The Temple Priestess

The Temple Priestess Retreat December 2022

The themes of this retreat were based around The High Priestess and her roles in ancient times, the Warrior Priest and all who are ‘excluded’ or ‘knocking to be let in.’ The theme that resonated most with me was the isolated or forgotten / ignored / misunderstood members of society - particularly in relation to mental health.

As I process the content of the retreat over Christmas, having just recovered from a serious bout of COVID, I realise for me, the key connecting thread to all of this is about layers.

The High Priestess and the Warrior Priest

The High Priestess always appears to me very sexually. Making love to warriors returning from war, is one of her roles I most connect with. 

After the adrenaline of battle wears off, the wounded warrior priest returns now aware of his pain, loss, shame and guilt. 

She uses her body as a temple to slowly peel those emotions away and heal his deep wounds. It is more than physical comfort or pure physical release. Through channelling energy from the cosmos, she can see where all the pain hides, on all the physical, mental emotional and psychic level and transmute it using her body as a vessel. 

The Relevance to Today’s World

A large part of the course focused on the excluded. For example, in our current culture veterans returning from war have seen and felt things most people cannot dream of. Often they return with PTSD and feel disconnected, alone and lost with no effective reintegration programme that deals with the deeper emotional conflicts they face. So they carry them around and find it hard to connect.

However actual war is not required to create a returning warrior in need of support (male or female) and there are many other forms of feeling excluded or having to hide parts of yourself, and this is the part of the course I wanted to look at most. 

Layers

In a lot of my meditations and expressions during the week, I was drawn to layers and removing them. On the first night, I acted out the temple priestess greeting and healing the returning warrior priest. My dance involved removing multiple pieces of clothing as I was healed (warrior priest) by the high priestess. I later found out it was very similar to the story of Inanna’s descent into the underworld – where she takes off a layer at each of the seven gates until she is naked and stripped of all worldly possessions.

This is a powerful story that represents giving up everything worldly to achieve your deeper goals. A place of huge potential for transformation and rebirth and another way to describe visiting the underworld (shadow) through conscious choice. 

Removing layers 

Most people surround themselves with ‘layers’ or masks, physical or otherwise. I think of these as shadow aspects. Examples include women or men who can’t socialise without their kids or partner as a prop, people who use weight gain to hide and deflect attention from potential partners or the seemingly perfect person / couple who put their smiley mask on when out but are deeply unhappy if you dig under the surface. 

Why Do This?

Subconscious drives and patterns are very powerful motivators. They are embedded by our conditioning, which can dictate how we behave and show ourselves. This then attracts people based on what our energy is projecting outwards. Fear traps a lot of people into acting how they feel they are supposed to. Or hiding parts of themselves from certain people / groups or even being very different personalities with different groups of people.  

I personally did it for years – having two very different sides to my life (corporate world marketing director and very spiritual complimentary therapist). But when I integrated them and was able to speak openly about all of me, I realised firstly that most people don’t really care that much and more importantly how much unnecessary weight I had been carrying.

Masks and Mental Health

You will often hear the term masking, in discussions around certain mental health conditions. This is an in built trait in all people, but especially in women who are taught to project an ‘I am OK’ attitude from early childhood. Later in life, with families of their own it gets more essential for ‘coping’ and many hide their feelings of frustration, pain, anger etc with a mask. This makes it hard for outsiders to see what is going on, so the cycle continues. More pain, more coping and masking, not looking at the layers of what’s really under there. The more you hide, the less intimacy you can experience and the deeper the pain gets. 

In a therapeutic relationship you can look at removing layers by slowly greeting them, shining a light into your dark corners and meeting your shadow. 

When you peel back the masks in a safe environment, over time you can acknowledge the lurking ‘monsters’ and see how scary they really are. Most are fear or shame based, not feeling good enough, or caused by rejection of parts of you by external influences you have then internalised. In the bright light of day, and put into context by a professional therapist, most are common feelings held by many and can be resolved and accepted fairly easily.

When you can take on one and say: ‘come on then’ and not be afraid of people seeing it anymore, it loses its power. It is no longer in your shadow it becomes a strength or ally. You can also choose when conscious of the masks you wear, which want to keep, and which are ready for the bin.

Adding Layers

If you can take layers away, you can add them too. By this I mean as an example, you can remove a shame based low self-esteem issue, but you can also upskill, retrain, make positive new choices and thereby add new layers of sparkle to who you are. 

It’s a Bit Like Art

Most of the art I do is layer based. You get a deeper image when you merge, subtract, dissolve and enhance. Think of yourself as a work art in constant creation. Experiment with auditioning layers, removing, changing the opacity of masks, adding or removing vibrancy. Just like with Photoshop, you are in control once you can see the original file clearly. Then you can play until you get effects that are dynamically you. No more people pleasing, please. You can create yourself out in the world, like an animator creates a 3d model. Add new layers or assets, remove the ones that don’t work, re-member who you really are and then own it.