Autumn is beginning soon, and the nights grow longer. Join Pam and Janaka as we turn inward together and practice the ancient art of descent.
We are trained to think of descent as failure. A stock that falls, a mood that dips, a season that dies back—the language of decline is everywhere, and it is always spoken with a wince. But go back far enough into any tradition and the story reverses itself: the descent is not what happens to the hero, but is the work the hero must undertake.
Inanna, Persephone, Osiris, and many other deities are celebrated not only for their sacred power, but for the deep, dark underworld journeys they had to go on in order to gain knowledge and shed some aspect of their being. However the story is dressed—Sumerian, Greek, Egyptian, and perhaps a different one you were raised on—the pattern insists on the same unfashionable point: nothing that matters comes back whole without first going down and coming apart.
This is katabasis: the deliberate, ritual descent. Not a fall we suffer but a stair we choose to take, one landing at a time, with witnesses and a way marked back up.
In this evening of reflection and ritual we will prepare for Autumn and its journey into the depths.
Weds, Sept 30, 8-9:30pm ET