Goddess Initiation: A Practical Celtic Program for Soul-Healing, Self-Fulfillment & Wild Wisdom

A little over four years ago, I worked through the 15 weeks of lessons in Francesca's first book, Be a Goddess: A Guide to Celtic Spells and Wisdom for Self-Healing, Prosperity, and Great Sex, and found, to my great surprise and pleasure, that these lessons were fun, inspiring, and, most of all, life-transforming. The psychology was sound, the spirituality was amazing, and the teacher was warm and caring.With the very positive experience I had working through Be a Goddess, I was very excited when Goddess Initiation was released. Designed to take a little more than a year to work through, Goddess Initiation has even more to offer than its predecessor. I didn't think that was possible!Goddess Initiation is essentially a workbook to help you gain personal insights, remove your inner blocks to joy and healthy sexuality, and discover your own creative passion for living. A shamanic method of self-empowerment and spiritual growth, the tools in this book are valuable regardless of your gender, sexual preference, or cultural or religious background. Francesca says, "Mine is an interfaith Goddess, who is perfectly happy helping all people regardless of their religious beliefs or lack thereof."Francesca is warm, intuitive, and truly magical! As someone who has not only worked through her books but has also worked extensively with her in person, I can tell you that the work she presents in her books is a result of many, many years of dedication to the Old Gods and to helping her students, her readers, and anyone else who comes into her sphere of influence to develop their innate talents, spiritual growth, and healthy self-esteem.

One very important part of being Wiccan, to me, is the journey of getting to know yourself. We all have "baggage" and we all have good and bad within us. Our journey is being able to accept the things you have done and learn from them so that you can have peace and give peace to others.This book takes you through a 13-month journey to know yourself and be at peace with the Goddess/God. It may look daunting to see this book is written for a full year. Your journey will not happen in the blink of an eye. You must take time to get to know yourself and really find out who you are and where you want to be.This book is very well written and does not use a lot of terms that would not be understood. Take the time for yourself ... it is important.Shannon

Everyone can use this reference in your lifestyle, easily adaptableThroughly enjoying reading and partaking of the wisdom of this author

I did it for a school course and it meets the requirements.

This is a great sequel to "Be a Goddess" and is destined to be a classic like all of Her works and study courses.

I am an initiate of Francesca's Third Road Tradition and I offer three separate and equally valuable reviews of her new book.A Standard Review:Goddess Initiation (hereafter GI) by Francesca De Grandis is a year-long course of self-empowerment culminating in an initiation into the Third Road tradition of witchcraft. GI is unusual in Wiccan literature in that one's first impression on reading it is that it is simply a self-help book. You won't find endless lists of candle color correspondences, Wiccan tools (athames, pentacles, etc.), and sabbats. What you will find is a rigorous training program in how to embody magic in a mundane world.Based on the oral tradition that she has taught for many years, GI largely consists of chapters which each contain one month's worth of lectures, assignments and rituals and which culminate in a self-initiation ceremony at the end of one year's work. GI also includes three introductory chapters, a post-initiation chapter (titled "So what if you're an initiate? Go wash your dishes and call your mother") and a couple of appendices pointing you to further resources.Francesca's lectures provide the intellectual framework for increasing your psychic abilities. She includes frequent examples which are usually made up to protect her client's identities but which accurately reflect her many years of experience as a professional shamanic counselor and teacher. She is quite clear and precise in her discourse.Her assignments are often shockingly simple (month one includes finding a notebook which will become your Book of Shadows), but equally often quite profound in what they reveal to yourself about yourself. For instance, when I received the notebook assignment in the oral training I bought a gray three-ring binder containing recycled paper. I wanted to be invisible and simply observe in those early classes since becoming a witch was a frightening thing to me as a Presbyterian Elder. I wanted to able to remove and rearrange pages if needed. And, finally, I wanted to be as eco-friendly as I could to honor our Mother. All of those things were brought to consciousness for me when I did that assignment.The rituals are beautiful, and, personally, I would buy the book simply to get her circle-casting which she titles "The Mother's Cloak: A Circle of Protection and Love" I have seen her use this lovely casting in public rituals, but she has not, in general, passed it on to her students. This casting should be of particular interest to Neo-pagans in general since it completely avoids the "Oh, mighty foo of the East" directional invocations which is a beautiful but confining legacy of ceremonial magic.The book only hit the bookshelves two weeks ago, and so clearly I have not applied this program to my life as it was designed to be done: over the course of an entire year. Nevertheless, I was trained in the oral tradition for over two years and then initiated, and I can vouchsafe that all of the essential material is there in this book. I can tell that if you follow this course diligently that you will experience profound and wonderful changes in your life, and that these changes will be accomplished safely and effectively. This book is a profound gateway into Faerie.A Personal Review:Darn it, here I spent two years and well over a (dollar amount) (it's even more expensive to study with her now) learning the Third Road Tradition, and now she's GIVING it all away for a mere (dollar amount). Well, actually I don't begrudge the time or expense at all because it was a lot of fun, and we got to friends, and I got to tease and mock her frequently (which is a sacred thing to do to each other in our Trad). My first reaction to GI (which I'd think any of the oral trad students might have) was to pick out everything that is "missing" in the book.Francesca's intention in GI is to move the written Tradition away from the trappings of Feri Tradition. You won't find Hawaiian magic and psychic anatomy, the Guardians, most of the Gods and Goddesses (though, strangely, Ana and Arddu make an appearance near the end) or the Circle Script. For those of you outside of the tradition you CAN find virtually all of these things on the Internet, but I wouldn't recommend it. The training is FAR more important than the trappings.And that's the thing.I think that she's really succeeded in putting the training into book form. There are moments when the poetry of Faerie speaks through her words on the pages, and …bzzzap… you are there.I, for one, am looking forward to working with all the initiates this book produces. I know that that fact's true, because when I was nearing the end of the book I had a true Teletubby moment of "Again! Again!" Not that I wanted to reread the book immediately, but that I wanted to be in Francesca's class again. Taking notes. Writing poetry. Chatting at break. Sweeping the floor at the end. I am continually astonished by the beautiful things that Third Road initiates produce, and eagerly await the new black-cords that this book will produce.A Poetic Response:I am the RhymerAt the crossroads of Being. See that overgrown footpath: That's the hard-scrabble road to Heaven. And there, the broad avenue: The well-paved road to Hell. But twixt the two Hidden in a smile: There lays the road to Faerie.This is the Third RoadThe road that chooses you.

13 months book study but so far its what I was looking for.

love it!!!

Great work book, with wonderful exercises that lead you on a path to initiation to living more fully and in touch with the Goddess. Teaches you ways of bettering oneself and getting closer ti achieving as well as identifying your goals in life. The way of writing from this author makes the book an easy read and an easy step by step explanation of how to use it.

Dies ist ein sehr behutsam und ausführlich geschriebenes Buch, das mir zu einem wertvollen Begleiter geworden ist. Es regt zum Nachdenken und Gestalten an, löst innere Blockaden und führt in neue Bahnen. Sehr ausführlich erklärt die Autorin an Beispielen, wie wir uns besser verstehen, uns von Altem lösen und Neues, Besseres finden können. Sie geht dabei in monatlichen Schritten in der Dauer eines Jahres vor. Für jedes Monat gibt es ein eigenes Ritual - von der Art her einfach, aber mit grosser Wirkung - und Aufgaben zu lösen. Ich bin jetzt im vierten Monat und merkte von Anfang an die positive Auswirkung, die dieses Buch auf mich hat. Absolut empfehlenswert!