Chapter 14, Pt.3: Wild Woman Book Study: Ep.10 Season 2 - a podcast by Rachel Prehn

In this episode we will be exploring:
Chapter 14: La Selva Subterranea: Initiation in the Underground Forest 

Story:
The Handless Maiden 

Topics/Themes:

The Fifth Stage- The Harrowing of the soul - 

Pregnancy, Birth, New life

The devil changing messages 

Cultural traditions the devil has mutilated  

Veils: Using a mask to empower rather than muzzle the wild self 

“This symbol is about keeping private, keeping to oneself, not giving one’s mysterious nature away. It is about preserving the eros and mysterium of the wild nature”.

The Sixth Stage - Realm of the Wild Woman - The queen staying at the inn for 7 years.

The ages are not meant to be hierarchical, but simply belong to women’s consciousness and to the increase of their soul-lives. Each age represents a change in attitude, a change in tasking, and a change in values. 

0-7 age of the body and dreaming/socialization, yet retaining imagination 7-14 age of separating yet weaving together reason and the imaginal
14-21 age of new body/young maidenhood/unfurling yet protecting sensuality 21-28 age of new world/new life/exploring the worlds 

28-35 age of the mother/leaming to mother others and self

35-42 age of the seeker/leaming to mother self-seeking the self

42-49 age of early crone/finding the far encampment/giving courage to others 49-56 age of the 

underworld/leaming the words and rites

56-63 age of choice/choosing one’s worid’and the work yet to be done

63-70 age of becoming watchwoman/recasting all one has learrned

70-77 age of re-youthanization/more cronedom

77-84 age of the mist beings/finding more big in the small

84-91 age of weaving with the scarlet thread/understanding the weaving of life 91-98 age of the ethereal/less to saying, more to being

98-105 age of pneuma, the breath

105+ age of timelessness 

Encouraging you to share your voice 

“Share your progress because it’ll either be a stepping stone for others or it’ll be a stone to avoid” - The Art Spirit 

The Seventh Stage - The Wild Bride and Bridegroom - The second wedding

“The endurance of soul has been tested and met. A woman goes through this cycle once every seven years…” 

“Once we have been through the cycle, we can choose any or all tasks to renew our lives at any time and for any reason. Here are some: 

- to leave the old parents of the psyche, descend to the psychic land unknown, while depending on the goodwill of whomever we meet along the way 
- to bind the wounds inflicted by the poor bargain we made somewhere in our lives 
- to wander psychically hungry and trust nature to feed us 
- to find the Wild Mother and her succor 
- to make contact with the sheltering animus of the underworld 
- to converse with the psychopomp (the magician) 
- to behold the ancient orchards (energic forms) of the feminine 
- to incubate and give birth to the spiritual childSelf 
- to bear being misunderstood, to be severed again and again from love 
- to be made sooty, muddy, dirty 
- to stay in the realm of the woodspeople for seven years till the child is the age
of reason 
- to wait 
- to regenerate the inner sight, inner knowing, inner healing of the hands 
- to continue onward even though one has lost all, save the spiritual child 
- to re-trace and grasp her childhood, girlhood, and womanhood 
- to re-form her animus as a wild and native force; to love him; and he, her 
- to consummate the wild marriage in the presences of the old Wild Mother and the new child Self”


“The Handless Maiden” is a real-life story about us as real women. It is not about one part of our lives, but about the phases of an entire lifetime. It teaches, in essence, that for women the work is to wander into the forest over and over again. Our psyches and souls are specifically suited to this so that we can traverse the psychic underland, stopping here and here and here, listening to the voice of the old Wild Mother, being fed by the fruits of spirit, and be

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