Gypsy Witch Discovers Real Magic: The Cuban Sandwich and Biblical Miracle
- Gods Biscuits Official
- Jan 15
- 19 min read
Have you ever stood at the edge of the ocean in the quiet hush before dawn, your bare feet pressed into the cool, wet sand, and felt the salt air fill your lungs like a prayer? In that perfect, silent moment, you realize the peace you’re seeking isn’t in the tide but somewhere deeper. It is a hollow space behind your ribs that even the thunder of the Pacific can’t fill, a silence that echoes louder than the cry of the gulls.
Have you ever truly knelt—not on a church pew softened by velvet, but on the unyielding, honest ground, and whispered your soul into the dirt? Begging for a sign, for meaning, for a voice that doesn’t merely echo back from the lonely confines of your own mind? I have. For years, I believed that beautiful, desperate striving was faith.
I was 37 when my spirit, once as expansive and free as the California sky, began to fray at the edges. Not broken, but unraveling. A single fragile thread had been pulled loose, and the entire tapestry of my life threatened to come apart.
To anyone looking, I was the poster child for the coastal dream. I was the woman you’d see walking a rescued bulldog along Sunset Cliffs at golden hour, a colorful tapestry bag slung over my shoulder. My sun-streaked hair was perpetually tangled by the wind, and my skin always carried the faint, clean scent of salt spray. I smelled of sandalwood, black pepper oils, and clove oils, as if it were part of my DNA.
I belonged to the ocean. I loved it all with a desperate, aching passion—the way the evening light transformed the world into liquid gold, the white sails in the marina like angel wings skimming the water. I adored the jacaranda trees that burst into a riot of soft purple every spring, mirroring the lavender-streaked evening sky. My footprints on the shore were the only temporary signature on a canvas washed clean twice a day.
I looked the part. I spoke the language. I slept on a silver-threaded pillow to drain the day’s negativity. I burned sage. I could discuss vibrational frequencies with the best of them. But here’s the secret they don’t tell you about the California dream: it’s a beautiful, shimmering set on a soundstage. You can live inside the postcard, but you can’t eat the scenery.
And I had to eat. Let me be clear: I was not a bum. I don’t like dirt or chaos. I appreciate the solid weight of good furniture and the feel of high-thread-count cotton. There’s a profound difference between a real gypsy, who possesses deep, inherent dignity, and a hippie who’s simply given up on soap.
My heart and true purpose was my holistic animal clinic on 5th Avenue in San Diego. It was a place of light and healing, filled with the soothing scents of lavender, chamomile, white sage, and the warm, comforting aroma of healthy animals. The walls were adorned with glitter and posters promoting human-grade dog food brands. I served my community, not just their pets, but the people themselves. The anxious woman whose pup had a thyroid condition, for whom I prepared custom raw food and then spent an hour simply listening to her fears. The elderly man who wept when acupuncture restored his ancient, arthritic Labrador’s ability to walk through Balboa Park one more time.
I was poor in money, but rich in purpose. Every relieved smile from a pet owner was a currency that filled my soul.
My unraveling began with a hole in the roof. It sounds trivial, doesn’t it? A leak. But that leak, in the ceiling above my clinic, was the first crack in the foundation of my world. My landlord, a man whose soul was as corroded and blackened as the mold now spreading across my ceiling, refused to fix it. He saw my success as a flaw, a profit center he wasn’t exploiting.
The leak developed into a stain and a bulge on the ceiling. The stain grew into a large patch of toxic black mold. The mold spread throughout the entire facility, creating a problem that would cost more money than I had to fix. Ultimately, it didn’t matter because the landlord refused to repair the roof he was responsible for on his commercial building.
My dream was shattered, not by a lack of passion or skill, but by pure, unadulterated greed. The fight drained both my savings and my spirit. I closed the doors for the last time, the click of the lock echoing through the empty space that had once been so full of life. I packed my tools and a few remaining keepsakes from clients into cardboard boxes and moved them to a storage unit.
The depression that followed was a thick, suffocating fog rolling in off the sea, refusing to lift. The glorious sunsets I had once loved now felt like taunts. The cries of the gulls sounded like laughter. I was adrift, my purpose gone, my compass spinning. The gypsy magic that had always flowed through me darkened, leaving nothing but dust and a hollow, echoing silence behind my ribs. I had whispered my soul into the dirt and was left terrified that the dirt spoke nothing back. I heard only silence.
The first time I saw Barbara’s townhouse in Point Loma, with ivy crawling up its brick façade and hummingbirds darting between blooming jasmine, I knew it was more than shelter. It was a sanctuary. My own little bohemian apartment had vanished along with the last shreds of my stability, leaving me adrift in a city that glittered too brightly for me to see my unraveling. Barbara, a former client from the wellness clinic where I had practiced energy healing, had recognized the storm within me before I had even spoken. With a voice like slow-poured honey, she offered me her daughter’s empty bedroom. “Just until you find your footing.”
She was a Taurus, like me—an Earth sign, supposedly grounded. But where Barbara was an oak—roots deep, branches steady—I was something far less graceful: a tumbleweed, perhaps, or a dandelion seed caught in a crosswind.
Our evenings became a ritual. We would sit on her back patio, cradling glasses of Chardonnay as the sun bled into the Pacific. Hummingbirds waged wars over the feeder, their tiny bodies iridescent in the golden hour. Barbara, a Buddhist who read the Bible every night before bed, would tell me about surrender—not passivity, but the kind of stillness that listens. I envied her peace. I wore it like borrowed perfume, trying to make it mine.
But peace was a language I had not yet learned to speak.
I was starving. Not my body, but my soul. I had once been a painter, a healer, a woman who believed in magic. Now, I was a collection of half-finished projects and unpaid bills. The root chakra, I decided, was my salvation: Muladhara—the foundation, the earth. I wore crimson Bobs I had received from an Ethiopian woman at a farmers' market, ate beets until my tongue stained pink, and pressed my palms to every tree I passed, whispering into their bark like a sinner at confession.
I craved gravity. Something to pull me back into my skin.
And so, I prayed. Not the tidy, church-bench kind. Mine was primal. Every morning, I unrolled a burgundy prayer mat onto the carpeted floor, arranging black obsidian, black onyx, red jasper stones around its edges. I lit palo santo, its smoke coiling like ghost fingers, then pressed my forehead to the fabric—hard—as if I could force my need through the concrete, into the soil, straight to the molten heart of the earth.
Use me. Send me. I’d breathe into the fibers, my spine stretched long, palms open. Show me where I’m needed.
I imagined my prayer as a scarlet lightning bolt, splitting the dark beneath the townhouse, arrowing toward the universe. I was a woman built for motion, but the world had gone quiet. Too quiet.
Point Loma should have been paradise—salt-kissed breezes, the Coronado Bridge strung with sunset light. Instead, it felt like a stage set. Beautiful. Hollow. Even the ocean’s rhythm sounded like a metronome keeping time for a song I’d forgotten.
But then, one ordinary afternoon, after months of pressing my third eye into that mat until the imprint lingered like a brand… she appeared.
And nothing would ever be the same.
Earlier that year, in January, my brother from another mother and I were in his home office—a familiar space that smelled of fur, dog kibble, and unconditional love. We used to partner in rehabilitating rescue animals with severe behavioral issues; he was the steady hand to my intuitive touch. He was my best friend in shenanigans, a man who loved me deeply but viewed my whimsy with a fond, scientific skepticism.
We were crafting our annual “Projection Boards,” a ritual we took with a mix of sincerity and sarcasm. His was pragmatic: “Expand his business” “Increase client roster.” Then, he pointed to one line in the middle of his projection board spread sheet: “Collaborate with Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Utah.” A lofty, but achievable, dream.
My board was a riot of color and impossible things. Pictures of love, stability, of a savannah in Africa. And in the center, a single, powerful word: WATER.
He picked up my board, a slow grin spreading across his face. “Let me get this straight,” he said, his voice laced with that familiar, loving mockery. “You want to… build water wells. In Africa.” He looked at me, at my big yellow eyes and gypsy clothes, then back at the board. “Gypsy, you can’t even afford rent. How, in the name of all that is logical, are you going to build water wells in Africa? Do you have any idea what that costs? Engineering? The years of work?”
I looked at him with my large yellow eyes offering an expression of prophetic knowledge. “You think with money, Philip. I think with magic. I’m a gypsy. I’ll manifest it. I’ll make it happen.” I said it with a bravado I didn’t fully feel, but the dream was too beautiful to be abandoned to practicality. The board was a prayer, a declaration flung into the universe. It was, to any sane person, utterly silly. But my faith was in the silliness, in the magic of intention, not in the stern God of budgets and blueprints.
Months later, in the humid breath of an August afternoon, the dream felt as distant as those African plains. I was in my element, yet utterly separate from it. I was shooting marketing photos for Embargo Cafe on Point Loma Blvd, a vibrant explosion of Cuban soul crammed into a bustling storefront.
The air was thick with the symphony of sizzling plantains, the percussive rhythm of a Latin jazz soundtrack, and the heated, passionate chatter of the two owners—a study in contrasts. One, Miguel, was all quiet passion, his focus a laser beam on the composition of a ropa vieja, his movements fluid and precise. The other, Carlos, was loud, offensive, and obsessed with the perception of success.
The interior was a masterpiece of nostalgic warmth. Walls painted with the bright colors of Old Havana adorned with grainy black-and-white photographs of cigar-rolling tabaqueros, Celia Cruz’s triumphant smile, and the iconic Malecón. The air itself was a flavor, a heady mix of garlic, cumin, slow-roasted pork, and strong, sweet coffee.
But my entire world had narrowed to the subject in my viewfinder: the majestic Cubano sandwich. It was a work of art. The outer crust of the pressed, golden pan con manteca glistened with a buttery, crisp sheen. Through a delicate tear in the bread, I could see the meticulously layered interior: glossy, slow-roasted lechón shredding at the edges, the sharp yellow whiteness of Swiss cheese melting into the crevices, the bright pink rounds of sweet ham, and the precise line of crisp, sour dill pickles cutting through the richness.
I moved through the crowded restaurant with a dancer’s focus, oblivious to the lunchtime roar. I needed the perfect light. I carried the plate outside to the patio, where the California sun was dappled by the leaves of a potted ficus tree. I knelt on the warm concrete, my camera a mere extension of my eye. I adjusted the plate, using a napkin to reflect a sliver of light onto the bread, making it gleam. I was crafting a moment, telling a story of desire and satisfaction where the food was the undisputed star. This was my meditation, my offering to the world: finding and framing beauty.
It was in the periphery of this focused tranquility that I first felt it—a presence, a weight. I lowered my camera slowly.
She was sitting alone at a small table in the corner of the dining room, half in shadow, as if the sunlight itself was hesitant to touch her. A woman who looked to be about my age, but carved from a different, harder element. She was sun-weathered and thick-boned, with a quiet strength that seemed to radiate from her core. Long, straight brown hair, bleached at the ends by a relentless sun, fell around her shoulders. Her face was deeply tanned, burnished to a ruddy, leathery bronze, and peeling slightly across her nose. But it was her eyes that arrested me. They were locked on me, unblinking, unwavering. She wasn’t just looking; she was seeing. Her fork moved slowly, picking without enthusiasm at the black beans and rice on her plate.
The cacophony of the restaurant faded into a dull hum. The air around her table seemed to still and chill, a pocket of profound silence in the midst of the noise. There was an eerie stillness to her, a gravity that felt ancient and out of place. She didn’t belong here, amidst the bright colors and casual laughter. She looked like she had just finished a long, arduous journey and had stumbled into the wrong era. Her gaze was heavy, knowing, and it carried a manifestation that crept up my spine like distant thunder.
A normal person might have looked away, unnerved. But I have always been blessed and cursed with a bold heart. I held her gaze for a long moment, then I walked directly to her table with my camera and a bright orange silk blend sari wrap skirt swishing around my ankles.
“I can’t help but notice you’re staring at me,” I said, my voice calm, direct.
She didn’t flinch. “Yes,” she said, her voice low and raspy, like wind over dry earth. “I’m a photographer, too. I was enjoying watching you work. I saw it—that passion for the detail. The fight to get the light just right. I have it, too.”
The tension in my shoulders eased a fraction. A fellow artist. “You look like you’ve been out in the sun for a very long time,” I said, my bluntness softened by genuine concern. “Is everything okay?”
She let out a short, dry laugh that held no real humor. “Just got off a plane. It was a long journey. The first thing I wanted was food from here.” She gestured to her plate.
“I don’t blame you,” I smiled. “It’s worthy of a pilgrimage. Where were you traveling from?”
She took a slow sip of water, her eyes never leaving mine. “Africa.”
The word landed in the space between us with the weight of a prophecy. It didn’t just enter my ears; it reverberated through my entire being. My breath caught. Africa. The word from my projection board, the image I had poured my energy into for months. The impossible dream. Time seemed to warp, the noise of the restaurant fading into a distant echo. I could almost see the red thread of my intention, stretched taut across the world, connecting my forehead on the living room floor to this woman, this stranger, in this exact moment.
“Africa?” I repeated, the word drawn out, laced with a disbelieving curiosity that was rapidly igniting into something else—something akin to fear, and awe.
“Yes,” she said, and her gaze intensified, as if she could see the cogs turning in my soul. “I have a mission there. I work to save the Maasai tribe in Kenya. We build water wells.”
The world stopped. The sound of clattering plates, of laughing diners, of Carlos’s loud phone call—it all vanished into a profound, deafening silence. I heard nothing but the hammering of my own heart. Water wells. The two words from the center of my board. My deepest desire, spoken back to me by a sun-weathered stranger in a Cuban cafe eight months after I’d cast my spell to the earth. All the months of praying. The red clothes. The root chakra gongs. The energy poured into the dirt.
Did the universe just answer?
The thought was automatic, a relic of my New Age lexicon. But it felt hollow, insufficient for the seismic shift happening in my soul. This wasn’t the vague, impersonal “universe.” This was too specific, too perfectly timed, too… intimate. This felt like an answer to a prayer I’d been too stubborn to address to its rightful recipient.
Without a word, I pulled out the chair opposite her and sat down, my camera forgotten on the table. I was all in.
Her name was June. As she began to speak, her words weren’t a sales pitch; they were a confession, a pouring out of a soul weary from a long, lonely fight. She spoke of villages, of droughts, of mothers walking miles for muddy water that made their children sick. She spoke of the frustration of bureaucracy, the loneliness of being a single voice shouting into a void. I listened, and with every word, I felt a strange, deep knowing. I understood the logistical nightmares not because I had experience, but because my spirit recognized the struggle as my own. As I articulated my words, I understood the passion that fueled her, because it was the same fuel that burned in me.
“I’ve been doing this for nine years,” she said, her voice cracking with a vulnerability she clearly wasn’t accustomed to showing. “Mostly alone. And you… you’re the first person who just gets it. You understand without me having to explain.”
I saw it, a profound relief washing over her features, a peace she hadn’t known she was waiting for. The weight of her solitary mission lightened, just a fraction, because for the first time, someone was there to help bear it. I looked at this strong, weathered, incredible woman, and I saw the living, breathing answer to every confused prayer I’d ever sent into the ether.
I didn’t ask about funding. I didn’t ask about a plan. My gypsy heart, which believed in magic over money, saw the magic standing right in front of me.
I looked at her directly in those brown eyes and said, “When do you want me to start?”
Her shock was palpable. But it was quickly replaced by a radiant, sun-creased smile. “How about tomorrow?”
The next day, I was in her small, minimalist apartment, surrounded by large floor to ceiling windows and a view of the San Diego river as it passed by Sea World. Thus began a project that would become my life’s work for the next 7 years.
It was not a glamorous beginning. For years, we existed on the razor’s edge of failure. We survived on beans and rice, our bank accounts perpetually anemic. We fought for every dollar, every ounce of support, every shred of respect in a world that dismissed two passionate women with an impossible dream.
Our work evolved. We realized that to secure lasting funding and protection for the Maasai, we needed to change more than just their water source; we needed to change their standing in the world. We began creating powerful, evocative art and documentation—photo essays, films, woven narratives that told their story not as one of poverty, but of resilience and rich culture. This art became our weapon. It was this work that earned us a seat, year after year, at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII).
The conference rooms of the UN in New York were a world away from the dusty plains of Kenya or my sun-drenched back patio in San Diego. We sat across from men in impeccably tailored suits, battling governments for recognition and the World Bank for funding. We fought bureaucratic behemoths, making the case that water was a human right. We took on the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), advocating fiercely to change global trademark laws to protect indigenous art, designs, and knowledge from exploitation. We were David against a dozen Goliaths, armed only with the truth, our art, and a conviction that refused to be extinguished.
Through it all, June was my anchor. She was a force of nature, a woman whose smile grew more radiant and whose eyes lit up with an unquenchable fire precisely when a project seemed its most insurmountable. She didn’t see obstacles; she saw challenges that were merely part of the architecture of her eventual victory. And she always, always carried her Bible. It was tattered, its cover beaten up, its pages softened by countless fingers. She read it every morning like it was the air she breathed, her foundation and her compass.
For years, I was certain I had mastered the universe. Under the spectral gaze of the full moon, I traced intention circles in sea salt, whispered affirmations to the wind, and lit sage until my lashes stung. I mapped my chakras like celestial charts, stacked rose quartz by my pillow, and issued commands to the cosmos. Bend, I demanded. And it did. Parking spots materialized. Rent money appeared unexpectedly. I called it manifesting. I called it power. I called it freedom.
But freedom without a foundation is just loneliness cleverly disguised.
I wore feathers like defiant armor, daring the world – and any concept of God – to touch me. Not that God, certainly. Not the stern, bearded judge of my childhood Sunday school, hovering in disapproving clouds. Not the deity of thunder and lightning I glimpsed in half remembered sermons. That God, I believed, had failed me long before I knew Him. He abandoned me. He let me weep into my hands. He sealed those grand church doors against me, a homeless 17 year old, knocking for someone, anyone, to simply hold me.
So I became my own architect of the divine. High priestess of a solitary kingdom. A gypsy, unchained and seemingly wild. I didn’t crave salvation; I demanded control. And I honed it to a sharp edge. So sharp, I mistook the growing hollow within me, like a phantom limb, for independence.
The stark truth arrived later: my spells were not true magic at all. They were faint echoes, pale reflections bouncing off the walls of a world I deluded myself into thinking I ruled. I wasn’t summoning power; I was merely borrowing fragments, like a child playing with her father’s heavy tools in the garage, blissfully unaware he watched from the doorway, his heart fracturing with unspoken love.
And He was watching.
He didn’t wait until my crystals were discarded or my affirmations ceased. He came anyway. Quiet. Relentless. Patient as the ancient tide that shapes the shore.
He found me, of all places, in the ordinary light of Point Loma. In a Cuban restaurant, where June, a woman whose hands were etched with sun and kindness like riverbeds, met my guarded soul with her gaze. Her worn Bible, pages tea stained and marked with faded ink, was always nearby. "Christ is in the dirt," she told me once, her voice as bright as the sun, as we edited photos of Maasai women carrying water barefoot.
I scoffed. Called it a childish myth. Boldly declared only the weak needed saving.
But Barbara, Taurus steady, radiating a calm certainty like deep water, never argued. She simply poured the deep red wine. And prayed. Silently. Not for show. Not to convince. She’d sit swirling her glass on her patio, whispering stoic words so softly they barely stirred the air, yet somehow, I felt them. Like a steadying hand on my back the moment before an unseen fall.
They didn’t preach salvation; they lived a radical belonging. In the quiet constancy of their presence, I glimpsed something unknown: a love utterly unearned. A presence unwavering in the face of my rebellion. A Father who remained steadfast, even as I sprinted headlong in the opposite direction.
For years, I served “God’s children” while building walls against God. I built wells. Fed orphans. Rescued animals. Saved lives – 75,000 lives, they told me. Yet, I still traced frantic circles in salt at 3 AM, as if this fierce love were something to ward off, not embrace. I thought my fiery independence was strength. But strength that refuses to be held is merely fear masquerading as freedom.
Then came that San Diego night.
The Pacific murmured against the shore in its ageless rhythm. Stars, my former sanctuary, blazed low and bright. I’d just finished directing another "prosperity meditation" into the velvet dark, chanting my desires, when a profound stillness descended. Not silence. Presence. An aliveness deep in the air and earth.
And then, a voice in my ears settled like a forgotten truth: “You are so much more than a gypsy witch, my child. You are my daughter. I created you to be exactly who you are.”
The polished quartz I’d been clutching fell from my slack fingers. It landed soundlessly on the damp sand. I didn’t flinch to retrieve it.
Because that voice… ah, that voice… it wasn’t the impersonal thrum of the universe. It wasn’t energy or cosmic law. It was profoundly intimate. It was gentle. It was fatherly. It knew my truest name. It knew my hidden fears. It knew the deep, unspoken ache behind my eyes every single time I saw a father lifting his laughing child onto his shoulders.
And in that instant, the dam built of salt, skepticism, and stubborn pride shattered.
The words of Romans 8:38-39 didn't enter my mind; they washed over me, powerful and cleansing as an ocean wave: “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Not death. Not crippling doubt. Not the 75,000 acts performed “for others, not for You.” Not my meticulously poured salt lines. Not my defiant feathers. Not my towering pride. Not even me.
I had spent my entire life fleeing a ghost I’d manufactured – that harsh, unreachable judge – while the real God, the One who shaped the Maasai, who spun galaxies from nothingness, who breathed life into dust itself, pursued me with the fierce tenderness of a Beloved who refuses abandonment.
I finally understood: the deepest magic isn't about commanding the world. It’s about being known. It’s the impossible well in Kenya that sprung into existence when June said simply, “Let’s build one.” It’s the ageless ocean, rising and falling for millennia, keeping time to a rhythm only its Creator hears. It’s the seismic shift within a stubborn heart whispering yes after a lifetime of screaming no.
I didn't discard my crystals that night. Not immediately. I clung to them, a little longer, to the familiar illusion of my own control. But something new, something irrevocable, had taken root.
And it grew.
Because real magic – true magic – doesn't spring from chants beneath the moon. It unfolds when you kneel on that same shore where you once plotted your control, hands finally open, heart finally vulnerable, embracing the terrifying, liberating truth: you are held.
No more need to be the untamed wanderer, defiant and alone. No more need to prove I didn’t require a Father. Because I have One. One who knew my name before the first star ignited. One who loved me through every incantation, every cynical snarl, every ritual. One whose boundless love isn’t earned with effort or spellwork – it is a gift, received by the open hand.
I still see magic shimmering everywhere. In the violent glory of sunrise breaking over the ocean. In the gentle competence of a nurse's hands. In the resilient laughter of a child who once knew only hunger. But now, I know the Source. The Divine Magician.
And His name isn't “The Universe.” It’s Elohim. Father. My Dad.
The thief doesn't create; he cheaply mimics. But Dad? He is the Creator, the Master Weaver of all wonder. He speaks light into suffocating darkness. He transforms rebellion’s wreckage into redemption’s masterpiece. He takes a gypsy heart, wild and scarred, and whispers, "I crafted you precisely this way – fierce, seeking, restless. So you would never settle for small wonders. So you would journey, searching, until you walked straight into my waiting embrace."
The echo of misunderstanding falls away now. That insistent frustration – being told my inherent spark was demonic, a contradiction of being made in God's image. How could both be true? I prayed over it, wrestling for years. The answer didn't come in thunder, but in the quiet aftermath of that seaside knowing. If the fallen one, Lucifer, lost his stolen glory, stripped bare when he lost Grace... then the magic within me? The deep resonance with creation, the intuition, the sense of the unseen woven into my very bones? It doesn't originate in darkness. It couldn't.
It took time, that final simple, profound piece settling into place. Magic isn't arcane forces stolen by shadow. It was always, gloriously, an acronym shining with revelation: MAGIC. My Awesome God Is Creating.
So breathtakingly simple. A reminder that while we complicate endlessly, Dad delights in clarity, in love made manifest. He is the eternal source of all authentic wonder, all true creation. To deny the magic He seeded in His world is, ironically, to deny a facet of His own radiant glory.
I still carry magic. I have this deep connection to creation. But my path is different now. Less about summoning, more about yielding. Less about my will, more about His whispered wonders unfolding in the dirt, the laughter, the everyday miracles. It’s a New Testament way: love over law, grace over grit, and finally, knowing beyond any doubt that this wild, seeking heart has always, always, had been held by the ultimate Creator of magic Himself. My Father. My Dad. Elohim.
AUTHOR: God's Biscuits Founder
LOCATION: United States
Amen 🙏