Book review “Journey to the Dark Goddess: How to Return to Your Soul” by Jane Meredith
People from spiritual communities tend to over-emphasize the light. But the darkness and darker aspects of ourselves, in our souls have to be integrated as well into our lives in order for us to be completely true to ourselves – and this is what this book is about. It It is not so much about shadow work, but there are some similarities to that. In the course of this book, the author interpretes several myths of descent to the underworld from various angles, many of them on a psychological level – the descents of the sumerian goddess Inanna, and from Greek mythology Persephone and Psyche and she also retells parts of them in a beautiful style. She tells about her own experience with rituals about such descents in spiritual groups with other women and also gives practical advice about how to do a four-part ritualisation of a descent into the Underworld and a following ascent, with many suggestions for creative approaches. She also writes about classical fairy tales and the evil queens/stepmothers/witches/fairies in them – and compares their often life-threatening challenges for the heroine of the tale as ways of initiation, which makes them similar to the Dark Goddess, as the author shows. Jane Meredith also writes about how some people seem to be stuck in the Underworld – for instance with experiences in their everyday life with abuse, loss, grief, addictions, recurring depressions or other painful experiences. For these she recommends seeking also help in the everyday world, for instance by counselling or therapy. But I guess combining that with the suggested rituals might be helpful as well for some people. I‘d recommend to read the whole book once and then, if you are willing to work through the rituals, read those parts again carefully. The author also recommend to have a check-in person for when the rituals are done and I think this is a good idea, because I guess those rituals, especially of descending into and staying in the Underworld could be quite intense and it is surely a good thing to be able to talk about them with a close person. This is an intense book and a treasure for anyone who wants to follow and meet the Dark Goddess or feels called by her.