Additional information
by Lara Vesta (Author)
A guided journey of empowerment and healing through life's difficult passages, with practical tools, including embodied rituals, writing prompts, seasonal self-care practices, and community creation.
The journey of the Dark Goddess is a natural part of any difficult rite of passage. These transitions are often thought of as negative--death of a loved one, job loss, home loss, chronic illness, divorce--but even so-called "happy" transitions, such as marriage, the birth of a child, or retirement, can come with unexpected instability, grief, and a need for integration. In our culture, we may often feel like we should "move on" or "get back to normal." In studying myth, however, we come to understand that the purpose of challenging life transformations is not positive or negative.
- An interactive brief of themes and objectives for the quarter, such as making an altar, writing with the ancestors, creating herbal infusions, and storytelling.
- A seasonal ceremony template appropriate to the rite-of-passage phase.
- A unique retelling of an ancient myth or fairy tale and instructions for deep myth work. These tales contain the formula for how to successfully navigate rites of passage, consciously and unconsciously.
- Journaling prompts for reflection and projection, making visible the initiation journey.
Author Biography
Lara Vesta, MFA, is an artist, storyteller, and educator. She is the author of Wild Soul Runes: Reawakening the Ancestral Feminine, The Moon Divas Guidebook, and The Moon Divas Oracle Book. A certified Celebrant with the Celebrant Institute and Foundation, and a former PhD student in philosophy and religion, she has spent over a decade studying ritual in diverse communities and facilitating rituals for individuals and groups in hundreds of different environments. She also has been through multiple challenging rite-of-passage transitions due to disabling chronic illness, which framed her understanding of the Dark Goddess work.
She is currently guiding students both online and live through a year-long rite-of-passage process as she crafts the Dark Goddess book. She was a professor of English and Writing at Pacific University and in 2015 created the Wild Soul School, an online educational community offering classes in personal empowerment, ancestral connection, self-initiation, and ritual practice.
