To celebrate over 20,000 copies sold, we present an extract from Journey to the Dark Goddess by Jane Meredith:

Listen. What is that, calling within you? What do you hear? Listen.

            Silence the world around you. Listen within. Open your inner ear.

            What do you hear?

It is a wordless cry, within you. It is a whispered sequence of words you cannot quite catch. It is the sound of your own voice. It is weeping; singing. It is the promise of your power, struggling to be free. It is the invitation of your soul.

            Do you hear her calling? She might be a tiny whisper within you – or longing – or doubt. She might be rapping on your door, persistently. She might be shouting in a voice of the tidal wave of change, come to claim you.

You may be driven to take this journey to meet the Dark Goddess by illness, grief, a gradually increasing despair, emotional numbness or a sudden loss. You might be inspired to take it by spiritual insight, your creative journey or by wanting to fulfill your potential. You might find yourself already there; numbed to the world and relationships around you, subsisting on automatic and completely blank about your future, your hopes, your desires, your self.

            Choose, then, to journey within.

 It will not be like any journey you have ever undertaken. Even if you have been this way many times, it will not be like any journey you have undertaken.

            The way will be strange. Dark. Frightening. The more frightening it is, the more you will understand that you are on the right path. The only path. All other paths are detours. They lead back to this path. It will be liberating to finally take these steps. You will be liberated from everything you have been.

            It is dark, and it will get darker. In the dark, you head towards the unknown. You will leave markers behind you. They will be the sum of all the things you care about in the world. You will leave behind your children, your dreams, your projects and successes. You will leave behind your heritage. You will leave behind love and human companionship. You will leave your future behind you. This will be a journey into the Underworld.

There will be warnings, maybe many warnings.

It would be preferable if you would take this medication.

You ought to be happy, you have what you wanted.

Your behavior is too wild/emotional/irrational.

It doesn’t matter what you feel; it’s better not to say it.

This is how things are. Grow up. Get used to it.

These warnings will reach your old self, but you will already be beyond them.

            This journey is not done lightly. It is not a thing of light. Your family, your friends, they will wring their hands and tear their hair and weep at the gates you have passed through, unable to follow you. You will know they are there, somewhere behind you, and you will not turn round. They may shout warnings after you, beg you to consider alternatives, or beseech you never to leave them. When you emerge – changed – they will see the changes in you, written across your body and face.

Do it once, unwilling and unaware. It will be very slow. But you will eventually stumble out, dazed by the extremities of suffering and priceless gifts. Do it a second time, still unwilling but aware. Slow, but not as slow. Fight it all you like, some part of you knows how to do this; that you have to give way, wait, be gifted, return. The third time, go willingly. Go fast. Or the fourth. Or as soon as you possibly can. Only when you journey deliberately, aware and willing, will you meet the Dark Goddess in her full glory. Only then will you have a chance for the depth of transformation she promises. Only then.

The voice of the Dark Goddess is the voice of our own soul, calling out within us. It is not the voice of our personality, which we have built up around that soul over many years and become attached to. This personality has attracted – like a shell around the soul – all sorts of manifestations; likes and dislikes, habits and relationships and jobs until we begin to think that is who we are. When that happens, the Dark Goddess starts her rumbling. It’s easy to ignore, at least for a while. But ignore it for long enough and eventually, like a volcano, she will blow, and the landscape will never be the same again. The stronger – and longer – we have ignored her, the more powerful will be the eventual blow-out. Almost all of us have experienced this at least once in our lives: a domino-like collapse of everything that mattered to us. In these explosions, relationships, jobs, health, friendships and houses can be lost; overturned in the great need for purging, evolution and (eventual) replenishment. Most of us shudder at the thought of allowing such explosive changes to rip through our lives again.

 I believe if we are able to listen to the Dark Goddess regularly, to hear her voice every day and respond to her as an ordinary part of our lives, the disaster, collapse and devastation would hardly ever happen to us. To act this way goes against all our customs, even against most of the teachings of the ‘alternative’ or ‘new age’ culture. To honor the Dark Goddess, to listen to her voice (that voice within us that is so hard to shut up), to respect what she has to say and to undertake regular journeys to visit her requires a different way of viewing the world. In this way of seeing, we would not expect everything to be continually onward and upward. Rather, we would model ourselves on the earth’s patterns, turning from the light of day naturally and gradually to the darkness, going through the dark and emerging again, gradually, once more into the light. We would model ourselves on the seasons, moving from spring to summer to autumn (or fall) to winter and through to spring again. We would model the moon’s cycle, moving from full to dark to full.

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Jane Meredith is an author and ritualist. She is passionate about myth, magic and the evocation of the divine. Her books include Journey to the Dark Goddess and Circle of Eight: Creating Magic for Your Place on Earth. Jane lives in Australia and presents workshops worldwide and as distance courses. Her website is: http://www.janemeredith.com