This series explores what it is like to be a spiritual seeker and Priestess in the 21^st century.

Is there more empowerment & direct access to the Divine in the world now? 

I’m interviewing women from my Priestess Training Program to find out!

This is such a huge question! I still go through phases of feeling claustrophobic within labels, but I am getting more intimate with being a healer and a priestess, amongst many other things. I am very much invested in my own and other’s healing, mainly through body work at the moment, and I love everything that the priestess path has offered me so far with all my heart. There are other, more worldly, identities I am attached to – I am also an activist, artist and a very queer person, which is sacred to me too.

I think the process of questioning expectations and experimenting has been quiet a journey in itself.

It seems so outrageous to call yourself a priestess –

but really, we are women who circle,

we contribute to each other`s healing,

we find alternative ways of receiving and passing on knowledge,

we question the ways we live, we nurture a connection to our source and to nature –

it makes a lot of sense to me.

I have asked questions about faith and spirituality for as long as I can remember, even though I was not raised within a religious framework. I remember wondering about true justice and afterlife as a child, about the meaning of things that seemed either too beautiful or too hard. I think the biggest transformations and spiritual changes always came in darker periods which does make me wonder why humans have such a hard time learning the easy way. But in the end heartbreaks or the loss of loved ones were always my greatest teachers. I love this quote:

“The doors to the world of the wild Self are few but precious. If you have a deep scar, that is a door, if you have an old, old story, that is a door. If you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it, that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door.”

― Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Connecting with my lineage, developing a very different understanding of time and journeys and aiming for a deep sense of trust in the meaning and purpose of life have been some of the biggest changes on my journey so far.

Being around others, like you Vanessa, who are incredibly courageous in being their authentic self. And sitting with the question of what it would really mean to loose more and more approval from society.

These were small questions at first and then they got bigger along the way. What if:

• I didn’t use my degree to get a job?
• The rhythm of my life was not dictated by a 9 to 5 job?
• I never wanted a husband and children?
• I thought our collective healing was the ultimate priority of our time?
• I wrote books even though no one has offered me a publishing deal?
• I just did things that give me joy or that give others joy because that`s enough?
• I tried to go build a little wooden house in the woods?

I think the more you question, the more authentic you become.

• I am much less afraid of darkness now and I am very honest about things not always being a shiny kind of soft pink.
• Having faith, unlearning things that aren’t serving us and deeply believing in each other takes hard work and I am not scared of this journey anymore.
• I also think my love is very strong and very loyal – its always been things way, but it`s not always been something effortless and easy.
• I care deeply for the people I love and I enjoy being very nurturing.

 

Being a person of faith is not always a “cool” identity within many communities, for example amongst activists, artists or queers, so there was a sense of needing to hold space for myself there and to find others to connect with was not always easy.

Another challenge is the realization that many religions have, often in correlation with white supremacy, caused an immense amount of harm and suffering to humanity and the planet, which I guess leaves me wondering about the sense or the truth behind that.

Imagining faith before, and independent from patriarchy, requires a great deal of creativity and a really resilient desire to go beyond almost everything we are being told today.

I think positioning myself in this web, understanding how diverse and fluid interpretations are and trying to be compassionate and inclusive is a huge challenge as is understanding my many privileges as a white person born in Europe.

I think for me there is empowerment in my stubbornness and my unwillingness to participate in things that do not make sense to me. I am very much an introvert, so I often am actually very glad to retreat and practice what nourishes me – reading, writing, making art, lighting candles, doing body work, learning about complementary medicine…

There are always things I can`t access because of my beliefs and identities, but as I grow older, I appreciate more and more that the corporate career, the straight marriage, the terraced house was never meant for me anyway and that I have a lot of freedom to create something that is meaningful and beautiful to me.

I meditate, take walks in nature, write and I have an altar in my bedroom.

It`s important to me to give life a framework that is not dictated by outside influences – this is private, just for myself and sometimes a few others.

I think a need for rituals and celebrations is very human and it took a lot of unlearning for me to go from watching “Sex and the City” for comfort and drinking white wine as a Friday night ritual to lighting candles and journalling.

I´d say that my spiritual practices are very committed, but also very fluid. I am trying to listen to what is needed at the time and I think this honouring of one`s needs is radical in itself.

I am also trying to honour the seasons more, to learn from them and grow humble in my understanding of the fact that nature is much more powerful than my macbook. I think embracing winter and allowing down time with introspection and darkness rather than constant expansion and light is a good move in that it is very much opposing our cultural ideas about productivity and purpose.

So many things! To me it means holding space for healing and faith for myself and others, but it also means to gather courage to change and question, to resist patriarchal ideas about meaning, structure and achievements and to nurture instinct and intuition, which are aspects often seen as feminine and less valuable. For me personally it also means learning about pre-Christian European traditions of healing and ritual, community and connection to nature, but I am really just at the beginning here.

From a spiritual point of view it means exploring my source

and my place in the world,

to form a value system for myself within

which I want to operate and leave something of myself behind.

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Join Priestess Training Today and start practising what nourishes you!

This post originally appeared on vanessasage.com in 2015