The Great Descent
The lunar eclipse in Pisces, with the Sun in Virgo, brings us to a powerful threshold of release, shadow work, surrender and conscious change. From a shamanic perspective, an eclipse can become a moment to look at what has been hidden, where we may have lost connection with our power, and what is ready to return to the light. The ancient story of Inanna and her Great Descent through the seven gates offers us an extraordinary map for navigating this movement. As the season turns toward Autumn, these ancient, cosmic and seasonal teachings come together to ask: what are you ready to release, and who are you becoming?
There are moments when the teachings seem to arrive from every direction at once.
The moon is speaking. The season is speaking. The ancient stories are speaking. Our own lives are speaking. And suddenly, what we have been sensing quietly within ourselves is reflected everywhere around us.
This lunar eclipse brings us a powerful image: something normally completely illuminated is temporarily covered by shadow. It has not disappeared. It has not ceased to exist. For a moment, we simply cannot see it in the same way. And then the light returns.
For me, this is a powerful reflection of the inner work we are being invited into right now.
What has been hidden?
What have we avoided?
What are we trying to control?
What is asking to be seen differently?
What is ready to be released?
And perhaps even more importantly:
What is ready to come out of the shadows?
I love when these moments happen because the teaching rarely arrives alone.
The eclipse is happening within a much greater movement. We have crossed Lughnasadh and begun the first subtle turn toward Autumn — the season of harvest, discernment, completion and release. And alongside this seasonal movement stands the ancient story of Inanna, the Goddess who willingly descends through seven gates into the Underworld.
Different traditions. Different languages. Different doorways. And yet the teaching is remarkably similar.
To me, this is one of the ways the universe has our back.
Sometimes it lays the teaching on thick. It doubles it up. Sometimes it triples it up so that we really cannot ignore what is being shown to us. And at the same time, the larger energetic movement helps to carry us through the very threshold we are being asked to cross.
This is how the teachings within my Awakening Touch Mystery School are reflecting and supporting this movement right now.
In Wisdom of the Seasons, we are entering the Autumn teachings of harvest, discernment and letting go.
In Awakening the Fire Goddess, Inanna is our guardian archetype this month, taking us into the ancient teaching of descent and initiation.
In September’s Communication with Spirit Journey Circle, we will take that teaching experientially through an eight-week journey I am calling The Great Descent.
And through Loss of Power and Boundaries, we explore another essential layer: our relationship with power, energy, choice and self-leadership.
This is why I love Mystery School work. The teachings are not separate from life.
We learn to recognise the sacred spiral when it appears — through Earth, cosmos, myth, Spirit and our own lived experience — and consciously walk with it.
The Autumn Teaching — Knowing What Is Complete
Autumn begins with discernment. The land is still abundant, yet something has already begun to change. Some things are still growing while others have completed their cycle.
This is the first harvest of the soul.
What has ripened?
What is complete?
What wants to be carried forward?
What needs to be returned to the earth?
This is one of the fundamental teachings within Wisdom of the Seasons: release is not a failure of growth.
Release is part of growth. And we are part of that same living cycle.
When Water Meets Earth — Surrender and Discernment
Intuition. Imagination. Sensitivity. Compassion. Surrender. Connection with the unseen.
Virgo brings us back to earth:
Discernment. Attention. Practical action. Responsibility. Organisation. Service.
What do I need to stop trying to control — and what actually still requires attention from me?
Because these are not the same thing. There are things we need to surrender. There are things we need to attend to. And knowing the difference is part of spiritual maturity
Surrender Is Not Avoidance
We speak a great deal about surrender in spiritual practice.
Let go. Trust. Allow. But I believe we need discernment here too.
Sometimes we say we have surrendered something when really we have stopped looking at it.
Sometimes what we call acceptance is avoidance.
And sometimes the opposite is true. We keep trying to fix, control and manage something that life has been asking us to release for a very long time.
So, there are two questions worth sitting with:
What am I trying to control that I need to surrender?
And:
What have I been avoiding that actually needs my full attention?
Autumn asks this. The eclipse asks this. And Inanna asks this.
When Autumn is lived consciously, Winter becomes a season of deep dreaming rather than heaviness. Only when we have completed one cycle can we truly imagine the next.
The Eclipse — What Happens When the Light Is Covered?
There is something extraordinary about the symbolism of an eclipse.
Something normally illuminated becomes temporarily covered by shadow. It has not disappeared. It has not ceased to exist. For a moment, we simply cannot see it in the same way. And then the light returns.
This is a beautiful image for shadow work.
We often think of shadow as something dark or negative that needs to be removed.
That is not how I understand it.
From a shamanic perspective, I am interested in what has moved outside our conscious relationship with ourselves.
What have I buried?
What have I rejected?
What am I frightened to acknowledge?
What gift have I pushed away?
What part of my power have I placed into shadow because at some point it did not feel safe, acceptable or possible to embody it?
Shadow work in a shamanic sense is not simply looking for our undesirable behaviour.
Yes, our shadow can express itself through behaviours and reactions.
But behind that behaviour there may also be a gift, a capacity, an instinct or a piece of our power waiting to be brought back into relationship with us.
Something wants to come out of the shadow.
Shadow, Power and Self-Leadership
This is where shadow work and power work meet.
Power is one of the foundational teachings in shamanic practice, and it is a subject I believe we need to understand deeply. I am not speaking about power over someone else. I am speaking about our ability to inhabit ourselves.
To know where our energy is going.
To recognise what influences us.
To recognise when we have handed authority for our choices to someone or something outside ourselves.
To notice when fear, old stories, relationships or unconscious patterns are making decisions for us. And to bring ourselves back into conscious participation.
This is why I offer my Loss of Power and Boundaries workshop regularly. For me, this is foundation and energy maintenace.
If we want freedom, we need to understand our relationship with power.
If we want to create consciously, we need to know where we have choice.
If we want self-leadership, we need to recognise where we are responding from our own centre and where something else is running the story.
Freedom requires choice. And conscious choice requires awareness.
Inanna — The Great Descent
And then there is Inanna. I could hardly imagine a more appropriate archetype for this moment.
In Awakening the Fire Goddess, Inanna is the guardian archetype we are working with this month.
Her story is one of the oldest descent myths we have. Inanna chooses to enter the Underworld.
At each of the seven gates she is required to remove something.
Her crown. Her jewellery. Her breastplate. Her symbols of status and authority.
Piece by piece, what has identified and protected her is taken away. Until she enters the deepest chamber with nothing left to hide behind. This is initiation.
And it asks us:
Who are you when what you have used to define yourself is removed?
Who are you when the strategies that once protected you no longer work?
Who are you underneath the identities you have learned to carry?
What remains when you cannot control the outcome?
Touching the Sacred Every Day
Light a candle. Say a prayer. Walk outside. Place your hand on the earth. Sit at your altar. Journey. Listen.
This is at the heart of the Mystery School teachings within Awakening Touch.
The practices are not separate from life. They are ways of meeting life. The seasonal cycle, shamanic journey, ritual, archetypal teachings, sacred circle and our relationship with Spirit give us structures through which we can consciously participate in what is already moving.
When the Universe Repeats the Teaching
Autumn says: Release what is complete.
The eclipse says: Look at what has been hidden.
Pisces says: Surrender.
Virgo says: Discern and act.
Inanna says: Descend. Remove what can no longer accompany you.
And our relationship with Spirit says: You do not have to cross the threshold alone.
This is why I experience these moments as an extraordinary offering.
The universe is not whispering the teaching from one direction. It is surrounding us with it. Season. Earth. Moon. Myth. Spirit. Community. Our own lived experience. Layer upon layer.
We still have to walk through the gate ourselves. But we are held within a much greater movement as we do.
The Great Descent — Eight Weeks of Journey
We will work with Inanna’s seven gates through shamanic journey, allowing each gate to become a personal place of inquiry and encounter.
What am I being asked to remove?
What am I holding onto?
What has completed?
What identity has become too small?
What part of my power has been hidden?
What becomes possible when I stop carrying what no longer belongs with me?
And importantly, we will work with the empty place and the return. Because descent is not the destination. We descend so that we can return differently.
The Mystery School — Different Doorways Into the Same Teaching
Wisdom of the Seasons teaches us to recognise these movements through the living cycle of the Earth — when to begin, grow, harvest, release, rest and dream again.
Awakening the Fire Goddess brings archetypal teachings into that movement. This month, Inanna walks beside us through descent, surrender and initiation.
As the Fire Goddess cycle completes at Samhain, we move directly into Awakening the Dark Goddess in November. The outer fire begins to turn inward and we enter the darker half of the year — into the deeper teachings of shadow, ancestors, death and rebirth, the unseen worlds and the wisdom that can only be encountered when we are willing to enter the dark.
Inanna becomes a powerful threshold between these two journeys. Her descent prepares us for what comes next. We learn that darkness is not simply something to move through or overcome. It is a place of initiation, gestation and deep knowing.
Communication with Spirit — The Great Descent takes us experientially through those gates using shamanic journey.
And Loss of Power and Boundaries brings the teaching directly into our relationship with energy, choice, personal authority and self-leadership. Different layers. Different practices. Different doorways. But one living body of teaching.This is what Mystery School means to me. We don’t collect spiritual knowledge. We live it. We meet the teaching again and again, from different directions and at different depths, until it becomes something we know through experience.
What Are You Already Becoming?
It is easy during a time of release to focus entirely on what is leaving.
What is ending?
What no longer fits?
What needs to be surrendered?
Harvest is not only about what we leave behind. It is also about recognising what has ripened.
So ask yourself:
What new state of being is already emerging within me?
What do I know now that I didn’t know a year ago?
Where am I already responding differently?
What part of myself is ready to come out of the shadows?
Who am I already becoming?
Perhaps the eclipse does not create the transformation.
Perhaps Autumn does not create it.
Perhaps Inanna does not create it.
Perhaps they help us recognise a transformation that is already underway.
A Simple Practice for This Threshold
On one side write: I release control of... Choose one thing.
On the other side write: I give my attention to… Choose one thing.
Sit quietly with both.
Then ask:
What is being revealed to me through this?
And finally:
What am I already becoming?
You do not need to know the entire path ahead.
You need enough presence to recognise the gate you are standing before now.
Autumn is here. Inanna is descending. The shadow moves across the light.
And perhaps the invitation is not to resist the descent.
Perhaps it is to recognise how many hands — Earth, cosmos, archetype, Spirit and community — are holding the doorway open for us.
The work is ours. But we do not do it unsupported. We descend consciously. We meet what has been waiting in the shadows. We reclaim what belongs to us.
And, in time, we return carrying something we could not have found by remaining only in the light.
Connect to your community
The path towards inner wisdom and discovery of ourselves is a path which, ultimately, we have to journey on our own. Knowing who you are and what gift you carry is revealed in this path of discovery of the Self. It brings sovereignty and autonomy.
Community is the way we nourish ourselves on this journey. We find safety in the sacred circle with others and inspiration when we listen to their own discoveries.
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Gita
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