick.

Through the spiral of time that doesn’t move forward, but inward.

The Loop

Once you notice it, you can’t unsee it.

The loop.

Not just in memory, but in mood, reaction, even fate. A strange recurrence of events dressed in new costumes. A phrase spoken that collapses the present into the past. A pattern of relationships that echo the same lesson with different faces. The wheel turns and then turns again.

For a long time, I thought this was just bad luck. Karma, maybe.

But karma is too linear a word and seemed too much like a punishment.

This was something more… gravitational. Like I was orbiting a version of myself that never stopped screaming.

And the body remembered it all.

Not just in panic attacks or tension—but in a kind of internal time-warp.

A scent would turn a Tuesday into a childhood winter. A certain kind of silence would open the door to the exact hallway I’d walked down years ago. My hands would tremble with emotions that belonged to someone younger, someone I used to be—but who never stopped being.

Therapists might call it dysregulation.

Spiritualists might call it psychic bleeding.

Either way, the self is out of sync.

In occult terms, this is a kind of possession—but not by an external spirit.

It is the Past Self, unresolved, unanchored, that is demanding a voice.

It speaks in symptoms.

It speaks in avoidance.

It speaks in ritual repetition: the mind going over the scene again, and again, and again—as if some deep part of the soul is still trying to cast a different outcome.

The world sees this as dysfunction.

But I began to see it as a summoning.

What if trauma loops not because we are broken—but because part of us is trying to get home?

What if these repetitions are not failures, but the soul performing its own kind of unconscious spell work—calling back lost pieces? A soul retrieval in a sense.

It was around this time I began to track the loops like ley lines.

Mapping emotional spirals as if they were sacred geometry.

Charting the rhythms of my symptoms like a planetary transit.

And I began to suspect something:

That healing wasn’t about “getting over” the past.

It was about stepping into the ritual already underway.

The Metaphysical Teachings

In the Hermetic traditions, there’s a saying: “Time is not real; it is a measure of change.”

But for the wounded, time feels all too real—sharp, jagged, inescapable. A ruler that cuts instead of measures.

And yet… something deeper whispers: time is a tool, not a tyrant.

A fluid element. A mirror. A portal.

When I began exploring witchcraft and Shamanism seriously and not just in a passing manner, but instead as a psycho-spiritual technology, rooted in physics- quantum mechanics, quantum entanglement, and the string theory, I encountered a strange idea repeated in different forms:

In ritual, time becomes soft.

In dreaming, time is non-linear.

In trauma, time fragments.

In healing, we reweave.

Traditions across many cultures speak of time not as a straight line, but a spiral.

The ancient Celtic people believed in “thin places,” where time folds.

Alchemists worked in kairos, not chronos—sacred time, not clock time.

Shamans and witches speak to ancestors not as memories, but as present spirits.

In modern chaos magick, we are taught to collapse timelines:

To visualize an alternate version of self—healed, whole, radiant—and to act “as if” that self already exists, already guides us.

This isn’t delusion. It’s a manifesting maneuver.

A reconfiguration of reality through belief, intention, and symbolic action.

I began to see my trauma as a place—not a wound, but as a temple.

Broken, yes, but also sacred.

A site of power frozen in time, waiting to be revisited, re-entered, re-written.

And the loops?

They were not failures.

They were portals.

Ritual gave me a language to speak to the parts of myself stuck in time.

I stopped trying to run from the loop, and began stepping into it with intention—like stepping into a circle cast with the elements, salt, and smoke.

Not to be trapped, but to reclaim.

The Turning Point, The Ritual Within

It happened one night when the loop was particularly loud.

I had just woken from a dream where I was both observer and participant, watching myself walk

a familiar hallway—the same one from before. Same photographs on the wall. Same breathless hush. But this time, I wasn’t afraid. I was… curious and determined, as if part of me had become the dream’s cartographer.

That’s when it occurred to me:

I didn’t have to relive the moment. I could re-enter it.

So I did what I always do when language fails me—I built a ritual.

Not elaborate. Just intentional.

A single candle.

Three stones.

An treasured photograph in its frame.

And the most important ingredient: a willingness to listen across time.

I called it a Time Walking.

But in truth, it was a conversation.

Between the me who hurt, the me who survived, and the me who had begun to remember her power.

Eyes closed, breath slowed, I saw myself—smaller, confused, clenched in fear.

And I whispered to her:

“You are not alone anymore.”

The room felt heavier, like the air had thickened with memory.

But there was warmth in it too, like being inside a spell just beginning to work.

I offered her symbols:

A raven feather for protection.

A vial of wolf hair for family.

A tarot card—the Star, reversed and then turned upright.

And I said the words, not out loud, but full of love and intention:

“We survived. Not to suffer—

But to become something more.

And I have come back to bring you home.”

The sensation that followed wasn’t dramatic. No thunder or lightning. No big revelations.

Just… stillness. A soft reset.

After that night, the loop didn’t vanish but it did change shape.

Less of a trap and more of a spiral staircase, and I realized something:

I wasn’t escaping the past.

I was learning to walk beside it—as a guide, not a prisoner.

The Reweaving

Integration doesn’t come with heralding trumpets.

It comes in quiet moments—when the body no longer braces before the memory arrives.

It came to me while making coffee.

A simple morning. Nothing unusual. But I caught myself humming—a tune I hadn’t heard since childhood. And for the first time, it didn’t hurt.

It felt… whole. Like the memory had returned without the pain tethered to it.

That’s when I knew something had shifted.

The loop wasn’t gone, but it had softened.

Like a scar that no longer itched.

Like a story finally told in full.

Where once there was only reaction, now there was choice. Not every time, but enough to notice.

I could now feel the before and after of a trigger—like noticing the breath between lightning and thunder.

That breath is everything.

That breath is where the spell was working.

Magick, in its truest form, is subtle. It's not always fire and incantation.

Sometimes, it’s simply walking through a moment you used to fear and realizing you are not who you were. And not just that—you are now more.

Because the self who walked through the loop and came back?

That self is a time-traveler. A soul-weaver. An alchemist of experience.

Integration is not forgetting; it's reclaiming.

It's seeing the past no longer as a wound, but as a well.

A source of wisdom drawn from the spiral.

The Invitation

If you’re reading this, and you know the loop, the sensation of time folding in on itself, of pain repeating in strange disguises, then know this:

You are not broken.

You are moving through sacred terrain.

The loop is not a prison.

It is a portal.

And yes, it hurts, but in metaphysical terms, that is the moment of initiation, the moment when the old self cracks and the alchemist begins to awaken.

So I offer you a spell. Simple. Symbolic.

But powerful in the way all deep healing rituals are.

Spell for Reweaving Time

What you’ll need:

• A small mirror

• A candle (white or black—your choice)

• A token from your past (photo, object, music, etc.)

• Journal or paper and something to write with.

• A safe, quiet space where you will not be disturbed

*If you work with deities, Hekate is perfect for this working as she sees in many directions at once, including the past, present, and future.

The Spell:

Cast your circle.

*Invoke Hekate her if you feel called to do so.

Light the candle and place the mirror in front of you.

Hold your token and breathe. Deep, slow, steady.

Look into the mirror—not at your face, but into your eyes.

Speak these words, or your own variation:

“I see the self that was.

I hear the self that is.

I call to the self becoming.

Across all time, we are one.

I walk the spiral, not the line.

I choose to remember, and I choose to rewrite.”

Pause. Breathe again. See yourself in all directions—past, future, present—surrounding you like stars in orbit. Stay in this space until you feel that it is done.

Blow out the candle. Thank the mirror. Thank Hekate and bid her farewell is she was called. Open the circle.

You may cry. You may laugh. You may feel nothing at all right now, but something has begun to turn. Workings such as these may not have an immediate effect but know that it goes beyond the surface, across time and that may unfold in ways you are not accustom to.

Take a few moments to write down anything that comes to you in this moment, any impressions or messages you may have received while looking into the mirror. Also, take note of and document any sensations you may have within your body.

This is the magick of non-linear time.

The soul does not travel forward.

It spirals. It echoes. It weaves.

And now, so do you.