Saturday, November 11, 2017

Dark Goddess Craft: A Journey through the Heart of Transformation by Stephanie Woodfield book thoughts


Title: Dark Goddess Craft: A Journey through the Heart of Transformation
Series: N/A
Author: Stephanie Woodfield
Published Date: November 8th, 2017
Publisher: Llewellyn Publications
Source: Netgalley
# of Pages: 240
Format: Kindle
Genre: Nonfiction/Spirituality
Days to Read: 3
Rating: ★★★★ (4/5)
My Social Media: Goodreads/My Booktube Channel/Twitter/Instagram

Goodreads Synopsis

Discover how to use the many faces of the dark goddess to navigate the process of deep and rewarding change. This practical guide looks at the misconceptions surrounding dark deities and encourages you to draw on the power of the dark goddesses to work through aspects of yourself or your life that you wish to change.

Organized into three sections—the descent, challenge, and rebirth—Dark Goddess Craft guides you into your own darkness and helps you emerge renewed. Stephanie Woodfield presents the goddesses you will meet along your path of transformation and explains each one's role in helping you. This book will light your way through the shadows and show you how to become the best version of yourself.

My Thoughts

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me this e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

People hear of dark goddesses or dark things in general and think evil, bad, negative and are scared of them. That isn't the case here, and no this doesn't deal with dark magick. Yes, things in this book deal with things that frighten us, but they aren't evil. It helps teach how to deal with our demons, we all have them. How to deal with the darkness within us. That balance is a necessary part of the world and sometimes, what we think of as dark, is just something we have trouble with and are scared of. Honestly this book is hard to describe and review as it's non-fiction and spiritual based.

I think almost anyone could learn things from this book though. I learned a lot reading it. About mythology, about humanity, about myself. I hope to go through this book again at some point but take it much slower really taking the time to go through each part as I am pagan too. Even if someone is not pagan, if you are open to it I do think anyone could gain things from this book, even if everything in it is not for you. Also please keep in mind if something in particular does not work for you, your path is your own and you can rework things so they work for you and your life and ignore what doesn't work for you.

For not knowing how to put it in better words, i'll let the book speak for itself. Please keep in my mind I got an uncorrected proof from Netgalley, which may differ in the final version.

"The dark goddess and the lessons she teaches are vital to our lives. Her destructive aspects teach us that there is death within life, that we are constantly changing and evolving. No matter what we have been through in our lives, we can rise from the ashes and like Kali dance ecstatically on the ruins of our old selves toward rebirth. As the fierce warrior drinking the blood of the slain, she is a no-nonsense goddess, teaching us to make our voices heard, to stand up and be counted, and inspiring us to bring about change, both in ourselves and the world around us. And she is also the shadowy keeper of the dead, teaching us how to pierce the veil, to see into the future, and to commune with the beloved dead. But she is also the side of the Divine we avoid the most, and as a consequence we often have difficulty working with her."

"Dark Gods rule over the things we fear the most. Some fear that working with this aspect of the dark goddess will bring out the darkest or worst parts of themselves. Other times we are simply afraid to welcome change into our lives and finally release the things we keep buried deep within our souls. While working with the darker aspects of the Goddess may make you face things about yourself you would rather ignore, her path is one of transformation and ultimately one of healing."

"Today we like to think of the world in terms of everything having its opposite, instead of seeing that most things, including the gods, fall into a gray area. There is male and female, night and day, and good and evil. Dark deities are in no way evil, but what we have learned to do when we approach the gods in this manner is to label any deity that holds sway over a realm or concept that frightens us as "dark." Gods who rule over death, change, war, violence, anger, and all the things that make life difficult or painful must also be dangerous and untrustable in some way, not unlike the things they hold sway over. What we often fail to see is that dark gods are not the cause of these things, but rather the very beings who teach us to understand them, who challenge us to move past our fears and give us the strength to face some of the more painful unavoidable things in life."

"Defining "dark" as a term that always indicates something negative also has racial connotations. There is an element of cultural baggage around the idea that lightness is good or preferable and being darker is shameful when it comes to skin color. There is even a myth about how Parvati is shamed by another god who calls her dark-skinned, and she takes measures to lighten her appearance, the darkness she sheds transforming into the goddess Kali, whose name means "black." We have to let go of the idea that "dark," within any context, is a bad thing. These attitudes influence not just the way we look at each other but how we perceive deity."

"You may be a parent, a spouse, a child, and a coworker and play many roles to different people, but you are still one person. When we put a label on something, we tend to forget that it is anything else but the label we have given it. It took me many years to see that the Morrigan has other aspects and faces. She can be dark and scary, but that is not the limit of her power or scope as a deity. The problem with labeling something "dark" or "light" is that we put blinders on and forget that the gods are more than the title or box people put them in."

"Throughout this book, I will refer to the goddesses we are working with as dark, but only because this has evolved into the terminology that we are most familiar with."

I know that's a lot but there is so much more I have highlighted. So much more i'd love to share and talk about but I want others to experience the book for themselves. This is a very educational and thought-provoking book, and one I really should work more in-depth with.

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