FACILITATED BY: Aki Hirata Quetzalyolotzin Jewel Moon Medicine Woman
EXCHANGE: $65
This offering is in-person at WUUM LA and is from 2-5pmPST.
As the year bends toward its longest night, we turn toward the dark. We come to be taught by it, not to escape it.
In one of the oldest recorded myths, the Sumerian goddess Inanna descends to the Great Below to meet her sister Ereshkigal, Queen of the Underworld. Before she goes, she tells her faithful Ninshubur what to do if she does not return. At each of seven gates, she surrenders a piece of who she was. These are powers she carried but did not yet know how to use. She arrives stripped bare before the sister she was taught to fear, the exiled one who keeps everything the upper world refuses to hold.
Read as a map of the psyche, every figure in this story lives in us. Inanna is the self that ventures down. Ereshkigal is the banished grief and power waiting below. Ninshubur is the inner faithful one who keeps watch and calls for help when we cannot.
The witch wound lives in that same exile: the inherited fear of being seen, of knowing, of our power, and of our grief. In this circle, we follow Inanna down. Through journaling and sharing, we name what was left at the gates. Through soul retrieval, we go looking for the parts of ourselves we abandoned to stay safe. Through voice activation, we let what was silenced make sound again. We return reoriented, reclaiming what we left behind, now able to wield it.
We close in celebration of remembering, while holding our grief tenderly. The dark is not the absence of the sacred. It is where the sacred has been waiting.
Please bring: a journal and pen, warm layers, and water.
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Aki Hirata Quetzalyolotzin Jewel Moon Medicine Woman is attuned to various energetic healing frequencies including Usui Reiki, Earth Evolution Reiki, IET, and 13th Octave LaHoChi. She is also a master teacher of Usui Reiki, co-channeller of Earth Evolution Reiki symbols, and the founder of MINKA Brooklyn. She is a moondancer, and trained under numerous teachers of ancient traditions, including Hatha yoga, pranayama and meditation (Integral Yoga Institute), Ayurvedic Nutrition (Naina Marballi), Art of Energy Healing (Suzy Mezoly), MedicineWay (Irma StarSpirit Turtle Woman), Toltec Healing Practice (Sergio Magaña Ocelocoyotl), Curanderismo (Rita Navarete Prez and Tonia Gonzalez) and more.