In this episode we will be exploring:
Chapter 14: La Selva Subterranea: Initiation in the Underground Forest
Story:
The Handless Maiden
Topics/Themes:
The Fifth Stage- The Harrowing of the soul -
Pregnancy, Birth, New life
The devil changing messages
Cultural traditions the devil has mutilated
Veils: Using a mask to empower rather than muzzle the wild self
“This symbol is about keeping private, keeping to oneself, not giving one’s mysterious nature away. It is about preserving the eros and mysterium of the wild nature”.
The Sixth Stage - Realm of the Wild Woman - The queen staying at the inn for 7 years.
The ages are not meant to be hierarchical, but simply belong to women’s consciousness and to the increase of their soul-lives. Each age represents a change in attitude, a change in tasking, and a change in values.
0-7 age of the body and dreaming/socialization, yet retaining imagination 7-14 age of separating yet weaving together reason and the imaginal
14-21 age of new body/young maidenhood/unfurling yet protecting sensuality 21-28 age of new world/new life/exploring the worlds
28-35 age of the mother/leaming to mother others and self
35-42 age of the seeker/leaming to mother self-seeking the self
42-49 age of early crone/finding the far encampment/giving courage to others 49-56 age of the
underworld/leaming the words and rites
56-63 age of choice/choosing one’s worid’and the work yet to be done
63-70 age of becoming watchwoman/recasting all one has learrned
70-77 age of re-youthanization/more cronedom
77-84 age of the mist beings/finding more big in the small
84-91 age of weaving with the scarlet thread/understanding the weaving of life 91-98 age of the ethereal/less to saying, more to being
98-105 age of pneuma, the breath
105+ age of timelessness
Encouraging you to share your voice
“Share your progress because it’ll either be a stepping stone for others or it’ll be a stone to avoid” - The Art Spirit
The Seventh Stage - The Wild Bride and Bridegroom - The second wedding
“The endurance of soul has been tested and met. A woman goes through this cycle once every seven years…”
“Once we have been through the cycle, we can choose any or all tasks to renew our lives at any time and for any reason. Here are some:
- to leave the old parents of the psyche, descend to the psychic land unknown, while depending on the goodwill of whomever we meet along the way
- to bind the wounds inflicted by the poor bargain we made somewhere in our lives
- to wander psychically hungry and trust nature to feed us
- to find the Wild Mother and her succor
- to make contact with the sheltering animus of the underworld
- to converse with the psychopomp (the magician)
- to behold the ancient orchards (energic forms) of the feminine
- to incubate and give birth to the spiritual childSelf
- to bear being misunderstood, to be severed again and again from love
- to be made sooty, muddy, dirty
- to stay in the realm of the woodspeople for seven years till the child is the age
of reason
- to wait
- to regenerate the inner sight, inner knowing, inner healing of the hands
- to continue onward even though one has lost all, save the spiritual child
- to re-trace and grasp her childhood, girlhood, and womanhood
- to re-form her animus as a wild and native force; to love him; and he, her
- to consummate the wild marriage in the presences of the old Wild Mother and the new child Self”
“The Handless Maiden” is a real-life story about us as real women. It is not about one part of our lives, but about the phases of an entire lifetime. It teaches, in essence, that for women the work is to wander into the forest over and over again. Our psyches and souls are specifically suited to this so that we can traverse the psychic underland, stopping here and here and here, listening to the voice of the old Wild Mother, being fed by the fruits of spirit, and be