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Descent & Rising | Women’s stories & The embodiment of The Inanna Myth
When our lives fall apart we often feel broken, ashamed and deeply alone. But what if you knew, as you experienced this descent, that it was mapped out in a myth thousands of years old? What if, despite the uniqueness of your own life and experiences, each stage of the process was universal? The journey of descent and rising is the core initiation of the feminine – the heroine’s journey – one travelled by billions of women before you.
I stumbled across the Inanna story during my own descent and was astonished by the symmetry it held with my own lived experience. Since then I have devoted to my life to working with its teachings and specialise in beholding others as they traverse the changes and challenges of the heroine’s journey in their daily lives.
“The heroine’s journey is an erotic, mystical initiation that revivifies our place in the shape of things…The fodder of our descents provides the compost from which the richest fruits of our lives can grow. If only we can turn towards our pain and let it work in us.”
4th - 11th April 2023
Descent & Rising Online Retreat
You are invited to join this FREE online retreat with Carly Mountain and Special Guests, where we will explore the personal and archetypal nature of descent & rising. We will delve into themes and experiences that we may encounter in our heroine’s journey’s and uncover why the Inanna-Ereshkigal myth has such wisdom and medicine for our personal and collective lives. These conversations are an invitation to find solidarity in your experiences, tend to your longing and unveil the wisdom inside of you.
INVOKING INANNA – The retreat will finish will a LIVE call with Carly where you are invited to move, breathe and digest what has been stirred within you. This path is an embodied one, it happens in our flesh and bones. This is not the end it is only the beginning.
Together we can honour our descents and dare to rise.

Online Programme
Descent & Rising: an erotic mystical initiation into your feminine wisdom
A Live 4-part Online Course Exploring the Embodied Experience of the Inanna Myth 10th – 31st May 2023.
Come and delve into the mystery and medicine of the Inanna myth. Held within a circle of women we will dive into the realms of our embodied underworld to commune with places that have been calling for our attention. Now is the time to remember, reclaim and reconnect with your deep self. She who has been buried under layers of conditioning and expectation – she who is connected to the fecundity of all things.
Remember. Reclaim. Reconnect.

PRAISE FOR DESCENT & RISING
Descent & Rising is a summons, a companion and a map to the deep self that is essential in this perilous moment of our personal and planetary history. Carly Mountain has created a masterpiece, seamlessly and sensitively weaving threads of intimate personal narrative with ancient myth, modern science, psychology, poetry, spirituality and more. Perhaps the greatest gift that Mountain transmits is an uncanny intimacy with Inanna herself. Here is the companion many of us have longed for as we feel our way through the darkest moments of our lives. I enter these pages alone and emerge rooted in a community of wisdom that not only spans the globe but reaches back in time to the ancestors and forward to those who will come after us, carrying the medicine of these teachings in their cells.
Kim Rosen, author of Saved by a Poem: The Transformative Power of Words
Reading Descent & Rising is to be invited into an ancient lineage of feminine wisdom, which for many of us perhaps was forgotten, but as we discover through this rich and insightful book, was never lost. Carly weaves magic as she illuminates the timeless intelligence of one of our oldest goddess myths through the lens of real-life underworld experiences. The result is a wise, warm and engaging companion for those of us who have been through a painfully deep ‘underworld’ experience, and a sanctuary for those who are being stripped to their core. Let Carly, Inanna and Ereshkigal guide you, step by step, gate by gate, as you descend and discover your very own heroine’s journey.
Alexandra Pope and Sjanie Hugo Wurlitzer, authors of Wise Power: discovering the liberating power of menopause to awaken Authority, Purpose and Belonging
Women's residential retreats. Online and in person courses
Events & Courses
Carly holds short courses and events online and in person, and residential retreats for those who wish to dive deeper. To keep up to date with new offerings sign up to connect below.
@carly_mountain
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Carly sends out a newsletter once a month with updates, insights and info on courses and events interwoven with poetry.