“The heroine is one who has remembered, reclaimed and reconnected with her unfettered red thread. She has been initiated into the spirit of the depths by her dark sister, and walks with newfound, embodied authority into the upperworld.”

When our lives fall apart, we often feel broken, ashamed, and deeply alone. But what if you knew, as you experienced this descent, that it was mapped out in a myth thousands of years old? What if, despite the uniqueness of your own life and experiences, each stage of the process was universal? The journey of descent and rising is the core initiation of the feminine—the heroine’s journey—one traveled by billions of women before you.

Descent & Rising explores real stories of women’s descents into the underworld of the psyche–journeys of dissolution, grief and breakdown precipitated by trauma, fertility issues, loss of loved ones, mental health struggles, FGM, sexual abuse, birthing experiences, illness, war, burnout and more.

This is territory that Carly Mountain, psychotherapist and women’s initiatory guide, knows intimately, and guides us through with exquisite care and insight, using the ancient Sumerian myth of the goddess Inanna as a blueprint. She maps not only the descent but the rising and familiarizes us with a process of female psycho-spiritual growth overlooked in patriarchal culture.

“The heroine’s journey is an erotic, mystical initiation that revivifies our place in the shape of things...the fodder of our descents provides the compost from which the richest fruits of our lives can grow. If only we can turn towards our pain and let it work in us.”