In a recent conversation, Bioenergetic healer Sarah Irwin and Miriam Katz discussed:

• The unique opportunity that the Israel-Gaza war has opened for Jews and Arabs
• How grief and other challenging emotions help us to heal
• Tools for tracking and releasing stuck emotions
• How our ancestors' unresolved pain lives in us ... and what to do about it

Listen here at Not Medical Advice on Spotify.

While the School of Hebrew Shamanism primarily focuses on pre-Jewish content, this upcoming book explores the Goddess as she manifests at the unseen heart of Judaism.

The Goddess in Judaism is known primarily as Shekhinah, though she wears such names as Tehom, Chokhmah, and even Lilith. 

Those who practice Judaism focus primarily on the seen content, the Torah and its Mitzvot (commandments), as well as Jewish community and culture. Just like the bagel, however, what is most central to Judaism is the overlooked vortex at its center. The indwelling spirit, or Goddess.

Join the mailing list to receive an alert when this forthcoming book is available. 

We have entered into a time of great uncertainty. The destruction that we've wreaked on our global habitat is catching up with us. We're seeing uncontrollable wildfires and shifting weather patterns. Just as we thought the pandemic was over, we're experiencing a resurgence.


Where do we turn in the darkness for direction, strength and support?

We turn to those who can teach us about death and destruction, which are the oft-ignored parts of the life cycle. We turn to those who can help us find those aspects of ourselves that we've shoved into dark corners, and reclaim the balance that has been lacking in our lives.

Western society has embraced a path of ascension - of denying of the body and the planet, of identification with a male deity who can help us to rise above our human struggles and experience a state of oneness.

The path that was largely paved over to help us ascend to the heights is the Descent to the Goddess. The Goddess inhabits the realm of the body-soul, nefesh in Hebrew. She teaches us to value our own physicality and sensuality, and by extension that of the Earth. She teaches us to embrace our inner wildness, and to revere all of her wild beings: animal, plant, fungi, and the elements.

A great purge of the Goddess began over 6000 years ago, and continued throughout the planet. In the Near East, the Ancient Hebrews cut down the Asherah, the Tree Goddess - also known as the Tree of Life. This act of destruction was meant to show loyalty to the One jealous deity (who is supposed to be beyond gender but is personified primarily as male). And yet, the Kabbalists (Jewish mystics) continue to perceive this world as broken due to the exile of the divine feminine from the divine masculine.

It is we who have created this world of narcissism and darkness by cutting down sacred trees - every tree is a sacred tree - and by denying our wildness, our darkness, and the feminine nature of divinity. It is we who have exiled the Goddess, to the detriment of ourselves and this beautiful Earth.

It is time for us to return to the balance of light and dark demonstrated to us by the moon. To acknowledge our own cyclical nature. Connect to our physicality and untamed nature. Re-grounding ourselves in the wilderness of this planet and the divine creatures who inhabit it.

If you have been on a spiritual path and are looking for the next step in your progress...
If you are willing to join an open-hearted virtual community with your own heart wide open...
If you are looking to reclaim the untapped power within you by enhancing your connection to your soul and the soul of this wild planet...
If you are ready to welcome the wisdom of the being who can guide us through this darkness...

Then join us.

The Virtual Apprenticeship in Hebrew Shamanism launches on October 17, and continues for 10 two-hour sessions, approximately every other week, from 1-3pm ET.

Tohu vaVohu are the forces of chaos in the beginning of the creation process, before the waters above (upper world) are separated from the waters below (lower world). Tohu vaVohu are home to the great dark mother goddess, Tehom.

Tehom, Hebrew for ‘deep,’ is adopted from the Babylonian name Tiamat, the great fire-breathing serpent. She is the spirit expressed through the first stage in woman’s creation cycle: death and destruction of old patterns. She is an essential part of the inner and outer world lifecycles, as witnessed via the mycelium happily decomposing old life, allowing new potential to bear fruit.

Those of us who have been “civilized” have shunned the dark mother; we have positioned ourselves in opposition to her wild ways.
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The time has come to reclaim her, and thus, reclaim the entirely of ourselves, fire, dragon and all.
From the Enuma Elish, a mythological Babylonian text, we learn of Tiamat’s battles with her water (realm of emotions) children and husband, Apsu. Their children have acted out, and Apsu wants to destroy them. Tiamat advocates to spare them and “tighten discipline.”

Tiamat warns her son Ea, god of wisdom and magic, about Apsu’s plans. Ea kills Apsu, and with his wife conceives Marduk (Ba’al in the Hebrew pantheon), who kills his grandmother Tiamat.

Ba’al means master and husband in modern Hebrew, and is an angry, vengeful god - the Patriarchy in archetypal form. Even his father El wants him destroyed. He is one of many children birthed from the dark mother.

Our job is to reclaim these children, who have been sent into shadow for their emotional wildness, an innocent and essential aspect of childhood behavior.

As we embrace and embody our wildness and re-enthrone the dark mother, we re-inhabit an essential part of womanhood and our own birth-creation-destruction lifecycle.

When old patterns can finally die, new possibilities are born.
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Tehom is the Hebrew Goddess who is the mother of our inner serpent, our Kundalini energy. She is preparing to burst through the surface and reconnect us to the stuff of life. Will you open the door to her?

The upcoming cycle of the Virtual Apprenticeship in Hebrew Shamanism will focus on the Hebrew Goddesses, including Tehom and Tiamat.