THE ROOTED WOMAN

WHY THIS PROGRAM, AND WHY NOW?

The Rooted Woman Oracle was born from a book: If Women Rose Rooted, published in 2016. In it, I wrote about what I called the Eco-Heroine’s Journey: a woman’s path out of the wasteland of modern society to a place of nourishment and connection, and to a profound sense both of belonging to, and responsibility for, the places where our feet are planted. The book has since become a word-of-mouth bestseller around the world – reflecting, I believe, the growing and deep-seated yearning of Western women for a stronger sense of connection to our ancestral stories and traditions.

The stories that Western civilisation has been living by for the past few centuries – stories of limitless growth, of the pursuit of progress as the primary purpose of life, of the super-individualistic and often super-human hero, of human separation from and domination over ‘nature’ – are crumbling. The masculine principle has dominated for too long, with its relentless striving for achievement, production and domination, and its focus on intellectual, rational and goal-oriented ways of being. Feminine qualities of creativity and intuition have for centuries – millennia – been suppressed, along with relationality: a sense of connectedness not only to our fellow humans, but to the other-than-humans who share the planet with us. Connectedness to the rhythms of nature as well as the rhythms of the physical body, and to the seasons and stages of our lives.

I believe that the stories we need to replace the destructive and outmoded tales of our patriarchal over-culture will be born from the wellspring of creative, relational wisdom which belongs to women. This gathering will offer a way for you to access those old stories and the nourishing traditions of our own ancestral lineages. Stories that spring from the ground beneath our feet, which emerged directly out of our relationship with our own distinctive landscapes, and which informed the lives of our ancestors. In these old myths and folk tales, women were the guardians of the natural world, the beating heart of the land, the bearers of wisdom, the root of spiritual and moral authority for the tribe.

In the time-between-stories that we are living through now, and in these days of ecological crisis and sociocultural uncertainty, we need more than ever to uncover the stories of the land and the wisdom which is encoded within them. They can help us to cultivate an understanding of the unity of things, a reverence for the interconnectedness of life, a belief in the power of the imagination and of intuition. They can help us to find a sense of deep, embodied belonging to this beautiful, animate Earth.

The Heroine’s Journey which I offer you in the book and the oracle deck is a path to understanding how profoundly enmeshed we are in the web of life on this planet, and how our entanglements with the world around us nourish us more deeply than any other source of sustenance. The Journey that women need to make today is one which plants us firmly back in the wider world where we belong, grounded and rooted and ready to rise up to protect it. In many ways, it is an antidote to the swashbuckling action-adventure that is the classic Hero’s Journey so beloved of Hollywood and blockbuster fiction: it is a Post-Heroic Journey, firmly founded in women’s ways of being and becoming.

In these ever-more troubled times we’re living through, we all need to follow this path, each of us in our own unique way. Not just for our own personal growth and greater wellbeing, but because this beautiful, ailing Earth needs us to be in caring relationship with it, and so do the other-than-humans who inhabit this planet along with us. The generations who will come after us can only survive if we are poised to fight for a sustainable and meaningful future. I firmly believe that each one of us has something extraordinary to offer to the world; each one of us reflects a unique and necessary node in the web of life on this planet at this time. We all need to make this Journey, then – to become rooted women – and no matter how challenging the path might turn out to be, there will for sure be richness and beauty along the way. But every pilgrim needs help on her path; all of us need a sense that someone, somewhere is rooting for us. This gathering will offer both community and guidance on yours.