In every era, you have women that do not wait for permission.
Their wisdom does not come from institutions, but from the invisible, from Spirit, from ancestral breath. In the history of mysticism, too many of these women have been left unnamed. Yet their presence is everywhere: in the tarot decks we read, in the healing circles we hold, in the rituals we reclaim.This is the story of Black Female Mysticism and how five women opened the ways for us, carving portals into the spiritual landscape through resistance, intuition, and divine trust.
Mysticism as Survival, Power, and Legacy
Mysticism, offered Black women something that society refused to give: Voice, power, authority, and space.
While mainstream religion confined them, mysticism allowed them to:
Receive visions without permission
Channel wisdom without education
Build communities without titles
Heal others without medicine
And most importantly: lead from within
Mysticism was never a soft escape. It was a radical act of spiritual autonomy.
1. Sojourner Truth — The Voice That Moved God and Governments
Birthdate: Unknown (1797, est.)
No exact birthdate is confirmed, so her numbers remain a mystery. But her spiritual signature reflects the energy of a Life Path 9, the compassionate warrior, the truth-teller, the soul who walks through suffering to free others.
Born into slavery, Sojourner Truth lived her early life in violence and silence. But her spirit refused to remain bound.
After escaping slavery, she changed her name, not to start over, but to step into her assignment.
“Sojourner” because she was a traveler. “Truth” because that was all she came to deliver.
She said that Spirit spoke to her directly, guiding her to speak, walk, and confront. Her speeches were channeled.
““Ain’t I a woman?” ”
In her most famous words — “Ain’t I a woman?” — she challenged the spiritual and political systems that tried to exclude Black women from the definition of womanhood, of worth, of the sacred.
2. Jarena Lee — The Preacher Who Didn’t Wait to Be Asked
Born: February 11, 1783
Life Path 5 → The Freedom Seeker, Spiritual Pioneer, and Voice of Change. Life Path 5s are here to break boundaries, ignite movement, and bring truth into places where silence once ruled.
Day Number 11 → The Visionary Messenger
A Master Number — those born on the 11th often carry heightened intuition, visionary insight, and a sacred calling to speak what others fear to say.
Her life became a walking sermon. She traveled alone, on foot, across states, delivering messages she had never rehearsed. Jarena Lee knew she was called. She didn’t need a bishop to confirm it.
In a time when women, especially Black women, were barred from the pulpit, Jarena received a direct command from God: Preach.
And so she did. Even after the church told her no. She stood up in the middle of a faltering sermon and finished it with such spiritual force that people wept. The bishop, stunned, granted her rare permission.
She went into trance states, received visions, and documented her experiences in a groundbreaking autobiography.
Jarena showed that spiritual authority can’t be revoked because it was never given by people in the first place.
It was a gift from Spirit, and she treated it as such.
Jarena refused to be silent. She was preaching, traveling, and sharing divine visions despite social, racial, and gender barriers. She didn’t wait for permission. She followed Spirit.
3. Rebecca Cox Jackson — The Mystic Architect of Sacred Sisterhood
Born: February 15, 1795
Life Path 3 → The Creative Communicator and Spiritual Architect
This number carries the gift of expression — not always loud, but always intentional. A builder of sacred structure through writing, rhythm, and inner vision.
Day Number 15 → The Teacher-Guide
A number that blends nurturing energy (1 + 5 = 6) with wisdom and responsibility. These are souls who gently create space for others to heal and grow.
Rebecca’s mysticism was interior, disciplined, and deeply feminine.
Her awakening came during a storm, when she was overtaken by the presence of the Holy Spirit.
After that, her life transformed: she healed without training, wrote without being taught, and began living in spiritual celibacy, believing her body was to be a vessel of divine service.
Disillusioned by patriarchal churches, she found temporary refuge in the Shaker movement, which emphasized equality and ecstatic worship. But even there, racial and gender tensions ran deep. So she built her own community, a circle of Black women who lived, prayed, healed, and dreamed together.
Rebecca created one of the first all-Black Shaker communities in history, not as a rebellion, but as a quiet, holy refusal to live outside her truth.
She reminds us that creating spiritual containers for others to grow in is one of the deepest forms of mystical leadership.
“The Shaker Church, officially known as the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, was a radical Christian movement founded in the 18th century. Known for celibacy, gender equality, communal living, and ecstatic worship, Shakers believed in creating heaven on earth through purity, simplicity, and discipline. For women like Rebecca Cox Jackson, the Shaker path offered a sacred structure for mystical devotion and spiritual leadership outside the bounds of patriarchy.”
Rebecca didn’t speak loudly, but she designed sacred community. Her mysticism was structured, her leadership subtle shaped by vision and daily devotion.
4. Marie Laveau — The Vodou Queen and Spiritual Strategist
Born: September 10, 1801
Life Path 11 → The Spiritual Illuminator, Master Intuitive, and Empowered Channel. 11s are portals. They carry an otherworldly presence, both magnetic and mysterious. Their mission is to awaken others, often through symbolic, energetic, or deeply intuitive work. Day Number 10 → The Independent Leader
People born on the 10th carry natural leadership and confidence. They walk their own path and hold power with quiet authority. It made Marie both commanding and unshakably respected.
If Sojourner was the prophet, Jarena the preacher, and Rebecca the builder — Marie Laveau was the strategist.
through Vodou a powerful, spirit-based tradition rooted in West Africa, shaped by Haitian resistance, and reborn in New Orleans through music, ritual, nature, and ancestral reverence.
In the 1800s, while the Church warned against “black magic,” enslaved and free Black communities were preserving sacred knowledge through Vodou. Marie Laveau stood at the heart of that movement elevating it into public, protective, and political power.
Where Her Power Came From
Marie Laveau was born into a Creole family with deep ties to both African spiritual traditions and Catholic ritual.
Her knowledge of Vodou came from:
Her mother and grandmother, both known healers and midwives
Community elders and Haitian Vodouisants who had carried their traditions through the trauma of slavery
Her own deep spiritual intuition, sharpened through years of listening, praying, and practicing
She didn’t read about magic, she lived it. Her rituals blended African deities (lwa), Christian saints, herbal medicine, ancestor work, and candle magic.
Spiritual Services with Strategic Outcomes
Marie wasn’t just a healer, she was a community protector and power broker.
People came to her for:
Healing illnesses
Legal interventions
Business success
Justice, love, fertility, and protection
She created gris-gris bags (charmed pouches), drew spiritual veves (a sacred symbol or drawing used in Vodou to call in specific spirits), and performed public rituals in Congo Square.
She also gained information and influence through her work as a hairdresser, where wealthy women shared their troubles and often returned later for help.
Love, Secrets, and Control
One of the lesser-known reasons Marie gained so much power? She helped women take it back.
When husbands cheated or lovers betrayed, upper-class women turned to her in desperation. Marie offered:
Spells to bring men home
Charms to keep other women away
Baths and blessings to restore confidence and energy
And in return, Marie gained something deeper than money:
Loyalty. Access. Protection. Power.
She created a quiet network of influence that extended from the streets to the courtrooms, all while using that leverage to safeguard her people.
The Legacy of a Vodou Queen
Even now, her name is spoken in whispers, prayers, and candlelight. Because her power didn’t end with her, it activated something that still moves through the bones of every woman who dares to protect, command, and conjure.
5. Pamela Colman Smith — The seer Behind the Tarot
Born: February 16, 1878
Life Path 6 → The Sacred Artist, Healer of the Heart, and Guardian of Beauty
The 6 is here to serve through love, harmony, and beauty. These are the caretakers of emotion, the protectors of what’s tender and true. For Pamela, this came through visual healing, she gave emotion a symbolic language.
Day Number 16 → The Spiritual Watcher
16s are introspective and attuned to the hidden. People born on the 16th often experience deep inner awakenings and carry wisdom gained through solitude or subtle observation.
Pamela Colman Smith was the seer who translated the unseen into image, color, and symbolic language. Her gift moved quietly, through creative channels, through sacred detail, through intuition. Her work became the foundation for modern tarot.
the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
Pamela, often called “Pixie,” was born in 1878 to a Jamaican-Creole mother and a white American father. She spent her early life between Jamaica, New York, and London, absorbing folklore, rhythm, and story across cultures. She was raised within the spiritual and artistic circles of her time, later joining the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a group devoted to esoteric studies and ceremonial magic.
In 1909, occult scholar A.E. Waite commissioned her to illustrate a new tarot deck.
The Sacred Process
Pamela had a rare form of perception known as synesthesia, an ability to see images while listening to music or spoken word. She described her creative flow as scenes appearing in her mind.
When she began drawing the tarot cards, she created not just pictures, but living archetypes. She filled the Minor Arcana with full visual scenes for the first time in tarot history — allowing readers to interpret meaning through posture, color, gesture, and surrounding elements.
Ridder Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Her illustrations drew from Christian mysticism, folklore, theater, Kabbalah, and symbolism in ways that felt timeless.
In just a few months, she created 78 cards that continue to guide spiritual seekers, artists, and mystics around the world.
Her Name Was Left Behind, But Her Work Stayed
Although her art brought tarot to life, Pamela’s name was not included in the original publication. For decades, the deck was known only as the Rider-Waite Tarot — named after the publisher and the scholar who directed the project.
Pamela was a woman, an artist of color, and financially unstable, all factors that contributed to her being overlooked in her own time.
She died in near poverty in 1951 and was buried in an unmarked grave.
Yet her cards never disappeared.
Her images continued to speak — across cultures, generations, and spiritual traditions.
Today, the deck is rightfully known as the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot, honoring the woman who channeled its vision.
A Mystic in Image and Gesture
Pamela Colman Smith carried a form of mysticism rooted in symbol, storytelling, and spiritual art.
She may not have led public ceremonies or founded religious communities, but she left behind a complete visual language for personal transformation.
Pamela shows us that spiritual authority also lives in creativity. She reminds us that vision, when anchored in Spirit, becomes medicine.
Her tarot cards still guide people through heartbreak, transition, and transformation with striking warmth and humanity.
What This Research Taught Me
Their lives may have looked different, a preacher, a healer, a builder, an artist but each woman followed the blueprint written into her soul.
So follow your intuition, is the message, even when no one else sees it. Messages do not come to you by accident. What you feel, what you see, is not random. You were chosen to receive it, to carry it, and to pass it on.
Final Thought
Black female mysticism is not a chapter in history. It lives within all of us. When we reclaim our power, our voices and our visions. We’re continuing a legacy that was always meant to rise.
Love, mara