Welcome back to White Rose of Avalon, my Darlings.   For today’s blog post, I will be sharing my review of The Path of the Priestess: A Guidebook for Awakening the Divine Feminine by Sharron Rose!    This is the last book that my husband gave me for my birthday in September, so I want to begin by thanking him.    

Now, I have had this book on my to-read list for a long time, but I had not gotten around to obtaining a copy until my past birthday.   That being said, I am very glad to have finally read this book.    The book was published all the way back in 2002, and that means that some of the references the author makes were to the world twenty years ago, but are really all the more pressing observations that still ring true today!   First, I want to state that the descriptions of the Yugas, the Great Cycles, definitely gave food for thought concerning how everything is truly cyclical, and exploring the reason why so much awakening of the Divine Feminine has been occurring over the last several decades.   That is part of the reason why what the author wrote seems all the more poignant and relevant today than even in 2002.   

I really enjoyed reading the book, as the first half is the author discussing her own experiences on her spiritual journey over the course of 20 or so years, and the second half of the book gives practical exercises and explorations of Goddesses and archetypes.   This was thoroughly fascinating to read, and I always appreciate reading others’ experiences on their own spiritual paths.   While the author’s path is very different from my own, rooted in the exploration of Hindu, Buddhist, Egyptian, and later even Gnostic and Alchemical magicks, I found that many of the things she discussed have an overarching narrative of exploration.     

This desire to explore and discover the hidden wonders of the Goddess across cultures is something that I think many Priestesses today can relate to, and I certainly do.   So, while the specifics of her path differ greatly from my Celtic and Avalonian Path, I find that there are themes that are so profoundly resonant with the discovery of a deeply felt call to walk the Path of the Divine Feminine in any of Her forms, which is quite universal!   Beyond that, my study of Vedic Astrology over the last year has shown me just how resonant I feel with the starlore of India, and how it can be applied across cultures (where I can even see parallels to the Celtic lore I am so versed in).   I think all of this made the fusion of ideas presented here ever more intriguing to me.   I really appreciated the author discussing three types of Goddess Archetypes at the end of the book, and giving cross-cultural examples and stories of each Goddess Archetype, along with the exercises to aid Priestesses in learning to embody the archetype!   After all, I have long been a sucker for archetype work, what with my background including an Associate’s Degree in Psychology.    

When the author began discussing the Alchemical information, that is when I began to resonate more deeply, as this is also the point when she wrote of some Celtic lore.   Reading about the author’s experiences with finding commonality between the beliefs of Tantra and those of Alchemy was truly profound, and definitely gave me food for thought in my own Sacred Sexuality work.   In the past, I had perceived a link between Alchemy and Tantra (which I have studied a bit as a lifelong yoga practitioner, especially with all of the time I have spent practicing Kundalini Yoga), but the author laid out the information so well that I found myself nodding along in deep agreement and feeling as if information I had known on a subtle level had clicked into place.   

At the end of the day, I think that this is a great book to read if you are beginning on a Priestess Path and want a sampling of all sorts of different modes of thinking.   It is also great for those like myself, who are firmly rooted in their paths, yet are always open to exploring other modalities, for there is so much to learn by exploring the way ancient cultures may have overlapped!  

I hope you have enjoyed reading my thoughts on this fascinating read.   Have you read The Path of the Priestess?   Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

Note on Image: The image at the top of the post is the book cover.   I found the image on https://www.amazon.co.uk/Path-Priestess-Guidebook-Awakening-Feminine/dp/0892819642.           

LINK TO AVALONIAN ROSE FAERY MYSTERIES PATREON: patreon.com/AvalonianRoseFaeryMysteries 

Further Reading

• The Path of the Priestess: A Guidebook for Awakening the Divine Feminine by Sharron Rose