Praying in the Dark Minotaur

Description

Why is there a 2nd Praying in the Dark intensive?
How is this one different from the first?
What does the subtitle mean?

Cathy Stevens Pratt and I created Praying in the Dark (now available OnDemand) to inaugurate a radical new rosary completely untethered from religion. We wanted a prayer practice that sings of our original masculine-feminine partnership-the way we lived before patriarchy infected men and women with poisons of domination and control.

As our world falls deeper and deeper into fascism, misogyny, racism, violence, and war, we felt a visceral need to create a theology-free prayer that holds the transcendental power, vision, beauty, and strength we need to carry us through the rough transition from suffering under patriarchy into a whole and holy way of living with reverence for all.

It was a beautiful and powerful intensive. We met four unusual guides for the first time: Hecate, Minotaur, Corn, and the Bees. We pondered the five crimes of patriarchy and learned the five bloom prayers that heal them. We fell in love with radical new prayer couplets that honor strength and compassion in both men and women, even encouraging us to shift roles to support one another. We slowly learned this new rosary and prayed it together for the first time.

As Praying in the Dark came to an end, we realized we had not created one intensive, but had stepped into a labyrinthine path of a whole new multi-intensive adventure.

An adventure that:

• takes us deep into the mystical wisdom held in the land and its creatures-wisdom far older, greater, and more meaningful than any taught in patriarchal religions
• scrambles our understanding of and experience of time
• alters and expands our relationships, starting with our core relationship-with ourself
• prioritizes presence, safety, empathy, attention, and responsibility over patriarchal dictates
• rearranges what is important and what we attend to
• awakens memories of the future

Our Unexpected Guides!

If this way of praying in the dark is untethered from religion, who are our cosmic guides? Three immediately stepped forward to bring us the powerful feminine, joyful masculine, and unique nature of the two in one. And then, the bees barged onto the scene to teach us about true community.

Hecate
Hecate is the original Goddess of the crossroads. She sees in the dark and guides us through our own dark-personal and collective. Patriarchy was so afraid of Hecate that they transformed her into a three-headed monster. Minotaur
The original Minotaur danced joyfully across Paleolithic cave wall thousands of years before patriarchy lied about him and turned him into a monster. Minotaur reminds us who the masculine really is when all the patriarchal veneer is stripped away. Corn
Corn is an unusual monoecious plant containing both the masculine pistillate and feminine staminate flowers on the same stalk. Corn is a perfect symbol of the original partnership between the holy masculine and the sacred feminine.

The Bees

Bees live in highly evolved, collaborative, cooperative societies where the well-being of all comes first. These guides lead us in a new way to approach our self, our relationships, our work and our awareness in the outer world.

What we will explore together

Gatherings begin with quotations to ponder, invocations of beloved angels and guides including our own morphic selves who hold memories of the past and of the future. For each ripple of safety, there will be Tarot guidance with deep soul writing followed by an experiential journey to the Star Dial on Crete to help us explore safety in depth. Gatherings end with The Blessing of Isis.

Discovery Gathering 1-The First Ripple of Safety-My Self

1. Why is safety the primary indicator of the demise of patriarchy?
2. What underlies true safety: awareness, presence, discernment, responsibility
3. Why does safety begin internally, with my self, not the outside world?
4. Oracle guidance on finding and building safety in my self, my body, my heart, my prayers with deep soul writing questions from the Oracle
5. First journey to the Star Dial on Crete to meet the Minotaur and explore personal safety

Discovery Gathering 2-The Second Ripple of Safety-My Relationships  

1. From the self, safety expands into my home, my close relationships, my family
2. Who is in this second ripple?
3. What underlies true safety in my relationships: awareness, presence, discernment, responsibility
4. Oracle guidance on safety in my relationships with deep soul writing questions
5. Second journey to the Star Dial to explore safety in relationships with Minotaur

Discovery Gathering 3-The Third Ripple of Safety-My Work

1. Beginning with the self and emanating into my relationships, my ripples of safety begin to affect my work, my work environment, the purpose and impact of all that I put out into the world
2. How does my work in the world increase or reduce the level of safety in others, and in the environment?
3. What underlies true safety in my work: awareness, presence, discernment, responsibility
4. Oracle answers our questions about creating fields of safety
5. Third journey to the Star Dial to explore safety in our creative expressions, our business communities, and the work we put into the world

Discovery Gathering 4-The Fourth Ripple of Safety-My Attention

1. From within a safe self, with safe relationships, and doing work that increases safety for ourselves and others, we are ready to explore the wide range of safety in all we touch: where we put our attention, our dreams and desires, how we contribute to safety in the climate of our world
2. Review all that underlies true safety in every dimension of our lives: awareness, presence, discernment, responsibility
3. Final Oracle wisdom with guidance for the road ahead
4. Final journey to the Star Dial to receive Minotaur’s closing blessing

What you will receive

Invitations to

• 4 live Discovery Gatherings and recordings
• 4 Watch Parties
• 4 live Prayer Cafés

Resource Page

Access to password-protected Resource Page filled with recordings of all gatherings, plus a feast of support materials

Getting Started PDFs

• Welcome Handbook
• Prayer Handbook
• The 5 crimes of patriarchy and the prayers that transmute them
• The Song of the Morning of the World rosary prayers

Bonus Videos

• Janet and Cathy talk about how they stumbled upon the Star Dial on Crete and discovered its magical ability to alter time
• Sample journey to the Star Dial so you can experience how it scrambles time
• Seven Steps to Get into Theta teaching video by Janet, plus 25 minutes of Theta music to help you drop into mystical theta

Optional

• membership in a private Praying in the Dark with the Minotaur Facebook discussion group
• purchase The Song of the Morning of the World timeline
• purchase The Song of the Morning of the World rosary with choice of medallions
• purchase Praying in the Dark with the Minotaur 8 x 11 blank Journal

Our Schedule

4 Discovery Gatherings
Tuesdays: September 15, 22, 29, October 6, 6:00-7:45pm Eastern 4 Watch Parties so people in all time zones can gather
Thursdays: September 17, 24, October 1, 8, 1:00-2:45pm Eastern 4 Prayer Cafes for conversation, questions, shared experiences
Sundays: September 20, 27, October 4, 11, 2, 2:00-3:00pm Eastern Weekly The Song of the Morning of the World rosary Wednesdays 5:00-5:30pm Eastern
Monthly The Song of the Morning of the World rosary 1^st Sunday of the Month (our October 4 café will begin after the rosary)
One Pre-requisite

Be sure to take the original Praying in the Dark intensive. It’s an excellent foundation for this one. You don’t have to have completed all four gatherings, but do get started. The first intensive sets the stage for this one and all that is to come. Praying in the Dark: How Visionaries Pray in a Time of Collapse is available On Demand at a crazy-low fee. The only other pre-requisite is a deep desire to bring more joy and safety into the world.

Registration
To make it possible for everyone to participate in this radical and holy prayer intensive, we are keeping the registration fee very low. If you wish to make an additional donation to support this effort, please add $27. Thank you for all your generous donations. $120.00 registration for one
$ 27 donation

Who will you be discovering with?

Janet Conner

I am a Prayer Artist, Mystic Witch, and Fire Keeper, creator in the Theatre of the Miraculous, and mistress of the threshold-the mystical theta brain wave state. But first and always, a devoted daughter of the Sacred Feminine. My first book, Writing Down Your Soul, was a surprising success and led to The Lotus and The Lily, Soul Vows, and more. But all that was warmup. In the dark on February 24, 2018, I clearly heard prayer artist in my left ear. I knew prayer artist would change everything, but I said yes anyway. That yes led me to write a whole new genre of prayer as love songs, redefine prayer altogether, and begin to offer prayer intensives with other mystics.

Two years later, witch arrived via a stunning endorsement from Rabbi Tirzah Firestone. I was ecstatic; my agent was not. I ended that relationship to follow witch where she wanted to go. She knew exactly what she wanted: transmute witch from a word that strikes terror back into an honorific that awakens a bone-deep memory of being revered for our WitchArt gifts. I have followed that directive and created several witch intensives, including the 7-part The Witch Sequence. All are available On Demand.

To do this profound work, I need lots of silence and mystical theta and my home in tiny Ozona Florida on the Gulf of Mexico is perfect. Here, I am surrounded by the songs of screeching ospreys, the shadows of swooping woodstorks, and the call of one very protective hawk.

Cathy Stevens Pratt

Once upon a time a little girl knew she was a witch. I played in the woods, prayed a walking rosary with my grandmother, and made potions with my cat. For decades I worked as a freelance illustrator & graphic designer and lived all over this country. Moving around taught me people are good and reminded me that the world is alive. Everything is alive. The trees, rocks, plants, creatures, clouds and stars all speak to me when I listen.

I am an oracle, mystic artist, mom, and partner. I live on the dark side of a mountain in the middle of Vermont. Here trees fall, winds howl, winter is brutal, summer is vibrant, water trickles and rages, and I am visited by many woodland creatures. The combination of being surrounded by wild beauty and a daily practice of Deep Soul Writing opens me to listen to my voices and to see into the unseen. This Imaginal Realm speaks through me so I may create sacred art in the form of paintings, words, fiber Mighty Dolls, rosaries and beads, and Visual Medicine™.

My offerings include:

• Oracle/Tarot readings using multiple decks, my own art and intuitive custom journeys
• One-of-a-kind fiber Mighty Dolls as talismans of power and healing
• Personal rosaries and mala beads dreamt into being for focus and joy
• Creative Journeys to inner realms to solve problems, open creativity, meet ancestors and guides, awaken inspiration
• Teaching Visual Medicine™ easily bridges the real world with the mystic and invisible

I love to share with my sister-witch collaborator Janet Conner. We create community, safe spaces, and conversations about creativity, the ancestors, deep deep time, forgiveness work and more. Supporting others in their personal and creative journeys gives me great joy.

Tony Goncalves
Tony’s spiritual work lives at the intersection of prayer, ritual, healing, and spiritual disruption. Rooted in his love of chanting mantras on malas and praying the rosary, his path has also involved breaking apart inherited spiritual practices and asking what still feels alive inside them. Much of his work explores healing religious and patriarchal trauma while bringing sacred traditions into honest relationship with the world we are living in now rather than the hierarchical and often disconnected systems from which many of them emerged.

Over the years, Tony has created and facilitated a wide range of nontraditional rosaries and prayer experiences, including practices centered on climate change, the five senses, the natural elements, and inter-spiritual practices inspired by Green Tara. A growing focus of his work has been healing and restoring the divine masculine through mythic exploration, including the creation of a transformational journey exploring the healing of the Minotaur as a sacred masculine archetype. His work draws wisdom from multiple traditions, though he never feels bound by any single one.

At the heart of his work is a desire to cultivate compassion, emotional honesty, and healing between the masculine and feminine within himself and others. Through prayer, ritual, and shared reflection, Tony hopes to create spaces where people can encounter the sacred in ways that feel embodied, restorative, untamed, and fully alive.