The Temple Priestess Retreat
December 2022
The themes of this retreat were based around The High Priestess and her roles in ancient times, the Warrior Priest and all who are ‘excluded’ or ‘knocking to be let in.’ The theme that resonated most with me was the isolated or forgotten / ignored / misunderstood members of society - particularly in relation to mental health.
As I process the content of the retreat over Christmas, having just recovered from a serious bout of COVID, I realise for me, the key connecting thread to all of this is about layers.
The High Priestess and the Warrior Priest
The High Priestess always appears to me very sexually. Making love to warriors returning from war, is one of her roles I most connect with. After the adrenaline of battle wears off, the wounded warrior priest returns now aware of his pain, loss, shame, and guilt.
She uses her body as a temple to slowly peel those emotions away and heal his deep wounds. It is more than physical comfort or pure physical release. Through channelling energy from the cosmos, she can see where all the pain hides, on all the physical, mental emotional and psychic level and transmute it using her body as a vessel.
The Relevance to Today’s World
A large part of the course focused on the excluded. For example, in our current culture veterans returning from war have seen and felt things most people cannot dream of. Often, they return with PTSD and feel disconnected, alone and lost with no effective reintegration programmes that deal with the deeper emotional conflicts they face. So they carry them around and find it hard to connect.
However, actual war is not required to create a returning warrior in need of support (male or female) and there are many other forms of feeling excluded or having to hide parts of yourself, and this is the part of the course I wanted to look at most.
Layers
In a lot of my meditations and expressions during the week, I was drawn to layers and removing them. On the first night, I acted out the temple priestess greeting and healing the returning warrior priest. My dance involved removing multiple pieces of clothing as I was healed (warrior priest) by the high priestess. I later found out it was very similar to the story of Inanna’s descent into the underworld – where she takes off a layer at each of the seven gates until she is naked and stripped of all worldly possessions.
This is a powerful story that represents giving up everything worldly to achieve your deeper goals. A place of huge potential for transformation and rebirth and another way to describe visiting the underworld (shadow) through conscious choice.
Removing layers
Most people surround themselves with ‘layers’ or masks, physical or otherwise. I think of these as shadow aspects. Examples include women or men who can’t socialise without their kids or partner as a prop, people who use weight gain to hide and deflect attention from potential partners or the seemingly perfect person / couple who put their smiley mask on when out but are deeply unhappy if you dig under the surface.
Why Do This?
Subconscious drives and patterns are very powerful motivators. They are embedded by our conditioning, which can dictate how we behave and show ourselves. This then attracts people based on what our energy is projecting outwards. Fear traps a lot of people into acting how they feel they are supposed to. Or hiding parts of themselves from certain people/groups or even having very different personalities with different groups of people.
I personally did it for years – having two very different sides to my life (corporate world marketing director and very spiritual complimentary therapist). But when I integrated them and was able to speak openly about all of me, I realised firstly that most people don’t really care that much and more importantly how much unnecessary weight I had been carrying.
