 Hey there, Savlings. Welcome back to Esoteric Moment Today. I have a book review for you. It is Jailbreaking the Goddess by Lesara Firefox Allen. One of the things I love most about Druidry is that there is freedom to interpret and use language that fits your relationship with deity in the best way for you. There is not a dogma about a certain group of gods that you need to use, that you have to follow gods that there's just so much room for exploration of deity in Druidry. Because I was raised Catholic, one of the things that really drew me to paganism when I first started exploring it was the concept of goddess and having a more female archetype to work with in my spirituality. That was very empowering to me and even now as much of my practice has really shifted to talking about deity in terms of an animist point of view, the concept of goddess is still very powerful and that archetype is useful when doing ritual or working with groups, certain magics. It's still something that I call upon so a little bit of a hodgepodge work in how I interpret deity. Most pagans have heard of maiden mother crone as being aspects of the goddess. This book adds two more archetypes to that idea and mixes the maiden mother crone in such a way that the goddess interpretation reflects better how our lives as women in this world go about. There are different elements than just maiden mother crone in our lives, so it seems strange to have a goddess that doesn't reflect the full life of a woman and also the maiden mother crone doesn't really fit in well to the mythology and stories that we have of goddesses. The goddesses that we worship are more multifaceted than just three archetypes and this book attempts to kind of draw out what those other phases of the goddess could be like. Of course, you can't talk about feminism and goddess without also talking about gender, gender identity, that inherent transphobia that we have in our culture and this book starts out by talking a little bit about that. Now, those aren't issues that affect me personally, so I'm not an expert, of course, and I would strongly encourage you if that's an issue that's close to home or you're looking to research more. Definitely read this book with a keen eye looking for things that, you know, maybe don't fit the way our culture is now starting to talk about deity. So there is a chapter that addresses those concerns at the beginning of the book. Maybe read that first before you decide to purchase it, if that is something that is important to you. The book begins by going into the five archetypes as the author sees them. I will do my best to pronounce them, but pronunciation as we all know is not my strong suit. So the first is femilla, which is more like your inner child, that beginning stage before maiden goddess. The second is the potens, which is more like the maiden, this potential full of waiting expectation. The third is creatrix. This surpasses the mother archetype by leaving a more all encompassing view of the creative business, families, all the things that a woman can create in their life, all the things that we have read and experienced with working with goddesses bringing to life. There's just more room by calling that a creatrix instead of just a mother. Then there is the sapientia, which is kind of that golden time between whatever project, whatever family you brought to life is kind of on its own. You have this period after that, before retirement, maybe a little bit after retirement, before you're an elder, before you're experiencing lots of aging effects in your body, where you have amassed tons of wisdom. You have experience to put that wisdom to good use, and you have more energy to actually do something with that. So this book adds that between mother and crown. And then finally, it calls Antiqua the final archetype of kind of crone, the elder with lots of wisdom, a bit closer to the gateways of death and the other worlds. There's wisdom there, and what that role then brings to our community. The second part of the book talks more about what if we envision relationship with goddess in this new five archetype way? What does that mean for our ritual, for our magics, for our groups? And it talks a bit more about that, and it definitely gets a little political. So if that's not your cup of tea, this is not the book for you. But I think many people who are interested in goddess worship, who are interested in paganism will find that to be enjoyable and lots of interesting thoughts there. The book is easy to read. I like the author's tone. It was not super conversational, but still felt intimate and honest, not too dry or anything like that. I will say there are a lot of journal prompts kind of hajpaji in between all the sections in each chapter. And eventually, I became quite annoyed with them. It could be just because of the amount of pagan how-to-e books I was reading at the time, but yeah, it wasn't my favorite part. I think the real value of this book comes in pushing ourselves to keep innovating and experimenting with our own thoughts and our practices. It's easy when we are overwhelmed or at least on autopilot with our daily lives to kind of set whatever we've figured out in those first stages of exploration or the second half of our training or whatever to kind of coast on those ideas. And this is a prime book for those who are looking to shake things up a little bit more or to kind of dive further in. Often in Druidry we talk about spirituality and your life as a spiral. You are constantly revisiting the same ideas and thoughts and feelings, but from a slightly different angle. There's a little bit more for us to discover in every turn of the spiral as we get closer to ourselves, as we get closer to the world and the purpose here. Universal flow, whatever you want to call it that we're centering towards. I'm less concerned about where that center is and just curious about the way our perspective changes as we spiral around these ideas. And this book is an excellent aid on that spiral as you're looking at goddess in a different way or exploring deity in new ways in general. Maybe you haven't considered goddess worship or working with a specific goddess or even what that would mean in your practice. This could be a really great read to kind of shake up your thoughts and try something new on for size. This is a definite check out of the library. I think it's going to be harder for most to justify keeping on their bookshelf as like a reference book. However, it has managed to stay on my bookshelf through a couple of purges. So it's holding up better as a reference book than I first originally thought and it might for you as well. In the comments, tell me what you think about the maiden mother crone archetypes of working with goddess. Are you intrigued by having two additional archetypes or is your relationship with deity so far removed from those archetypes as it is that adding more is kind of irrelevant? Tell me your thoughts in the comments below. This week's sapling shout out goes out to someone on Instagram, WayDJack, and they comment on my profile a bunch, but mostly because their profile picture is gorgeous. You should go check it out. It's like two trees and the owen flowing between. I don't know if they did it themselves or if they're using somebody else's art, but I really love that piece. So you should go check them out on Instagram. And if you want to be the next sapling shout out, definitely follow me on Instagram at esotericmoment or comment on videos here on YouTube. That's how I get to talk to you and learn a little bit about what you are enjoying in Druidry, your practices, books, all that jazz. Thanks for watching and as always, may you find peace in the sacred growth.