Sylvia Brinton Perera

Pioneer study of the need for an inner female authority in a masculine-oriented society. Interprets the journey into the underworld of Inanna-Ishtar, Goddess of Heaven and Earth, to see Ereshkigal, her dark sister. So must modern women descend into the depths of themselves. Rich in insights.

A Way of Initiation for Women

Descent to the Goddess

Laura Mei

The process of initiation in the esoteric and mystical traditions in the West involves exploring different modes of consciousness and rediscovering the experience of unity with nature and the cosmos that is inevitably lost through goal-directed development. Thus necessity — for those destined to it — forces us to go deep to reclaim modes of consciousness that are different from the intellectual, "secondary process" levels the West has so well refined. It forces us to the affect-laden, magic dimension and archaic depths that are embodied, ecstatic, and transformative; these depths are preverbal, often pre-image, capable of taking us over and shaking us to the core. In those depths we are given a sense of the one cosmic power; there we are moved, and taught through the intensity of our affects that there is a living balance process. On those levels the conscious ego is overwhelmed by passion and numinous images. And, though shaken, even destroyed as we knew ourselves, we are recoalesced in a new pattern and spewed back into ordinary life.

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