A Small Invitation into the Underworld

A little while ago I wrote Coming Back from the Underworld, reflecting on a theme that seems to have quietly underlined most of my life: descent.

For as long as I can remember, I have felt strangely drawn toward the symbolic world of death, darkness, transformation and what lies underneath the visible surface of things. There has always been something oddly familiar there, even safe. I sometimes wonder how much my strong Scorpio signature has to do with this particular fascination, but whatever its origins, the Underworld has become one of the central landscapes of my life.

Reaistance was a huge part of the whole process. Then came a period when resisting was no longer possible, and what had felt like a call toward death gradually revealed itself as something very different: a descent toward parts of Life I had left behind.

Only much later did myths and archetypes begin giving me language for what I had been living.

And recently, Inanna arrived.

I began contemplating her descent through the seven gates and unexpectedly found myself looking at my own journey again through an entirely new lens. One gate opened another. Venus entered the picture. Alchemy began weaving itself through it. Experiences from years ago suddenly appeared in a different relationship to one another.

What began as a contemplation of an ancient myth has become an extraordinarily alive inquiry into Eros, desire, rage, vulnerability, power, surrender, boundaries, death, love and return.

I originally thought I would simply share these writings here on Facebook.

But as they began to deepen, I noticed that I didn’t want to.

They felt too intimate for the open stream. Not secret, but somehow requiring a different kind of container. A place where a thought can be left to breathe. Where we don’t need to turn everything immediately into content, explanation or debate. Where a few people can enter the same symbolic landscape together and see what begins to move in their own lives.

And so, quite organically, a very small Venus group has been born.

We are beginning now, at the threshold of the coming Venus retrograde, and will use this period as a living exploration of descent and return. Inanna and her seven gates will be one of our maps. The Venus archetype and alchemical processes will weave through the journey as well, alongside our actual lived experience.

This is not an astrology course, and I am not entering it as a teacher with a finished system.

I am sharing an inquiry while I am inside it.

Some of the questions already opening feel incredibly alive to me. What if descent is not primarily about becoming someone new, but about discovering what remains when what we are not begins to fall away? What happens to Eros when we stop placing the source of our aliveness outside ourselves? What if anger, rather than being something to transcend, carries an intelligence capable of protecting what is sacred? What becomes of desire after fantasy, projection and old survival structures have been allowed to decompose? And how do we bring what we find in the darkness back into relationship, creation, body, home and ordinary life?

How do we return without abandoning the Underworld?

I want to keep this group very small and intimate. There are currently two other people joining me, and I feel there may be room for perhaps two more.

I am not posting a link publicly because I would like the group to form through genuine resonance rather than numbers.

This may be for you if the language of Inanna, Venus, the Underworld, alchemy, Scorpio, descent and the feminine mysteries already touches something familiar in you. Not necessarily because you know much about any of them, but because there is a feeling of recognition. A sense that these are not merely interesting subjects, but doors into terrain you are already walking.

The space itself will remain devoted to this journey. I will share writings, contemplations and questions as they unfold, and there will be room for personal reflection and witnessing without the expectation that everything needs to be interpreted, advised upon or even spoken.

We begin at the threshold.

If reading this creates a clear little yes somewhere inside you, send me a private message and tell me what in this journey is calling you.

I would love to hear why you want to descend with us.

(Picture is obviously Ai tweaked to bring about vibrations of Inanna)