Welcome to the Descent & Rising Online Retreat

A free series of intimate conversations on the heroine’s journey.

You’re In! Welcome!

Thankyou for joining me. I am delighted to have you with us for this free conversation series, where we will explore the personal & archetypal nature of descent & rising. A rite of passage that when honoured, recognised & supported, can be a catalyst for change for both ourselves & the world we live in. The retreat happened 4-11 April 2023 but the talks will remain available here indefinately as a resource to go with my book, Descent & Rising: Women’s Stories & the Embodiment of the Inanna Myth. I give huge gratitude to the women who offered their wisdom and time to these conversations. You can access their work via the links in each of their profiles.

Together we can honour our descents and dare to RISE.

Carly Mountain - Carly Mountain writer, psychotherapist and women's initiatory guide

Scroll down to access the recordings.
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Descent & Rising Online Retreat with Carly Mountain

ORIGINAL CONVERSATIONS

Each conversation has a different theme that addresses the archetypal experiences that are a part of ALL descents and rising. Whatever the particular configuration of your life’s unfolding, rites of passage, grief, being stripped to reveal what is emerging, reckoning with power, unleashing creativity, moving with rage, hopelessness and desire rising, are a part of all heroine’s journeys. I hope that these conversations can help you trust the process as it unfolds.

Journalling Prompts

To help you move with some of your own material in relationship to these conversations at the end of each retreat talk I offer some optional journalling prompts to move with. Free writing is a great somatic practice that can allow Ereshkigal to be heard. Allow your pen to move freely and see what emerges from within you.

Your retreat schedule:

Descent & Rising Course with Carly Mountain

dAY ONE

with Jane Hardwicke Collings, teacher, former midwife & creatrix of the School of Shamanic Womancraft.

Jane offers wisdom and insight into the four life stages as initiatory thresholds and the costs that are incurred when we are not honoured and held in these transitions. She delves into the embodied impact of cultural narratives and we look at how our heroine’s journey’s have the power to disrupt narratives that no longer serve us. We explore Inanna’s choice to descend, as a choice that we can all make: a choice to remember another way, for the benefit of not only our own lives, but also for the sake of the collective and the Mother Earth.

Day Two

with Avni Trivedi, women’s health and paediatric osteopath, birth doula, zero balancer and non-linear movement teacher.

In this gentle conversation, Avni and Carly look at grief as a fundamental part of all heroine’s journey’s. And how grief can be an alchemical process that can invocate the most creative endeavours of our lives. Avni shares wisdom on the somatic nature of grief and the way that her own grief has deepened her connection to nature, spirituality and the preciousness of life. And we examine how Inanna traverses grief through the hearts gate, and touch upon symbolism and the medicine of poetry and story, as languages that can speak to unspeakable griefs.

Day Three

with Kim Rosen, teacher and author of Saved By A Poem: the Transformative Power of Words and founder of the S.H.E College Fund.

Kim shares generously about the importance of the beholder in our heroine’s journey’s and how poetry, therapy, books and other forms, can all be sacred containers for our descents and rising. We look at the process Kim calls Undressing the Voice and how this mirrors the stripping of Inanna as she descends through the seven gates. Kim describes the descent as a painful and yet necessary path: a path that when embraced, can bring us into deeper intimacy with who we truly are.

Day Four

with Lucy H.Pearce, author of ten life-changing non-fiction books for women and founder of Womancraft Publishing – creating life-changing, paradigm-shifting books by women, for women.

In this enlivening conversation, Lucy and Carly explore how our descents and rising call us to reckon with power and in doing so unleash our creativity. This is a fiery path that Lucy has walked, in her life, through her writing and in the creation of Womancraft Publishing (who are also the publishers of Descent & Rising). She shares vibrant insight into her own reckoning with the Sky Gods, and some of the things we may have to face when we step into our authority and forage for different ways of being creative and more authentic in the world.

Day Five

with Chameli Ardagh, visionary and CEO of the Awakening Women Institute.

In this depthful and immensely moving conversation Chameli shares her experience of Inanna and the initiatory, unswerving energy of Ereshkigal that she experienced through the pandemic, menopause, divorce and the recent death of her son. She explores the beingness of rage, beyond the mind, beyond what is rational, as the felt sense of what is. The acute experience of hopelessness – and the relief. The experience of losing the Goddess and her identity. And finally, the holy fecundity of desire and the natural movement of rising.

Day Six

with Saida Desilets, a counter-culture creatrix who is passionately devoted to normalizing healthy, embodied, sexuality as a means to optimize one’s vitality, relationships, and genius in the world.

Saida embodies the succlence that she is such an advocate for in her work. In this talk, she frames the descent as a deep love affair with our body, a reclamation of trust and a revelation of the home base within our soma and pelvis, that then supports our rising. She illuminates the ancient nature of desire and how the Inanna journey is an uncovering of the true compass of our desire, that is so often highjacked and mishaped by culture and conditioning. This conversation is an invitation to follow the emergent and evolutionary current of your desire into relationship with the fullest most juicy expression of your unique aliveness.

Day Seven

with Tamara Albanna, artist and author of Inanna’s Ascent: Reclaiming Female Power and Trista Hendren, creatrix of Girl God Books.

Tamara and Trista are passionate about our ability to rise. In this talk we explore the possibilities of rising and the need for sacrifice, collaboration, compassion and creativity to help us ascend. As a daughter of Iraq, where the Inanna myth originated, Tamara speaks to how her Iraqi sisters have been held in the underworld by external forces, but also speaks to the strength and resolve of Middle Eastern women, even in the face of adversity. This conversation has a warmth and joy that can be cultivated inside of sisterhood. A sisterhood that is embodied in the myth and that we can hopefully create inside of ourselves and our lives as we rise.

Day Eight

Invoking Inanna was the LIVE call that happened on 11th April at the close of the retreat. You can access the recording below.

You are invited to enter a process of movement and creative reflection with Carly who will bang the drum for you as you begin to digest what has been stirred by opening up these conversations. The heroine’s journey does not happen only in our heads, it happens in our flesh and bones. This call will offer an embodied process of invocation, that can help you root down into the Inanna within.

Want to have the book to travel with as a part of your retreat?

You can purchase you copy of Descent & Rising today.

buy the book

New book Descent & Rising By writer Carly Mountain