Review: Aspecting the Goddess by Jane Meredith

Although it is only published today, I have already read Aspecting the Goddess twice. I suspect I will read again and again.

The book, by Jane Meredith, teaches how to invite the Goddess into our lives in her many different aspects and in a variety of ways. Its subtitle is Drawing Down the Divine Feminine.

Many witches and pagans talk about “drawing down the Goddess” – sometimes referred to as “drawing down the moon”. The term usually refers to a rite of invocation in which we invite a specific deity to join us in mind and body, so that we merge for a brief moment. This enables us to speak the wisdom of that deity, but also allows us to experience their essence at least in some small way.

It is an advanced skill and not usually recommended without considerable training. Aspecting the Goddess effectively breaks that training down into six stages: walking with the Goddess, researching her, dedicating to the Goddess, presencing her, enacting myth and finally aspecting the Goddess. Aspecting is essentially the same as invocation. This allows us to work with various goddesses – or gods – in a way that feels appropriate for us at that time.

The book is beautifully written. Between the practical lessons are the stories of 12 goddesses: Persephone, Bloduewedd, Isis, Mary, Aphrodite, Ereshkigal, Nepthys, Freyja, Ariadne, Inanna, Eve and the Star Goddess. Jane offers her personal experiences of how these goddesses have influenced her life and how she has worked with them using the techniques she describes.

I said I had read this book twice. I first read it more than a year ago. I proofread it before manuscript was finalised – and I loved it. I already loved Jane’s earlier books Aphrodite’s Magic and Journey to the Dark Goddess. I think this is my favourite of the three.

Last night I started to read it again. I had been intending just to skim over the book to refresh my memory before writing my review, but I was drawn in by Jane’s beautiful words. I read it late into the night and picked it up again early this morning. I should have been doing other things, but the pages seemed as though they all needed to be read – and the messages I got from the second read were different to those I got the first time round. That is surely the sign of a powerful and important book.

You can view Aspecting the Goddess on Amazon.

Links and previous related posts
http://www.moon-books.net/books/aspecting-goddess
http://www.badwitch.co.uk/2010/05/review-aphrodites-magic.html
http://www.badwitch.co.uk/2012/07/review-journey-to-dark-goddess.html
http://www.badwitch.co.uk/2011/09/day-with-aphrodite.html 

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