Hello, and welcome to Home to Her, the podcast that's dedicated to reclaiming the lost and stolen wisdom of the sacred feminine. I'm your host, Liz Kelly, and on each episode, we explore her stories and myths, her spiritual principles, and most importantly, what this wisdom has to offer us right now. Thanks for being here. Let's get started. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Hey everybody, this is Liz, joining you as usual from Central Virginia, the unceded lands of the Monacan Nation. And if you would like to know whose lands you are residing on, be sure to check out the map at native land. ca. Super helpful for North America in particular. And yeah, so glad you're tuning in today. And if you As always, if you are interested in learning more about the Sacred Feminine, there's all kinds of ways you can do that. This is the 93rd episode of the show, I think, so there's a lot of people that you can learn from. But if you want to learn from me, you can check out my award winning book, Home to Her, Walking the Transformative Path of the Sacred Feminine, which is available wherever you buy your books. You can check out the classes and the retreats that are coming up via the home to her academy at home to her academy. com. You can follow me on social at home to her on Facebook and Instagram. I was really trying to do Tik TOK and I just, man, there's a, that's a, that's a, that's a lot of platforms to keep up with. Maybe I'll get back to it, but you know, maybe, maybe I'll be there. And then you can check out articles and all past podcast episodes at home to her. com. I will put all of this in the show notes. And if you are a regular listener, I would love for you to leave a review of this show, wherever you access it. It helps other people find it. And goddess knows we need easy access to this kind of information. And as always, feel free to reach out to me with your thoughts, your comments, your feedback, your suggestions. You can email me or you can contact me via social. That's a really good way to do it too. But I love hearing what you're thinking. I love hearing from you. So, please do that. And, Okay. On with the show. So I'm super excited to have a repeat guest today. I've only had a few repeat guests in the whole time. You know, I've been doing this for four and a half years now, right? Yeah. So that means I think they're pretty damn cool. And that is absolutely true with my guest today. She first joined me back in 2022. We had a really phenomenal conversation. Then we got to meet in person and I already knew she was cool. That just cemented it. And she's back now to talk to us about an upcoming book that she's got, and also one of my favorite subjects, which is this idea of rewilding ourselves and the world. Oh, I just feel good even saying that, so let me let me, yeah, let me go ahead and introduce her to you. H. Byron Ballard is a ritualist, teacher, gardener, and author of multiple books, including Oh, man. Staubs and Ditchwater, right? I've read it. I just know. Staubs and Ditchwater. Staubs and Ditchwater. A friendly and useful introduction to Hillfolk's Hoodoo, Earthworks, Ceremonies in Tower Time, Seasons of a Magical Life, and the forthcoming Feral Church. Known as Asheville, North Carolina's village witch, Byron specializes in folk magic and folkways of the surrounding Appalachian Mountains, where she and her family have hailed from for four generations. Byron is also a senior priestess and co founder of the Mothergrove Goddess Temple, a non profit church with a focus on the many forms of the divine feminine. And her work as a pagan priestess has her regularly performing rituals and ceremonies for locals and also traveling all over the place. And Byron is joining us from her home today in Asheville, North Carolina. Yay. She's back. Byron. Welcome. Welcome. Oh, I

didn't realize you don't have repeat visitors. That's very exciting. I feel very important. You should. In the spirit of what you said, I will say that I live on Cherokee land. And I live above the section of the French Broad River that was called Ta'ak'i'asti, which means racing waters. And I'm very, very much aware that we are not the first people on this land, nor were the Cherokee for that matter. But yes, let's honor. Those ancestors of the land and and our ancestors as well. It's always good to see you. I know. It's good to see you too. It's

better to see you in person, but this will do.

It is. It is. And last time we saw each other in person, it was It was a camping event, so we were mostly at night around a fire, so we didn't see much of each other really anyway. We just hung out.

That's very true. That's very true. Well, and I feel like we're kind of leaping right into this topic, which, by the way, if y'all listen to the show on a regular basis, you know that I usually start with asking my guests about their spiritual background and their relationship to the, Sacred feminine and we've covered all that the first time that Byron was on the show So i'm going to put that in the show notes if if y'all want to go check that out and hear that part of her story You should that was an amazing conversation but I kind of am feeling like You know want to talk about this topic of feral church and I I feel like we're already dancing around it. One is I'm like, I just kind of want to go right there. Yeah. What you said about the indigenous you know, the Cherokee that you're on Cherokee land, and I named it, I'm on a land of the Monica nation. And, and so immediately thinking of like to me, when we think about nature, it, In this place, in this country, this is very tied up to the, to the original peoples that tended the land that would have had a deep relationship to place. And so I'm curious, you know, just right out of the gate as you, and I want to talk about what it means to have feral church and all that, but just even thinking about that concept how does that weave with your understanding of indigenous relationship to place? To place like it was that kind of in your head as you were thinking about approaching this topic It's always in my head.

I think in my in my intro in the bio You said my family's been here four generations and my family's been here More like 350 years So we have been five generations of my family in the neighborhood in which i'm sitting right now And before that it was neighboring counties we were in the counties on on Three sides of the county I live in now. So yeah, I've been here a long time, family been here a long time. And I say that I haven't been able to get away from here, nor have any of us really that we have these kind of weird gnarly roots. And I was talking actually to a Cherokee friend of mine and. If you don't know her, you need to know her name is Jody Noe, Dr. Jody Noe, who lives in Connecticut. And we talk a lot about land and land based spirituality. But when she, when we were talking about how long my family had been here, she laughed and she said, Well, you've been here almost as long as we have. So, yeah, a long, long time. And because of that, And because of relative levels of poverty, I feel like I've been very close to this land for a long time. As a, as a child, I grew up in a, in a very rural area and grew up with a family that, left me alone and left me to my own devices. And lately I've thought about the word neglect and neglectful. And I was fortunate because if in fact, we can apply that word to my early life with my parents. With my family, primarily my mother, who did not work outside the home. She just turned me loose in the morning. I went out the door when I was not in school and I knew to be back by dark. But other than that, she didn't seem to monitor me very much. So I've been on the land and with the land and the way I describe it is it's not my land. It's not even the Cherokee land. It is the land with which we dwell and it can't be owned. People can claim they own it and spend a lot of money, frankly, pretending they own it and they can do all sorts of damage to it. But the reality is no one can own that. That it is its own entity and cannot be owned. Yes. What were we talking about? I just went off on a rant.

No, I mean, I think you wove it back together. I was just asking about, you know, indigenous peoples being on the land and how that kind of plays into this idea of feral church. And I feel like you kind of wove it together. And what I was thinking as you were saying that, Okay. And I feel like when I say this, you'll be like, well, duh, but for me, it's been kind of a thing that's become much more clear for me for the last couple of years is the importance of place and location to our spiritual work and to our magical work, like case in point. I. Have had a practice of rooting to the earth for years and you know, I think we do these things I don't know. I'd love to hear your perspective on this, but we do these things over and over and Eventually they root in us, you know, it's like oh now I get I mean, you know He always sometimes you just got to kind of do stuff wrote a little bit until you'd like really start to feel it Right, and what came clear to me a few years ago was how important Transcription by CastingWords location is to that practice that it's not a philosophical up in the head thing. It is a down in the ground thing. And the more that you are actually in tune to your place, the stronger that route is going to be, which just seems so obvious. But for me, like, I don't know, I don't think I understood that until like even moving to Virginia. And I'm like, wait a minute. Rooting here is completely different than rooting in California. Completely different. The land is different. It's all, it's all different and everything gets more powerful, I think, when we start to understand ourselves in relationship to place.

Oh, absolutely. There's no question about that. Yeah, the whole grounding piece is interesting in a dominant culture that seems to do a lot of moving around. So people move a lot for jobs, they move for partners, they move because it's too cold in New England in the winter and they would rather have a more moderate climate. People move around for all sorts of reasons, but, and because it's relatively easy now, as opposed to 100 or 150 years ago when you didn't probably move far from home. And I'm trying to figure out how to say this exactly, from my front yard. If I could see through the trees and the hills and all that, I can see the place where I went to elementary school. I can see the place where I went to high school. I literally, without erasing trees and hills and all that, can see the mountain where I grew up, spent the first 18 years of my life. I can see the cemetery where my mother's family are buried. I mean, I can, I can, if you could see it as the crow flies, I could stand in my front yard and see all of those things. But I'm really unusual, because most people are not like that in the modern world. They, and I love to ask people, where are you from? Well, I used to love to do that. Now I find that makes people uncomfortable because they, they don't know where they're from. And there's a truism, I guess, in Southern Appalachia that you are from where your grandmother was born. So I would then be from Buncombe County because my grandmother was born here in Buncombe County. In fact, again, if I could see through my neighbor's house and that row of pine trees, I could see the piece of land that held the house where my grandmother was born. And if I could see past that white van, I could see the house where my mother was born. So, that kind of enveloping of my personal history, it has blessings, certainly. But it also, it brings burdens. It brings huge burdens because this was for many years, the mill village for a cotton mill. And so it was very working class. And in the last 10 years, it has been gentrified so that there are houses in front of me, which I can see, and behind me, which I can't, that are on the market now for over a million dollars. So there is a lot to being rooted in, in a land that is healthy and helpful. And certainly my magic is is enhanced and made easier by my connection to the land with which I dwell. But it also means that I am forced to live on land and watch it be abused.

Yes.

And I get to feel that because you don't get to cut that off, you know so yeah, it's, it's really important. For example. When I got back from my Ohio tour, as I refer to it, the tour of far Ohio. It's the far land of Ohio. Far land of Ohio. It had been, as you know, terribly hot. Record breaking heat on a couple of days here. And no rain. Two days ago, I posted in my socials a picture of an eggshell and the people who know about that know that that is a weather working. And I said, if you live in an area is dry, that is dry and you feel it's important to get, to get some moisture, to get some rain, You know what to do. So I didn't explain the working because it's a very, it can be a pretty intense working and we don't want to flood the places that are not flooding. So this morning we got rain. And part of that is because I know the land with which I dwell. And I also know the weather working to do that. But also I don't do that casually. I listen to the land. And if, if I am panicking because look at my pasty face, I can't do heat and I certainly can't do dry. Both of those things are just horrendous to me. So I may be feeling a level of stress that the land itself is like, eh, it's just a dry spell in June. I don't know what you're freaking out about. So if I feel that from the trees, I mean, you're going to feel that from annuals because they freak out all the time. They. They're very emotional. Cucumber's very emotional. So if I feel it from the oak tree and the big maple tree, and they're like, hmm, this is not feeling very good, then I'll do the work. But it's because of my connection to the land that I feel that it's time to do that. It's not because I go, oh, it's so hot, and I'm so powerful. I have an idea. Why don't I call a storm? Well, that is not right, and it's not healthy. And it's a mistake. It's a bad use of ability, frankly.

Yeah. It just makes me really think of us folks that have been perhaps shaped by settler values first. And then, I'm just thinking of like the individuality of our culture and capitalism and like the quick and easy, you know, and even like that idea of, of understanding our personal power, which is important. I mean, we have it like we should be employing it, but without that tempering and understanding of responsibility that comes from recognizing yourself as belonging to a system. It's not about you as the individual, right? It's about you and your place in this bigger ecosystem. And that includes relationship to land. If we're not holding that, then we're like, I feel like I've heard indigenous people talk to us as we're like toddlers, like children, you know, like just like kind of bumbling around and breaking shit. And yeah, not holding it with responsibility.

Well, and I would suggest that's a less settler culture than it is urban culture. Because urban people feel so completely separate from land. And, yeah, it's easy to be out in the middle of, you know, a hundred acre national forest and go, whoa, I'm so connected to the land and the energy of this place. It's harder if you're an urban person, but that's still the earth. Every bit of the material that is the urban human construct comes out of this planet. It's it's not imported from Mars, right? And so the more we can think about the skin that is on the land. So if you're if you're a rural person, you deal with the skin on the land. You want to enhance the soil. So you have a good garden or a thriving orchard. You want to make sure there aren't toxins in your land as much as you can. You're going to be ostensibly more in touch with soil than people in the urban setting, but people in cities are also deep into the heart of land. And, and we don't talk about that nearly enough. Every pagan I know practically is like, oh, it's so hard now living in this city. But when I get to move out onto the land, when I get to move to the country, and most of these people will never move to the country. They might move to the suburbs and have a big backyard, but they're not going to move to the country. And so helping people understand that a built environment is still environment is really, really important that you can access land spirits and ancestors and all that from a city as easily as you can from your big suburban backyard or from the middle of a national forest. The techniques may be a little bit different, but mostly it's your attitude. If you feel like you, you are walled off from land and you can, Oh, I can't touch it. I can't be part of it because it's concrete and it's steel and all that, well, embrace that. Embrace what steel is. Steel is extraordinary. Concrete is extraordinary. And when you can put your hands on the pavement of a major city, You feel the energy and the lifeblood, not only of that urban human structure, but you feel the lifeblood of the land and the soil underneath it. And that's powerful and it's palpable.

Well, I, and I feel like this is kind of a perfect tee up into talking about this concept of your latest book, Feral Church, which I just like, as soon as I heard the title, I'm like, yes. Yes. Tell, yeah, talk about it. Where did the idea come from? Yeah. Okay, I'm going to try, try to be brief about this. Don't be brief. You

just take your time. We will hear more and more about this as as the time goes on. ripens. I was where I was actually this past week. I was in Southern Ohio in a place called Wisteria and Wisteria is a 600 plus acre nature preserve that is also a campground and event center. I was there when we learned that Carol Christ had died and I never knew her. I always felt like she was a teacher, but I, I never had the privilege of studying directly with her. And for listeners that

haven't heard of her, can you tell them who the, who she is?

She is one of the foremothers of the modern goddess movement. She wrote some incredible books. She wrote some incredible short pieces that appear in different places. The best I can tell you is Google her name, Carol P. Christ. Dr. Carol Christ and look at some of the things that she's written and, and drink them in. So she, she died and I mourned her and was sitting in a chair drinking coffee laced with whiskey, to be honest, and several other women that I knew came around and we were saying, oh, this is so horrible. We had known she'd been ill for some time, so it was not a surprise, but still. You know how that is. It's still a punch in the gut. So I'm on my way home from that event and me coming home is about six and a half hours, maybe seven hours. So I had plenty of time as I'm driving through the glory that is West Virginia. It was just, it was extraordinary. Green, a million shades of green. And the whole time I'm hearing in my head, you need to write a book about the goddess. And I was like, no, I don't think so. That's been done plenty of those around plenty of that happening. And I kept resisting it. And I like to think it was Dr. Christ herself being like, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tag, you're it. But no matter who it was, whether it was my subconscious or my guilty conscience or ancestors or notable goddess thealogians I finally answered myself as I kept saying, why me? Why me? Well, why me is that I've always my entire life been a goddess worshiper. I'm one of eight people who started a goddess temple that's been around 18 years. So why not me? And it's time now for the next batch of goddess theology. Because we, we had a lot of that in the, in the 80s, early 90s. And since then, many things have kind of roiled through that. So it was time for a new, I'm not going to say a new approach because veneration is veneration and you will choose your venerative process that I don't, I don't believe anybody gets to tell other people how they can worship, but it was time to look at it a little differently. And the, the phrase, a feral church came into my head and I used it long before the book was even halfway finished. I was saying feral church, it's feral church. And when I went to the first publisher, Who is not the group that actually published it. They sat on the book for 11, almost 12 months because they weren't sure how to do it because, ooh, goddess, ooh. And so I withdrew that proposal and then I gave it to the, the group I'm currently working with, which is Llewellyn books and they said, well, yeah, of course, but even they, Have been a little reticent about the concept of doing a book with the word goddess in the title And I think because they think and rightly so that there's going to be some backlash about that When we started Mother Grove Goddess Temple, I was doing a lot of interfaith at the time, and there were Episcopal priests who came to me and said, a goddess temple, how very cool. Listen, if you are going to build a temple, you need to immediately put an endowment in place because we just had to replace the roof on our historical building, and it was a million dollars, so make sure. Get an endowment. Another priest said, if you're going to put in a playground, we just did that. So it's very specific, the kind of things you can and can't do. So let me know. I'll give you my pamphlets. I'll connect you with our guy. And a Baptist preacher, who is a friend, Said you're gonna need a special kind of insurance for a church. So when you're ready for that insurance you come to me I'll take you to my guy and we'll we'll figure out what that how we can get that need met. So they were Incredibly supportive the people who were not supportive were in fact some members of the pagan community Because their immediate question was what about the God? Well, what about the God? And I explained as gently as I could for someone who is in the fervor of starting a brand new thing. I said, well, it's a goddess temple. That's what we all feel we've been called to create, a goddess temple. And so if you are interested in doing a temple for the God, I'm, I'm glad to walk you through our process of how we did our articles, articles of incorporation, how we are doing our federal papers. I'm glad to walk you through that. This is a goddess temple. And then I heard, well, pagans have so little money, wouldn't it be better to do a temple that's like a goddess and a god temple? And we were very clear, and we are still clear to this very day, that we are a place where you can celebrate the goddess. The goddesses, the divine feminine, the female divine, however it is, you, you wrap words around that concept. So if you are someone who loves the Blessed Virgin, but you really don't want to be Catholic, you can come to us because she's here with us. If you love the Shekinah, she's here with us. If you have been deeply acculturated into your African ancestry, but you still find yourself going to an AME church, but you would like a little more Yoruban, Yemaya, Oshun stuff, come to us. So we're not a coven, we're not a, a pagan temple per se, but we are a place Where the worship of the divine feminine is celebrated and honored and there is a place for it. I put up a page recently on Facebook for Feral Church. And one of the first comments was, well, what about the God? And my response is, well, this is a book of goddess theology. So frankly, there's not. Really anything about the God. I think I mentioned Dionysus in passing because I'm talking about the mean ads, but other than that, you're not really. Well, why not? Well, why not? Because I worship the goddess and the God equally. Well, chances are no, you don't, but I'm not going to challenge you on that because, and as I said to this person, if that works for you, Beautiful. But this book is a book of goddess theology. You might wanna look at it because it may, it may bulk up your own practice for the divine feminine that you honor so much. But pretty insistent that no, if it doesn't have the, the two of them together, that doesn't count. Mm-Hmm,

So, I'm,

I'm looking forward to to answering that question a thousand times. the, isn't there any God in here? Huh?

Oh my gosh, right. And are we asking that question to every Christian church? Where's the goddess? You know, where's the, where is, where is she? I have a funny story about that. Actually, you know, those billboards that I don't know if you have them, but you know, they were all over California. I know I've seen them on road trips around here too, which is like big old billboards that say I don't know, like, does Jesus love you? Call this number and find out, or whatever, like, that's like, 1 855 TRUTH or something like that. And it's more than that, but you know what I mean. And I was driving back from Mount Shasta with a friend. And we're talking about how, like, what would they say if we called them up and ask them who the Divine Feminine is or where the Goddess is? And can God be a woman? And my friend that was with me is like, let's find out. And so she calls and the first person we get. And I want to, I really want to say the people that were answering the phone were lovely, like really lovely people. The first person that answered the phone, she said, hi, you know, I'm just wondering, can, can God, can God be a, a woman like how, you know, how do you see that? And there was this long, long pause. And then she said I'm going to have to transfer you. And then she transferred us to another person and he Oh, bless him. You could hear him. He was kind of spinning scripture in his head, trying to figure out the answer. And then finally was like, well, no, you know, it says, like, it did just, I forget what he said, but you know, no, no, no, you know, it's just like God, that's just how God presents. He's a man. But you know, God can be a mother. And and my friend Erica is like, well, if God can be a mother, why, why isn't he a she? And the poor guy, he was so flustered. She wasn't being, and my friend was not being. You know, mean or anything. She's just questioning him, but it was it was kind of entertaining just to hear that whole spinning. So, I mean, if we all did that on a regular basis, like, where's the goddess? Then maybe it would make sense to come back and say, where's the God? Yeah,

yeah, exactly. Well, and how many books are there about Thor and Odin and Lou and, And, and people like me don't say, well, I mean, what about Danu? What about, what about Freya? What about, because, because we are, I don't know, polytheists, so it doesn't have to be one thing or another. Yeah, so that was interesting. But the process of writing the book, and I've been, I've been telling this to people and they look at me like I'm a little hmm. I normally, when I have an idea for a book, this is my eighth book, when I have an idea for a book, I start sketching out like a rough outline, and then that will turn into something that would be like a table of contents. Always, that's the way it's done. With this book, I decided The concepts I wanted to really explore and I decided the land in which I wanted to explore them and then I would do basically a journey, a path working into that place. And to see what would happen. And then when it was done, I'd write it down. And I did that again and again. And you and I were talking before we started about last year was a really long, busy year for me because I did a lot of traveling and in between I would come home and travel to places like. the great prairie before humans came along. I would travel to the steps. I would travel to all these mythical and distant places and dive deep into them. So it was like a whole year of just traveling from place to place. And that, that was so remarkably different. I don't know that I would ever write another book like that, but this book wanted that. This book wanted boots on the ground or bare feet on the ground. This book wanted exploration, not in an intellectual head way, but in a spirit way. So, yeah. And I just sent a couple more notes. I wanted to add some people to my acknowledgements. And I sent that back to my line editor, Lauren. And if you're listening, Lauren, you're the best. I love you. And she'd asked me to write another paragraph in one of the chapters. And I did, and I sent that back to her. But then I had the document open in front of me, which I haven't had in a while. a month or more and I read the end of the book and I cried because it's exactly what I want it to be and the book ends in Avebury and in about two weeks and two days I will be in Avebury again. Amazing. So it's, I mean, it's a deeply personal, but it's also deeply theological. And I was very clear that I wanted the word thealogy spelled T H E A, that it's a, a goddess book, a work of goddess thealogy. And the, the original subtitle, and I won't be able to remember the new subtitle, sorry. The original subtitle was Feral Church, Finding Goddess in the Wilderness. Well, they changed the subtitle a few months ago, I guess, to something like a path working for health community and magic, something like that. And I said, It really has to have goddess in the subtitle and and they were well, I mean, we're trying to get it It's widest readership possible and I was like, oh, yeah. No. No, I get that. I absolutely get that But if it doesn't have goddess in the title, then I have a problem So we got all that worked out and now it does have a path of working to find community Magic and the goddess. So we got the goddess back in it, but I think that they are They're kind of wondering how it is. They're going to promote it without getting backlash But we're going to get it. And we need to understand that part of the reason this book had to happen, part of the reason you do the work you do is that we don't take goddess seriously. Yes. Goddess is the thing that sells razors. So you can have perfectly smooth legs. Goddess is a woman of Of impossible dimensions, who is there as a in service to man. There's a whole lot that goddess has become that is not a being so powerful or a family of beings so powerful that they will kick your ass.

Yes,

and we need to remember that we need to remember that when there is flooding in the Midwest and my land is dry. That that's the work of the planet and the planet is goddess, too. So if you think goddess is some soft, loving I want you to remember back to the 60s with that margarine commercial where a woman dressed in a green leafy headdress She's got a green wreath and a green outfit is given this tub of margarine she tasted and says, Oh, I love butter or whatever and they say it's margarine and she goes, it's not nice to fool mother nature, and then she goes, so we need to remember that that concept that being those beings that we wrap this around our beings of immense power and great authority. And they are done with being demoted in the way that they, that they slash we have been demoted for 6, 000 years. Done. Done.

Yes, preach since we're in church and I wanted to ask you, I feel like we're kind of dancing around it, but I, I want to ask you to be explicit because I feel it's feel so important to me to help us connect the dots between that concept of being feral and the goddess and the divine feminine and how you see those things, coming together, like, to me, it's a very felt sense but I, yeah, I wonder if you could talk about that some.

Well, it's hard for us to talk about because we are so incredibly not free. And feral is free. Yeah. The primacy of freedom cannot be understated. So if you are a feral cat, you may not live a very long life, but you live it the way you intend to live it. And the idea that church, this thing that is, a big building that requires insurance and it requires a new roof and and you got to get all the seats filled with some bottoms that have a little bit of money to help with the upkeep of what you're doing. That's what church has become for us. Church has become for many of us that status that you achieve so you don't have to pay Taxes on your land and building. Church is more than that. And what I'm, and this is the first time I'm saying this in a really public way. But I feel like what we, not just me, but all of us are doing with the concept of feral church is that we are going into this beautiful, exquisite, ancient, ancient building that no longer functions as it used to, that no longer has people like it used to, to love and tend it. We're going into that structure and we are pulling out the copper pipes. And the wiring, and we're taking away the beautiful carved mantles and the newel posts, and we are renewing them. So we are taking, I am taking, the movement is taking back things that, that have been left to languish. And one of those concepts is the idea of a house church. So, You may not need a great big building to hold your public rituals in. Maybe you call together seven other people and you do it at home. And the Christians had a strong tradition of house church. And right wing Christians often still do. But there's no reason goddess worshipers can't have that. No reason. So that we can be together in a place that is safe, where we can begin to stretch our wings and And use our power. We have spent, and I know you and I have talked about this before. We have spent so many decades in empowerment circles, figuring out where's our power, how can we, what is, and then finally we stood up and we stood in our power. But the thing we have got to do now is we've got to learn to wield power, and we've got to learn to wield it in a way that it has not been modeled in a long long time. And I always refer back to Eisler's Chalice and the Blade because she was so explicit in that book about we think power is this thing which is subjugating others, which is being on top power over versus power with and she was clear about where dominator culture comes from, and that it is not a natural order. It's an imposed order on human culture and society. So we have some models. But what we see around us constantly is a strong person, usually a strong man, on top of a very oppressive system. And that has to go.

It has to go now.

Should have gone a thousand years ago, but right now, it's going. It's going.

Yeah, two things that I thought of as you were sharing that was one this idea of a house church to me feels really like one of the things that I see and I acknowledge like even in myself, we tend to really hold a lot of things through a capitalist lens because that's what we've been taught to do. And also, like, with all the patriarchal structures, so hierarchy, like, if you're going to build something, it needs to get bigger and bigger, and then you've got to put all this structure around it to hold it, and inevitably you're like, well, in order to hold that structure, I'm going to have to have hierarchy, and, and it becomes this, this thing. And so to me, like, the idea of house church is It's fundamentally anti capitalist in nature. It's just sort of stepping outside of that. And it doesn't have to be like, Oh, this is intentional to burn this shit down. It's also like, no, but we, this functions outside of that. So when that system collapses, which it's going to, when is the question, but it's going to, this still is going to hold us because it's not beholden. It didn't, it wasn't built on those You know, those that that foundation that has to go along with capitalism. And so to me, it just makes sense. It's about community and it's about holding on to a sense of the sacred outside of. This old paradigm that's crumbling. Yeah,

yeah,

yeah, we're

going fast enough to get out the marble staircases to where we're going to take everything of value that can be repurposed and reused, but all community has to start here. And it, and then it goes from there to your hearth, however you define that, whether that's your family, your intentional family, you, you and your cat, your dog, whatever that is, and everything has to grow out from there. So it has to grow out organically, and it can't grow into this.

Yeah, since she's pointing to like heart to hearth and then vertically for those who are listening. Yeah,

And you you said it so well about when all of it collapses and it's collapsing now me where we're watching that in real time when it has completed its collapse. We have to have systems in place or else we'll build it again. We've done that again and again. We need to have systems in place. So if it starts from your heart, to your hearth, to your immediate neighborhood, to your community, to your city, to your county, to your state, to your region, to your nation, to the earth. If that is how it grows out, then we're talking about the way mycelium works. We're also talking about an ancient concept of if you've got a circle that is strong and let's say that's your your house your hearth church is probably what that's going to be called so that's your hearth church and it's strong and you connect with another hearth church and that's strong and then you connect with a third hearth church and then you're starting to create a chain and that's strong it's stronger than the sum of its parts but when you Move that dimensionally, then what you have is chain mail and that is incredibly strong. That is the suburban chain link fence that keeps the dog on that side and your kid on this side. And so we, when we start to look again and again at structures, then we can understand that there is a natural order in way, in the ways that things grow. But there's also an imposed order and we can work past the imposed order to get the maximum amount of freedom that we can in our search for the feral church.

I love that. Yes. The other thing that came up as you were saying that is so something that I've been doing with a friend locally is we just call it emergent ritual and we get together on the full moon and we really do not have an agenda. We like our we just listen the day or two before and are like, what? What is what's coming forward for you? And it could be very deeply personal, you know, like my my personal life's kind of There's a bit of a shit show these days, you know, so like that's guiding me you know, but like for her like what's coming forward like that and we take that and that's our fodder and then We but then we start to pull in the other elements too so that could be magic tools that could be like I want to I'm really feeling called to bring this Particular tarot deck or I really like this stone from my backyard Which by the way is where I tend to work these days. I say no No judgment on your beautiful crystals and stuff like that. Everything has purpose, but i'm really really into place right now So this stone from my backyard is calling me. I want to bring that And where did we want to, where on the earth did we want to do this? We try really hard to be outside most of the time, if we can. And then we just get in the space and see what's going to happen. And it's. It's fucking cool, first of all, but it feels really powerful. And to me that I think, and it's right now it's just she and I, because we're very much in the same wavelength. And again, we're just listening when we'll be the right time to invite other people into this, who are kind of holding that we just happen to be really on the same energetic frequency, but like what those people will come if, and when they need to come and just let it all emerge. And to me, that feels very much like what you're talking about with like hearth hearth church too. Yes.

Would you agree? Yeah. Oh yeah, absolutely. At, at Appalachian Summer Solstice no one had scheduled a solstice ritual. They just, I don't know why it didn't go on the schedule. I don't plan it. And so, I was sitting with some friends And we were saying, what time is solstice tomorrow? Well, we're going to get together. We're going to meet here at your camp. Then we're going to go out and we're going to do something. Well, I don't know what that is. The next morning, another friend, which turned into a group of friends said, I am so angry, there is not a ritual for the solstice. I wanted to do a ritual and I was like, well, we're doing this thing and she and her friends had gotten a bag of organic meadow flower seed. And there was a place that had been, they'd done some construction and it was all chewed up, and they were going to go there and plant the seeds and put straw over them and hurrah. And I said, Well, why don't we put all that together? Great. So we put all that together. And again, we didn't call the quarters, we didn't have a written statement, we just all kind of circled up and said some things and, and put our hands over the seeds to, to imbue them with as much power for fertility as we could. And then we did the thing. And another person was like, well, when is the full moon? That's the same time as solstice, right? And we're like, no, full moon's tomorrow. Well, there's not a full moon ritual. I was like, we can do a full moon ritual. So we went down to this really beautiful little sacred grove. And we, I had some candles with me and somebody else brought strawberries because it was a strawberry moon. And we just did a full moon ritual. So it doesn't require training. It doesn't require a degree. It doesn't require any of that. What it requires is your open heart and your sincerity and your willingness to make a space where the goddess can be. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. And what is also coming up, and if people have been listening to the shows that I've done this year, this is a kind of a running theme that I've been exploring. I don't start out the year with themes, but I feel like this one feels important, because it just keeps coming up in different ways. And it is, and I feel like it's speaking to what you're talking about with Feral Church too, which is when we get too focused on the container. Then we lose the potentiality of the, the sacred, like the, the goddess, if you will, like she is just like, oh, she's potentiality. She is, she is emergent. And that's the kind of energy that we really need to tap into right now as all these old structures start to crumble. And You know, the containers of the familiarity and the ritual, even from a pagan perspective, I think can be really helpful. And they're almost reassuring in a way, you know, like this is, this is the way you do it. This is how you do it. And in, and in some ways that I, that makes sense to me because we're calling back to ancestral wisdom, or we're at least trying to, and all that's valuable. And, you know, actually I'm thinking of Cerridwen Fallingstar, who was one of my first guests on this show, like, you know, way, way back saying like, Oh, I practice magic the way my ancestors did 60, 000 years ago. I make it up. Like we don't, we also have to remember that it was emergent. There was no, like, it was just somebody or a group of people that was like, Hey, let's try this. This felt powerful. Let's see what's going to come through. And we, so whatever ritual we're holding, we also have to make space for that, that energy, which to me is like also what you're talking about with feral church.

And it's, it's a living tradition. Now it may have been slumbering in many places for a long time, but it's a living. And so it's going to change and it's going to be different. And my idea of God is maybe different than yours. I consider myself a hard polytheist. And so I see. I see a plethora of them. They are everywhere doing everything, but also I'm an animist. So for me, the big, our big round mama earth, that's maybe as much a goddess as any of us really need. Oh yeah.

Yeah. And I love that you even just named that because there's sort of a, there's a paradox in that, right? Like polytheist and animist or like, you know, or that, that it, to me, that's, that is the goddess. She's the yes. And. I'm this and this. I'm everywhere. I'm all the things. I

just, I've always thought that. I, I was asked to help do that UU curriculum cakes for the Queen of Heaven year. And I was talking about, oh, this goddess and that goddess, and I'm sure I got very verbose and smiley and oh, I, I just love Inanna. She's and this retired UU minister just looked at me kind of funny and she said, Are you saying you think that the goddesses are really real? Because she only worked with sort of Jungian archetypes. And the idea that I could think that these were non corporeal spirit beings who interacted with us but were not us, she, she was just like, she, she looked at, I call it my Papua New Guinea moment, because she looked at me like, like I had a bone through my nose, and I suddenly was, you know, dancing around a fire. Which is okay, I mean, I'm happy. Not the bone through the nose thing, but the dancing around the fire naked eye, I'm happy to do that. More than happy to do that. But, yeah, and, and this book, plus I guess my overall feeling about the divine feminine and the worship of them, her, their, of. It gets tangled, doesn't it, and complicated is that it's going to be different for a lot of people and for some people it's the archetype and that's all they need and for some people they need to know that somewhere out there is a spirit being that is called by the name that they pray to.

Yes.

And for some people it's only there is a, there is a unity in the plurality. For others, there's only just an insane plurality of all these female divinities. And all of that's right. All of that's absolutely correct because there's not dogma. The only dogma is that the Divine Feminine exists and we have ample evidence all around us in the land with which we dwell. Yes.

Yeah, I was also thinking of that quote from Starhawk when she said, you know, when people ask me, do I believe in the goddess? I say to them, do you believe in rocks? Yes, of course. Yeah. And I think the where I feel like, well, okay, we'll just keep it in my experience where I get bristly is when people try to say it's only this one thing. Well, to your point, like, oh, the goddess is only archetypal energy or the goddess is only this expression or the goddess is only the great mother and that's all that existed or whatever. And to me, it's just so like anywhere where we're trying to find the one answer feels patriarchal to me that you're in the land of monotheism there and patriarchy and yeah, and now we've stepped out of the world of the goddess. Thanks.

Right

and as if we can step out of the world of the goddess also paradox, but yeah

Yes. Yes, I think we can too. Yeah, I have to agree with that. There are I remember somebody described it years ago. They didn't like the idea of Matriarchy of a matriarchal thing because it just felt like Jehovah in drag And, and the, the point of the mother world is that it's life affirming and not life denying. And that if that is the basic grounding of it, that's enough to make it different than, than what the dominant culture honors, that it's about living fully. It's about honoring the birthing process and the gestational process, whether they are literal birthing and gestation. Or they are metaphorical birthing and gestation. So it is both the pain and glory of a child slipping out of a uterus, but it is also the creation of new art, and of new, and of new thought forms, and, and of newness. That must then be nurtured and tended into a maturity where it can create its own newness and then it's very different than what we've lived with now for thousands of years.

Yes, so much so. I love it. I can't even, so we've run out of time. Like, I don't even know how we did that. That was, this was really fast. It doesn't surprise me. I'm, I'm so excited for this book of yours. I know it's not coming out for a little bit longer, so who knows? Maybe it'll be my first three peat and come back and talk to me about it again when it actually comes out. I, we have to get you a crown or something. I, I, she's going to have to be like a crown of flowers and vines, you know, since it's feral.

Oh, that sounds good. Oh, yeah. And I will say that the book is available for pre order and if you pre order it from my local indie bookstore, which is malaprops. com, M A L A P R O P S dot com. When it comes in, they will call me, and I will go sit at a table, and I will sign your book for you, and put a bookmark in it, and they will ship it off to you. Now, you get your books wherever you normally get books, but if you do it that way, then you get one signed from me. And, you know, some people like that. And I love doing it with them. It's

a wonderful bookstore. Oh, that's awesome. Okay. So I'm going to put that in the show notes for sure.

Yeah,

absolutely. And yeah, thank you as always. It's so good to be in conversation with you. I love it. Love it so much. Thanks

for everything and, and best of luck in your exciting adventures.

Yeah, thank you. Thanks to all of you guys for listening to, so much more fun to do this because I know you're out there and if you like the show As always you can write it a review. You don't even have to write the review. You can give it five stars That'd be great. You can tell other people about it. Yeah, whatever you want If you're just feeling lazy, just click the stars and you're good You can tell other people about it and you can you can subscribe You can do all those things check out all the stuff going on at home to her academy. com home to her. com Take real good care of yourselves. I would recommend get outside and do something feral for yourself. Go run around naked. Well, maybe not around a fire because it's really hot right now, but you know, go, go howl at the moon, go get your bare feet in the dirt. Do something to reconnect with that great mother goddess through, through the earth. And until next time, take good care of yourself and I'll be with you again soon. Home to Her is hosted by me, Liz Kelly. You can visit me online at hometoher. com, where you can find show notes and other episodes. You can read articles about the Sacred Feminine, and you'll also find a link to join the Home to Her Facebook group for lots more discussion and exploration of Her. You can also follow me on Instagram, at home to her, to keep up to date with the latest episodes. Thanks so much for joining us and we'll see you back here soon.