Shamanism – Feminism and Religion

Moving through the Midlife Threshold

Goddess Qi Gong as a New Compass

There is a deep and insidious taboo around ageing that leaves so many of our experiences as women unspoken, as if the physical, emotional, hormonal and mental shifts of growing older should be suffered alone and hidden behind doors.

What if we can turn midlife into a positive initiation that we share together? Would it be possible to learn to read our body and psyche differently? Might practising conscious movement literally help us move through this phase? And what would happen if we re-orient ourselves towards the many faces of the Goddess?

A Taoist View of Intention (Yi)

Choosing How We Show Up with The Inner Compass of Mind, Eye and Heart

What does it mean, to set an intention? In this piece, I explore the Taoist concept of Yi, the integration of mind, eye and heart as a practice of coming into alignment with life.

This essay invites a nuanced relationship with intention, away from the modern hype around manifestation, and instead rooted in choice, care and conscious participation in life.

Klara Kulikova, Unsplash

A common concern around the word ‘intention’, especially in spiritual or self-help contexts, is its suggestion that thinking the right thoughts or holding the right mindset, will miraculously give you what you want.*) When it doesn’t, the implied message is that you somehow fell short: you weren’t positive enough, not aligned, or evolved enough for it to work. In short, the burden of failing is placed on you, without recognising the complexity of life. Rest assured, that’s not the kind of intention I’m writing about here.

Time Travel with Your Moving Body as Antenna by Eline Kieft

Explore how your body is always positioned in time and space, connected to the world around you, and even to the times that came before and the ones still to unfold. Use movement as a way to travel through time…

I’m passionate about movement as a way of knowing, and how we can calibrate our body* to perceive information from our interior world, and from the living, breathing world around us. Read how movement can become a conscious act of locating yourself in various conditions and unfolding layers of being.

Eline Kieft, 2025 by Andy Murray.

Healing Soul Loss Through Movement

We tend to imagine soul loss as something rare and dramatic, or reserved for those with deep trauma. But in shamanic paradigms across cultures, soul loss is a normal part of being human. The concept refers to moments when a vital piece of our essence disconnects, often as a survival mechanism. In psychology this is called dissociation. This can happen through shock, illness, relational rupture or subtle decisions we make to fit in, stay safe or succeed. A piece of us leaves in order to preserve the rest.

[Image credits: Detail from Anderson Debernardi’s painting “Iniciacion Shamanica”, seen at Exhibition Visions Chamaniques. Arts de l’Ayahuasca en Amazonie Péruvienne, ‎⁨Musée du Quai Branly, 2024. Photo by Eline Kieft.]

Desperately Seeking Persephone by Janet Rudolph, Book Review by Carolyn Lee Boyd, Part Two

In Part One of this review (posted yesterday), we learned how Janet descended into the Underworld, like Inanna and Persephone, after child abuse and rape, and how she began a decades-long journey back to our own world, healed and empowered. To learn more about her return from the Underworld and how she became the shaman and author she is today, I invite you to join the journey in Part Two as we continue to explore “Signposts” that marked her ascent.

Signpost #3. Be aware, be free, be focused, be here, be loved, be strong, be healed.

Janet’s teachers at the Mystery School had brought together shamanic traditions from throughout then world. Among them was Huna, or Hawaiian Adventure Shamanism as practiced by Serge Kahili King. A summary of Huna is shown in a mantra: Be aware, be free, be focused, be here, be loved, be strong, be healed (114) and “focus on the gifts that come to us through adversity” (116).

Desperately Seeking Persephone by Janet Rudolph, Book Review by Carolyn Lee Boyd, Part One

The myths of the descents of the Sumerian Inanna and the Greek Persephone to the underworld have fascinated and inspired women for millennia with their violence and betrayal, leaving behind all you love and that hold you up, and facing your deepest fears, even death. We recognize our own traumas in their struggles and seek guidance as to how to navigate our ascents back to wholeness and well being in their stories.

After her own experience of childhood abuse and stranger rape as a young woman, Janet Rudolph, one of FAR’s co-weavers, also pored over the myths in hopes of finding a helpful account of their journey home. “Once I had tumbled metaphorically, literally and mythically into the thorny quagmire of the underworld, it was devilishly hard to escape. I felt lost. I needed a guide, a role model to find my path outward”(xii). The problem is, Janet says, “The stories of their return are glossed over. There is no detailed story called From the Great Below Back to the Great Above” (15). Until now in Janet’s recently re-published book, Desperately Seeking Persephone.

I Am Kaleidoscope by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

Art work designed by Jaysen Waller – http://www.jaysenwaller.com/

FAR was founded in June 2011 by four women, Xochitl Alvizo, Cynthia Garrity-Bond, Caroline Kline, and Gina Messina. They are and have been revolutionary thinkers in the world of feminism. Below is a portion of what they write on our “About” page

“There is no single definition of feminism and this is a place of many voices. Important work in women’s studies in religion continues as more attention is paid to the intersection between gender, race, culture, and sexual identity, within feminism and religion.” They go on to say: “We establish this blog in the hope that feminist scholars of religion — and all who are interested in these issues — will use this forum to share their ideas, insights, and experiences, so that this community of thinkers will be nurtured as we explore diverse and new directions.”

Emerging from the Underworld: a book review by Eline Kieft

Desperately Seeking Persephone: A Shamanic Journey Through the Underworld by Janet Rudolph weaves together a healing journey from abuse and rape, a deep personal connection with the goddesses Inanna and Persephone, and the ups and downs of a long-term shamanic apprenticeship. These strands could have easily filled three separate books, but Janet masterfully crafts an integrated tapestry of personal and mythical strands. She integrates everyday life experiences, liminal space and the archetypal realms until something new emerges that is more than personal story, more than myth, and more than a description of discovering a shamanic path.

Untangling the Triad of Life Force, Spirit and Soul by Eline Kieft

*Calling Home at the Sealskin Soulskin Workshop 2018. Image Credit Justyna Skowronek*

Most cultures recognize an animating ‘life force energy’, such as chi, qi, ki, kundalini, n/um, ruach, prana and mana. Life force is very closely related to ‘soul’, and often indicates vitality, original nature, instinct, intuition or inner compass. Another term is ‘spirit’, and I must say, it confused me for a long time how they are related, and how they are different. In this article I explain how I understand the nuances between these terms.

Shamanic paradigms consider ‘spirit’ as the animating life force both in our bodies and in the animist world around us. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, this concept is called ‘Qi’, or life force energy. This can be affected by ongoing stress or other health concerns that sap our vitality, but while we live it’s always there.

‘Soul’, in shamanic views, refers to an original essence that makes us who we are. This metaphysical part of us is in direct relationship with the sublime. The soul “continues beyond death and into eternity and into infinity. We could literally say that our soul has a body, much more than saying that our body has a soul” (Villoldo, 2018). This soul essence can be damaged: parts of it can ‘leave’ following traumatic events.

Interdependence Day by Mama Donna Henes

I was recently invited to address a gathering of resident chaplains in the pastoral care department of a major urban medical center. Specifically, they asked me to present the shamanic point of view of team building with an emphasis on creating alliances and community.

There is no such thing! From a shamanic point of view (as well as quantum scientific thought) separation is a false concept. It is redundant to think of reaching out to build teams, alliances, and communities, since we are already all connected, allied, joined together as one. The fact is there is no such thing as opposing sides.There is only one side: just us folks, all of us everywhere, trying to live life as best we can, much more alike than different. There is no us and them. There is only us. We — all of us who occupy this planet: organic and inorganic; living and not; past, present, and future —are the world. Continue reading “Interdependence Day by Mama Donna Henes”