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A Samhain Tale: Hecate & the Crossroads of Choice
Posted on:  Oct 27, 2018 @ 12:04 Posted in:  Sabbats
Excerpt from The Path of She Book of Sabbats.
At Samhain, when the veil between the worlds is thin and the mysteries of the sacred dark permeate the mundane world, Hecate calls to us. Never before has Her voice been so loud, so urgent. She speaks to us not only in our dreams and ritual magic, but also in the stark language of wildly erratic weather patterns, dying oceans and barren lands, and in the cold despair and hungry hopes of our own warm, beating heart.
It`s not easy to heed Her call. She raises our own spectral fears about the fate of our human society and planet home. Environmentally, socially, politically and spiritually, we are destroying the fabric of our physical and social world. We have reached a critical tipping point, and if we continue on this trajectory, things are not going to end well.

But how do we change? How do we shift from denial, apathy and despair into a place of hope and inspiration? How do we turn this destructive momentum into an evolutionary, birthing moment? And what is our personal part in weaving a better world into being?
Take a deep breath, summon up your courage and say, “Yes, Hecate, I am coming. Guide me to your crossroads.”
In the world between the worlds, where the mysteries lie in wait, you will find Hecate. She appears before you in Her Crone form, with a thick mane of moonlight silver hair and intense, amethyst eyes that shine bright with Her ageless presence. She wears a cloak of midnight black that shimmers as She moves, as if brushed with starlight. An aura of light surrounds Her, a way-showing beacon in the enveloping darkness to guide travelers to Her crossroads. Her arms open wide to welcome you, casting a circle of illumination that draws you into its center.
With a sweep of Her hands, two roads appear before you.
To the left is a neglected path, overgrown with the luscious fecundity of the wild realm. Memories arise within you of the feral innocence of childhood with its simple pleasures of play and wonder in your dance with the outer world. And beneath this, older, ancestral memories percolate, of a time when humanity lived in loving, sensual communion with the powers and mysteries of the Mother Earth.
To the right is a paved-over surface that obscures any trace of the living land under an unforgiving, tar black sheen. This path exudes a deadness that lays bare the tear in our human psyche from the natural world and our true, beautiful essence, and echoes with the keening pain of our battered souls and broken hearts.
“One path holds the good dream of humanity where you walk the Earth in accordance with my life-centered ways and your best nature of love, generosity and communion with others. The second path holds the bad dream where your worst instincts of dominion, fear and greed lay barren the wild realm and the heart of your human society. It is this second path, reeking devastation on the living world, that rules humankind.
“Both of these paths exist inside of you and in your greater society. Humanity is neither good nor bad, but some complex weaving that includes the best and worst of your nature.”
With another sweep of Her hands, the two paths merge into one.
“This is my middle path,” Hecate says,” it holds the opposing paths of the good and bad dream of humanity. A mirror path exists inside of you that contains the joy and sorrow, and beauty and wounding of your life story.
“To transform yourself and your world, you must walk this middle path. To travel its ways is to accept and take responsibility for all that you are and all that you have experienced, and from this greater awareness choose whether the good or bad dream of humanity will hold sway in the core of your being. You must choose whether love or fear will rule you.
“This love is my way, the way of the sacred feminine, that is awakening within you and leading you home to your Deep Self and a better world.”
As Hecate speaks, the light that emanates from Her being shines brighter and brighter. This wondrous luminosity is the very love that She speaks of, offering a beacon of guidance and hope in these turbulent, Great Turning times. Hecate, the sacred feminine, all life on this stunning Earth, your life, are woven of this love.
Hecate turns to you, taking your hands and squeezing them tight.
She folds Her arms inward, drawing Her brilliant light back into Her body until She is gone, and you find yourself alone under a star-studded sky. Your hands still tingle from Her touch and the responsibility She has bequeathed to you shines strong and bright within you.
After the crossroads vision is done, the real magic begins. With your every thought, every word, every action, you choose which path your lives serves, and the kind of a world you want to create. Never have the stakes been higher; life as we know it hangs in the balance. To change this world, you must start with yourself.
Honor the Mysteries of Samhain
with the Path of She Book of Sabbats.
Photo Credit: Neven Krcmarek on Unsplash
Fall Teaching: Reclaiming the Goddess Mysteries of the Hera Path
Posted on:  Sep 16, 2018 @ 22:09 Posted in:  Sabbats
Excerpt from The Four Seasons of the Hera Path. Click here for your copy: FREE E-Book
Change is in the air. For millennia, humanity has rejected the ways of the Goddess and the mysteries of the sacred dark. We’ve lived a half-life, cut off from our deep roots in the Divine Feminine, the primal powers of Nature, and the profound beauty and magic of our body, shining soul and authentic Self.

Yet the season of humanity is turning, and a great awakening is upon us. The Goddess reaches for us, as we reach for Her. It’s time to reclaim Her hera path, and retell this sacred, transformative tale for these modern times. Here we’ll find the very things we need to guide our spiritual journey and quest for self-discovery, personal growth and spiritual evolution that can truly mend our soul and make our life, and our world, anew.
The Goddess and Her hera path are foreign to our contemporary sensibilities. The original Goddess hera tales have been mostly lost to us. What remains are fragments of myths, like those of Persephone and Inanna, whose deeper meanings and transformative teachings have been relegated to the fringe of our human society and psyche.
In its basic structure, the hero’s journey is a quest where outer trials and treasures fuel our spiritual adventures and personal growth: the hero begins in the everyday world, where he is given a quest or call to adventure; he sets out on a journey where he faces greats trials, usually with the help of an ally; he fights his biggest battle, and through his victory he achieves his quest and claims his treasure; and then he returns to the ordinary world as a reborn or changed man.
If this storyline sounds familiar, it’s because we’ve been telling this hero-journey tale for thousands of years. Joseph Campbell found this story structure in important, surviving myths from around the world, including those of Buddha, Mohammad, Jesus and Moses. Frodo, Luke Skywalker and Harry Potter are contemporary examples of our continued reliance on the hero’s journey to tell big stories of spiritual adventure and personal growth.
In its basic structure, the hera path has four phases: the Goddess descends into the Underworld realm of the sacred dark, leaving behind Her known world as She begins a new cycle on Her journey of self-discovery and spiritual evolution; She travels the ways of this realm, suffering its trials and embracing its mysteries of death and rebirth: She dies to Her old Self, and is reborn anew; She returns to the sunlit realm of light and life, transformed by Her travels into Her full maturity and powers: Queen and Goddess of the realms below and above, who bridges the primal powers of darkness, death, light and life; She walks the sunlit realm, at one with Her Goddess power and presence, leaving a trail of blossoming life in Her path.
To reclaim the hera path is to embrace a Goddess-based conception of personal growth and spiritual evolution. You’re not trying to reach a rarified state of enlightenment that’s often associated with spiritual evolution, nor are you trying to emulate the qualities of someone or something outside of your Self. Instead, your journey of soul is about becoming a more evolved, whole, powerful version of your Self. You show up to your life and spiritual pathwork with wisdom, love and self-acceptance, knowing that darkness, death, trials and suffering are inevitable parts of human existence and your life story, and the very things that drive your spiritual growth and evolution.
The hera path has always held these transformative mysteries of the Goddess on our behalf. Persephone has been making Her journey of descent and return from the Underworld over and over again in the mythic realm, waiting for the time when we would once again seek Her guidance and wisdom on our journey of self-discovery and spiritual evolution. Her story, along with the more ancient tale of Inanna, are as potent and relevant now as they were in the distant days when they were first spoken, and maybe even more so given how long we’ve strayed from the life-giving, soul-nourishing ways of the Goddess, and how lost we’ve been from the deep roots and mysteries of our own Self and soul.
What is lost can be refound and reclaimed. As the seasons turn to Fall, Persephone waits for you at the edge of the known world, where the everyday gives way to the deeper Mysteries that underlie human reality. Her hand is extended, reaching to you with an open invitation to join Her at this edge place where the ancient hera path of the Goddess begins.
Click here for your free copy of Four Seasons of the Hera Path: FREE E-Book
Photo Credit: luizclas from Pexels
The Goddess and the #Metoo Movement: Mythic Tales for these Modern Times
Posted on:  Apr 20, 2018 @ 20:17 Posted in:  Goddess
The Rape of PersephoneFrom the long ago of Greek civilization, comes the #metoo tale of The Rape of Persephone.

Demeter’s trim-ankled daughter whom Hades rapt away, given to him by all-seeing Zeus. Apart from Demeter, lady of the golden sword and glorious fruits, she was playing with the deep-bosomed daughters of Okeanos and gathering flowers over a soft meadow, roses and crocuses and beautiful violets, irises also and hyacinths and the narcissus, which Gaia made to grow at the will of Zeus and to be a snare for the bloom-like girl–a marvelous, radiant flower. And the girl was amazed and reached out with both hands to take the lovely toy: but the wide-pathed earth yawned there in the plain of Nysa, and the lord, Hades, with his immortal horses sprang out upon her. He caught her up reluctant on his golden car and bore her away lamenting. (Source: Homeric Hymn 2 to Demeter (abridged) (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C7th or 6th B.C.); http://www.theoi.com/Khthonios/HaidesPersephone1.html)
Let this piece of Persephone’s story sink in. Persephone is a Goddess. Her Mother Demeter is a Goddess. These are big, powerful, feminine beings that bring life, abundance and beauty to the Earth. Yet the God Hades, with the help of the almighty Zeus, can do want He wants to Persephone.
Hades desires Persephone so He abducts and rapes Her, and makes Her his bride. Persephone is taken against Her will, and Demeter can’t protect Her beloved daughter. Later in the tale, Persephone is returned to Demeter, but the damage has been done. She’s eaten the fruit of the Underworld, and is forced to be with Hades, Her abductor and abuser, part of every year.
Our #metoo stories are this old, and older still. We modern women are the latest manifestation of the suffering of our mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers, and the long, long female line that went before us. And the Goddess stands with us in our suffering, and our awakening.
Persephone’s story is our story. We didn’t write or choose this story. It was written by men in power with the intention of usurping and subduing the sovereignty and powers of the Goddess, and we, Her earth-bound daughters. The purpose of this story was, and still is, to make us forget and fear our vast, mysterious feminine nature, and to make divine and normal our powerlessness in a male-defined reality.
Dial back another 3000 years to ancient Sumeria and the tale of The Descent of Inanna:
From the Great Above She opened Her ear to the Great Below.
From the Great Above the Goddess opened Her ear to the Great Below.
From the Great Above Inanna opened Her ear to the Great Below.
My Lady abandoned Heaven and Earth to descend to the Underworld.
Inanna abandoned Heaven and Earth to descend to the Underworld.
When Inanna arrived at the outer gates of the Underworld, She knocked loudly.
She cried out in a fierce voice: ‘Open the door, gatekeeper! Open the door, Neti!
I alone would enter!’
Neti, the chief gate keeper of the kur, asked: ‘Who are you?’
She answered: ‘I am Inanna, Queen of Heaven, on my way to the East.’
Neti said: ‘If you are truly Inanna, Queen of Heaven, on your way to the East,
why has your heart led you on the road from which no traveler returns?’
Inanna answered: ‘Because of my older sister Ereshkigal, Her husband, Gugalanna,
the Bull of Heaven, has died. I have come to witness the funeral rites.’
(Source: Wolkstein, Diane; Kramer, Samuel Noah (1983), Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer)
Let this fragment of Inanna’s story sink in. Inanna is the Queen of Heaven and Earth. Ereshkigal is the Goddess of the Underworld. This is a story and reality where Goddesses, not Gods, reign in the Great Above and Great Below, and hold between them the primal mysteries of life, death and rebirth.
Later in the tale, we discover that Inanna, like Persephone, suffers the trials of the Underworld. But She does so by Her own choice and great courage. Through Her descent, She submits to the transformative mysteries of the Dark Goddess Ereshkigal. She is stripped bare, and dies to Her old self in order to be reborn into Her full powers and beauty. When She emerges from Her journey in the Great Below, Inanna is whole, holy in the full spectrum of Her Goddess powers and wisdom – Queen of Heaven, Earth and the Great Below.
The Great Below isn’t the realm of Hades and male power. The dark isn’t a place of rape, violence and domination. These are lies and distortions that block us from the wild, raw depths of our women’s power and mysteries, and from the very things that can mend our lives and our world: our pain, grief and rage, and our truth, beauty and sovereignty. And, like Inanna before us, when we emerge from this journey, we can become whole, holy in the full spectrum of our feminine powers and wisdom, transforming not only our personal lives but also our shared society.
Our Modern #MeToo TalesSomething profound and essential is shifting in the foundations of our world as we witness others tell their long-hidden, #metoo stories, and tell our own stories in turn. We may not have words to capture this shift. Yet it’s there – blazing through the eyes and voices of women aligned with the #metoo movement – stirring up the secret, restless places inside of us.
We’re speaking truth, and being heard. We’re saying: you’re time is up, and holding male perpetrators accountable. We’ve woken up, en masse, and we’re not going back to sleep. And we’re not alone.
Persephone’s story is our story. Together we share a #metoo legacy of sexual violation and descent into a hell of male dominion that speaks to the everyday reality of sexism, misogyny and violence that’s endemic to our society.
Inanna’s story is our story. Together we share a heritage of the feminine mysteries of life, death and rebirth, and their pathway of descent into the Underworld as a journey of transformation into our full beauty and powers.
We’re in this together — Persephone, Inanna, you, me and the countless others braving their #metoo tales. Our lives, truth and stories matter. Safety, respect and honoring our feminine nature are our birthrights. It’s time for a new myth and collective reality, guided by the tales of Persephone and Inanna, and yet fresh and inspired by our personal stories and lived experiences.
Hades, Zeus, the male ancestors who wrote these mythic tales, and the men who continue to abuse and dominate women: their time is up. Whatever comes next will be of our writing and choosing, in service of our greater womanhood and sovereignty, and beauty, love and justice for all.
Image Credit: Rupert Bunny, Rape of Persephone, via Wikimedia Commons
Spring Journey: Your Spiritual Evolution
Posted on:  Mar 19, 2018 @ 16:32 Posted in:  Sabbats
In Spring, Nature and the Goddess share their mysteries of spiritual evolution where new beginnings emerge from a complex, potent wholeness woven of the opposing energies of light, life, darkness and death.
The Spring Journey: Your Spiritual Evolution guides you in these mysteries where soulful, new beginnings emerge when you welcome your whole Self to the light of your spring pathwork, engaging the light and shadow of your life story that are the makings of your personal growth at this time.

On your Spring Journey, you will:
- Align your spiritual path with the seasonal powers of Nature and the Goddess.
- Explore the spring season teachings of balance, wholeness, equanimity and spiritual evolution.
- Reunite with the Goddess’s ways of love, light and new beginnings.
- Step past your old stories into a deeper level of spiritual maturity, power and self-love.
- Discover the seeds of transformative change and personal growth that are emerging for you.
- Design an action plan to plant and tend this new growth in your life.
- Cultivate the essential qualities and skills of living your spiritual evolution.
Your Spring Journey includes:
Spring Journey Guidebook (pdf ebook): Seven lessons, each with an integrated wisdom teaching, awareness practice and journaling task to help you explore and experience the teaching, and apply it to your spiritual pathwork and everyday life.
Spring Journey Journal (pdf ebook): For each lesson, there are journaling prompts and questions to deepen your self-awareness and exploration of the Spring Journey teachings.
Spring Journey Guided Meditation (audio mp3): A 26 minute meditation that connects you with the potent energies of the spring season as you travel to the sunlit realm of the Mother Goddess in search of the parts of your Self and life story that are the makings of your springtime new beginnings and personal growth.
The cost of this integrated Spring Journey package is $16.99.
Spring Journey: Your Spiritual Evolution
Embrace the Goddess’s mysteries that guide your spiritual evolution.
Give yourself the springtime gift of new beginnings.
Your Spring Journey awaits you!
Photo Credit: Matthew Henry on Unsplash
Spring Journey: The Goddess, Nature and Your Spiritual Evolution
Posted on:  Mar 18, 2018 @ 22:39 Posted in:  Sabbats
Spring heralds the return of the seasons of light, a threshold time when Nature reaches its green arms upward from the dark, death-like places in the belly of the Earth to embrace the strengthening sun. The Spring Equinox marks a moment of equal night and day, before the resurgence of the powers of light.

The natural realm delights us with the miracle of tender, new beginnings as life returns to the sleepy, barren landscape. From the tight buds that unfurl into purple crocuses, pink blossoms and the chartreuse canopy of trees — to the nighttime croaking of mating frogs, the quick flash of hummingbirds and the noisy honks of returning geese — it’s as if Mother Nature has turned back on the fresh, bright colors, sounds and smells of the living world outside our doorstep.
Less apparent in this wondrous springtime display are the death from which this new life arises, and the continuing presence of darkness alongside the resurgence of light. Green-growing things bridge and balance these elemental forces, extending both downward into the dark, composting soil, made rich by decay and death, and upward to the enervating potency of daylight, and the restful influence of the dark of night.
You’re part of the living world. The quickening pulse of Spring tugs on your body and soul, inciting you to cultivate new growth that takes your life in a fresh, positive direction. This new growth emerges from your inner darkness — made rich by the lost and forgotten parts of your life story and dormant potential that reach upward to take their place in the sunlit world of your conscious engagement and everyday existence.
Like Nature, something deep inside of you seeks a new balance and wholeness —woven of the light and shadow, beauty and wounding, and other vital, opposing parts of your inner darkness and life experiences — that give rise to your springtime rebirth and new growth. And like Nature, you need to cultivate equanimity to achieve this potent state of balance and wholeness in the face of these challenging, divergent aspects of your Self and life story.
This kind of soul-sourced, transformative change doesn’t come easy. It calls you to step past the death-like stagnation and stuckness of your old story and patterns, and step into the soulful, new beginning and personal growth that are ready to root and blossom in your life at this time.
In this profound spiritual pathwork, you’re following the hera’s path that illuminates the Goddess’s mysteries of spiritual evolution as a journey of descent and return from the Underworld. The hera’s path comes to us through ancient Goddess myths, the best known being the Greek, Mother-Daughter tale of Demeter and Persephone. It’s Demeter’s and Persephone’s evolutionary teachings that guide your Spring Journey pathwork.
In Spring, Persephone returns from Her Underworld travels in the realm of darkness and death. Demeter waits for Persephone at the threshold place where the Underworld opens into the sunlit realm, welcoming Her beloved daughter back to Her powers of light and life. Persephone has been transformed by Her travels and trials in the Underworld. She emerges as a Goddess reborn into a more mature, evolved version of Her Self: Queen of the Underworld and Goddess of Spring Growth, with a wholeness and bigness of being that is wise, loving and powerful enough to bridge and balance the immense, opposing energies of the death-centered Underworld and the life-centered realm of Her Mother Demeter.
Persephone shows you what spiritual evolution looks like from a Goddess perspective. You’re not trying to achieve some rarified, perfected state of being, or to emulate someone or something outside of your Self. Instead, like Persephone, your journey of soul can help you become a more evolved, mature version of your Self, with a wholeness and bigness of being that can bridge and balance the potent, opposing energies of darkness, death and wounding, and light, life and beauty within you and your life story.
With Demeter, Persephone and Nature as your inspirations and guides, here begins a new season of light on your journey of soul that can embrace your life story, in all its complexities and polarities, as you seek the equanimity, wholeness and bigness of being that are the markers of your personal growth and spiritual evolution.
Open to Nature’s living equanimity of balance and wholeness. Embrace the evolutionary teachings of the Mother-Daughter Goddesses, Demeter and Persephone. Become big, wise, loving and powerful enough to bridge and balance the complexities and polarities of your Self and life story. Be ready to step past your old story and cultivate a soulful, new beginning as you start your Spring Journey.
Further explore these transformative teachings through the Spring Journey: Your Spiritual Evolution. The Spring Journey guides you through seven, integrated lessons that take you into the depths of your springtime personal growth and spiritual evolution. Each lesson is complimented with an awareness practice and journaling task to help you experience the teaching for yourself, and apply it to your journey of soul and everyday life.
Your Spring Journey includes: two pdf ebooks: the Spring Journey Guidebook and Spring Journey Journal, and the Spring Journey Guided Meditation (mp3 audio). The cost of this integrated Spring Journey package is $16.99.
Spring Journey – Your Spiritual Evolution: Embracing Your Life Story
Seek Out New Beginnings ~ Embrace Your Wholeness
~ Evolve Into Your Deep, Beautiful Self
Your Spring Journey awaits you!




