Jane Meredith - 25 May

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT

JOURNEY TO THE DARK GODDESS

Five thousand years ago, Inanna, the Queen of Heaven and Earth, dares to journey to meet Ereshkigal, the Queen of the Underworld. Jane Meredith wisely guides us today on this crucial, mysterious and challenging journey (the descent and the ascent) that every one of us must take as part of our initiation into becoming human. The reward is to know our selves and so, to be able to care for others. This is a wise, wonderful and inspiring book. Thank you, Jane.

Diane Wolkstein , Author, Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer

Jane Meredith is a wise, compassionate guide who teaches women to approach their experiences of loss, darkness and death as sacred initiations. Filled with practical advice and rituals Journey to the Dark Goddess shows how, by following in the footsteps of ancient Goddesses, we can emerge radiant and whole from the dark realms of the underworld.

Jalaja Bonheim , Ph.D, author of Aphrodites Daughters: Womens Sexual Stories and the Journey of the Soul

Journey to the Dark Goddess provides a clear and profound psychological map for women journeying into their depths. For some the underworld comes unbidden to us through lifes circumstances, for others it can be an exploration entered into deliberately to seek wisdom and transformation. However we make the descent, Jane Merediths unique mix of therapeutic storytelling, exercises and creative activities facilitate a productive and powerful venture into the realms of the Dark Goddess. I recommend it for anyone wishing to explore their shadow and reclaim their personal power.

Ali Harrison , Transpersonal Psychotherapist

Interesting insights, creative ideas and conscious rituals all designed to help you understand the experiences you might have during a Journey of Descent into the Dark Goddess realm, while you are held there in Her Underworld, and as you Ascend out of the Underworld, returning once again to the surface of your life.

I recommend this book to all who are entering into the Underworld, either consciously by design or by falling into Her world unexpectedly and unaware.

Kathy Jones , Organizer of the Glastonbury Goddess Conference, author of Priestess of Avalon, Priestess of the Goddess

Like others before her, Meredith challenges the reader to face the darkness within themselves and within nature more broadly. That her challenge is so comprehensive makes this a book worth reading.

Emma Restall Orr , Author of Kissing the Hag

Journey to the
Dark Goddess:

How to Return to Your Soul

Journey to the
Dark Goddess:

How to Return to Your Soul

Jane Meredith

Winchester, UK
Washington, USA

First published by Moon Books, 2012
Moon Books is an imprint of John Hunt Publishing Ltd., Laurel House, Station Approach,
Alresford, Hants, SO24 9JH, UK
office1@jhpbooks.net
www.johnhuntpublishing.com
www.moon-books.net

For distributor details and how to order please visit the Ordering section on our website.

Text copyright: Jane Meredith 2011

ISBN: 978 1 84694 677 6

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publishers.

The rights of Jane Meredith as author have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Design: Stuart Davies

Printed in the UK by CPI Antony Rowe

We operate a distinctive and ethical publishing philosophy in all areas of our business, from our global network of authors to production and worldwide distribution.

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to the Dark Goddess,
and her mysteries.
Ereshkigal, Persephone, Hecate, Kali, Morgana,
Black Isis, Lilith

The Dark Goddess is a mysterious and hidden figure. Although each of us is familiar with her roles of wicked witch, the crone, the bad mother, the hag and the winter queen, we dont always remember her other face of compassion, healing and rebirth. This does us a great disservice. It leaves us disconnected from the full range of the feminine divine and estranged from much of our ability to change and grow. In a journey to the Dark Goddess we travel deeply into ourselves, seeking answers to difficulties, strength in a crisis, and healing or change when we have become stuck. Sometimes we make this journey consciously, but all too often we find ourselves on the path without knowing how we got there, what to do or how to get out. Some of us spend years down there, in a shadowy, inner realm known as the Underworld.

Each journey to the Dark Goddess is different, yet the pattern of journeys remains the same. They begin with an awareness, a feeling that something in our lives is not quite right. When this awareness arises we may set off to investigate it. But often we dont. Often we prefer to ignore that awareness, that small voice, that feeling of something awry; and were capable of ignoring it for quite a long time. Eventually it gets too much and all of a sudden we are swamped; collapsing under stress, illness, emotional crisis, overwork or an outright disbelief that this could be our life. Then, as everything falls apart around us, we are forced to begin the search for understanding and change.

When we undertake a journey towards the Dark Goddess much that we have accumulated is stripped away. Sometimes we experience this as having parts of our lives we have relied on taken from us; such as health, relationships, emotional stability and status. We cannot visit the Dark Goddess while still keeping our place in the world; we cannot be in two places at once. This means we have to strip off or more painfully, be stripped of all our guises, props and patterns that are so much a part of our lives we have almost come to think of them as ourselves. In stripping down to the core we find our intrinsic self, or our soul and that is where we meet with the Dark Goddess.

Journeying to the Dark Goddess is filled with paradoxes. For an empowering and inspiring experience it is best to travel towards her willingly; yet we almost never do that. If we want to understand the Dark Goddess and the part she plays in our lives we have to invoke her, invite her in, sit with her. Instead we shun, avoid and cower from her. We experience her as utterly other the scary witch, a faceless dark power, a nightmare as removed from ourselves as possible; yet when we finally meet with her we discover she is a part of us. And not just any part. We find her in the deepest, truest remnant of our souls; always there to remind us when we make the journey of who we are on the inside. One of the paradoxes is that the worst times in our lives times when we felt out of control, in grief, pain and distress can be followed by the emergence of new inspiration and energy, accompanied by determination to live a life of beauty and meaning. This is a rebirth by the Dark Goddess.

Our culture has not taught us how to listen to the Dark Goddess, how to journey towards her or how to integrate her wisdom into our lives. But instructions remain in myths from other times and places. Many women have found support and guidance in the stories of the Goddesses. In Greek myths both Persephone and Psyche journey to the Underworld. In Sumerian mythology Inanna (known as Ishtar in Babylon) is famous for her visit to the Dark Goddess. From these stories we can learn much of the journey to the Underworld, and the return.