Psyche: The Descent of Grace

In this immersion in soul, we re-animate Psyche. We bring her/him/them back to life.

The Roots of Psyche

You know the word psyche. It’s wedded nowadays to many things: Psychosis. Psychotic. Psychopath. Psychiatry. 

What about psychotherapy? Psychology. You know these words too. I have studied both, and in my 6 years of studying in formal institutions, I see how psyche has been killed off. Psychology means the study of the psyche, the study of soul. Yet on my masters, we were lost in statistics and Likert scales and methodologies. In the key psychotherapy text, the chapter on Jung had been taken out as it was ‘no longer relevant to contemporary psychotherapy’. Terrifying. 

Therapy comes from the root therapeia; to tend, to minister, to heal. So psychotherapy means tending to soul. And in mainstream Western medical practice, when our souls need tending, when we ask for support, we are met with medication. Invited to block our ‘intrusive’ thoughts. Told to define a ‘goal’ and measure our ‘progress’ against a number. 

My soul shrinks when I think of this. The soul cannot be measured, validated or medicalised. Jung lamented way back in the 1930s that the practice had been twisted into ‘a psychology without the psyche’. So even in the psychotherapist’s, the counsellor’s chair, psyche has been killed.

We meet Psyche so that we may melt into body, earth, life.

Where Psyche Resides

But do you know what psyche means, what it really means? I can give you the definition, and I will. But the real meaning lies within the myths, it lies within your dreams, and it lies, waiting, attentive, longing within you. 

Do you know how to retrieve it? To revive psyche? To reanimate psyche? This is what we will do together in PSYCHE, the first 100 hours of our 300 hour Advanced Embodied Yoga and Soul Training. Which begins on Samhain, the gasp of the great descent of the year, when the veils between the worlds are thin. And where we will descend. Together. 

Descending in community means that we are also one another’s guides, that we co-create what psyche means within the group mind and we co-create with psyche her/his/their self.

And if we want some inspiration, then the myths offer some guidance.

To descend with devotion, guardianship and community.

Myths of Descent

In Psyche and Eros, the epic love story between the God of Love himself and the mortal Psyche, we learn that the path down to the Underworld is driven by love and hope. Eros is injured and lost. He and Psyche separated. His mother, Aphrodite, tells Psyche she must go down to the Underworld and retrieve a box for her. And so Psyche descends, out of love for Eros and hope of his return. 

Love and grief send another human, Orpheus, down to the Underworld after his beloved Eurydice is killed by a snake. And so he descends, to play his music of love and grief to the God and Goddess of the Underworld, Hades and Persephone. And it breaks even their hearts. Or should I say, it opens their hearts to the plight of humans and all that we must feel, grieve and make music with. 

And what of Persephone? The Maiden Goddess who is taken from her Mother and dragged down to the Underworld. The Hymn of Demeter, her mother, would have us believe that Hades took her by force. And descents can certainly sometimes feel like this. When we are plunged headfirst into the dark seemingly without a choice.

But did Persephone have a choice? What might she have secretly been longing for, perhaps in her own unconscious? To escape the clutches of a devouring Mother and to finally become Queen of her own dominion? What parts of Persephone were in fact ready, ripe for descent? Maybe, all of them. The story of Persephone’s descent is ultimately one of love and desire. And freedom. 

And Ianna. The Sky Goddess who descends to the Underworld out of envy of her sister, Ereshkigal, Queen of the Dead. Ianna is the Goddess of love, fertility, war, grain, deformity, disguise and prosperity. What could she possibly be jealous of? Well, she is. And it’s that envy that sends her down. But what’s at the heart of all envy? Longing. 

So this short snippet of myths of descent tell us some things. They tell us that descent can be driven by love, hope, grief, desire and longing. 

What are you longing for? More love and light?
Or are you longing for more psyche.

Always longing for more psyche.

Guardians of the Raw Imaginal

PSYCHE is not about chasing the light or transcending from our messy and divine human experiences. It’s about descending into the deep, the imaginal, the raw. With guardianship and support, with community. With trust. So that we know we can surrender, so that we know that we are held. This work can be confronting and uncomfortable. And deeply transformational. 

This is an invitation to trust how Shakti/life/mystery wants to move through you. To meet Psyche in yourself, in one another and through what we will meet together in the group.

What does psyche mean? It means soul. It means breath. And it means butterfly—that which is not easy to catch, to contain. Psyche’s wings which crumble if we try to grab or grasp. So we approach gently, with reverence, delicacy. With devotion. 

We descend with, through and in response to the call of Grace.

If you are interested in joining for either the 100 Hour Immersion or the full 300 Hour Training, you can download an info pack here.

We descend with the support of the plants, the ancestors and the unseen guides.