Descent, Initiation and The Feminine Path of Community Building

The relationship between women and Earth’s living wisdom has been extensively documented by feminist scholars, anthropologists, and historians. This is not new information.  And yet, it feels, for many women who I know, a unique time to be embodying and living this wisdom as a process of self-initiation. In the book “Journey of Soul Initiation,” Bill Plotkin offers a psycho-spiritual map for the journey toward real human maturity.

To mature, we begin with the reconnection of our soul with the web of life. From there, the initiation process follows an ecological and soul logic. 

First, we descend. This is the most significant element of the journey of soul initiation. A Descent may seem like it follows a linear trajectory but it is far from logical. We are called into the void, into the womb. On an intuitive level, for women in particular, we can sense when it is time to descend into our depths. We can feel the ways in which the external world- in the challenges we may be facing- is a reflection of the internal and that the internal is a reflection of the Soul- not just our own, but the World Soul (Anima Mundi).

Maureen Murdock’s book “The Heroine’s Journey” is a feminine based soul initiation map. By following this map, we are “putting back together the mother-daughter body.” We are daughters of the earth mother and so by trusting the path of soul initiation we are able to heal the separation from the feminine- not just within ourselves, but within the collective.

Each woman’s journey to remember, reclaim and embody earth’s wisdom will be unique to her. She will experience the surrendering of her resistance, control and fear as a sacred communion with the divine through her own rituals and ceremonies. Many of these may be in aloneness and others- when she is experiencing the yearning to reconnect with the feminine- will be with other women who have also walked through soul initiation. I am witnessing how these ceremonies are becoming more and more common. This reveals the development phase we are at within the World Soul. Enough women have descended to meet the Goddess that a transpersonal transmutation is now taking place. 

We are remembering how to build, hold, and lead community. In this episode, I riff on how this transpersonal mythopoetic process is currently playing out in my own life.