WHAT  IS A DESCENT??

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In her book Descent and Rising, Carly defines a descent as ‘an initiation that challenges every notion we have of ourselves and our lives…changing the landscape of our relationships, work, spirituality, core beliefs, sense of belonging and understanding of the world…..​

A descent can arrive in many forms, the end of a relationship, job loss, baby loss, coming out as gay, the loss of a role or money, birth and the journey into motherhood - it is heralded by a significant shift in our lives which rocks the ground we thought we were standing on and brings us back down into the mud and sludge of our humanity, body and psychological shadow.’

 

A descent is vital part of the Heroine's Journey, a term believed to be first created by Maureen Murdock, who felt the culturally centred Hero’s Quest did not represent the psycho-spiritual journey of women.

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"The hero’s journey is focused on the adventures: slaying the dragon, finding the boon, meeting the goddess. For the heroine, the first part of the journey is the separation from the feminine, because of the focus in our culture on the idealization of the masculine. The individual in a patriarchal culture is driven to seek control and power over themselves and others; still slaying the dragons, internally and externally, and finding the boon, more externally. But for women, this doesn’t feed our nature. We ask, ‘What happened to my desire to write, to paint, to dance?’ And then, we experience the descent. So, there’s a split when we focus more on making it in the world, rather than on listening to our deep self."

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I recommend the books Descent and Rising, by Carly Mountain and The Heroines Journey, by Maureen Murdock, if you are interested in learning more about mythopoetic maps of remembering.

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