Returning to the Matrisphere

(because the cure for patriarchy is not more *mal-"archy")

[art: Andreea Molocea’s The Soothing Embrace of the Grandmother]

After 5-10,000 years of indoctrination and brainwashing, not to mention terror and violence, its hard to imagine a way of life outside of the structures and confines of patriarchy. We’ve been conditioned to want to get to the top of the pyramid scheme not to undermine their foundations.

So we replace gods with goddesses, priests with priestesses, and patriarchies with matriarchies. We talk about our matrilineal ancestors little realizing that all of our language and terms reify these systems of domination. Mothers did not create lineages to assert paternity and property. They entangled us with love in great sustainable circles that wove us into the seasonal returns and rhythms of the natural world.

The opposite of patriachy is not really matriarchy but what I have decided to call the Matri-Sphere…a soft realm where we can land to dream and to love again and to know, not that we are in charge, but that we belong.

[art: AndreeaMolocea’s The Fall]

I am giving a FREE talk about all of this with The Shift Network on July 11 to which I want to invite you. It’s the subject of my next book Mothers of Magic (Running Press, 2026) and the course I’ll be teaching this summer. To return to the Matri-Sphere is to feel circled by the ancestral mothers guiding us, loving us, holding us and reminding us who we really are and what we can really do.

*malarkey is “meaningless nonsense” The idea of a matriarchy is malarky. All archies are patriarchal.

What would it feel like to receive boundless, nurturing, supportive mothering? Wouldn’t it be a blessing to know that there were mothers to call upon and turn to whenever we needed them? 

Co-founder of the Way of the Rose and author of Take Back the Magic Perdita Finn shares that we can cultivate, restore, and strengthen our maternal spiritual connections — beginning now. 

You’re invited to join us Thursday, July 11, at 5:30pm Pacific for a new 60-minute event during which Perdita will teach us how to access the nurturing wisdom of our maternal ancestors, helping us to replace anxiety with deep-seated faith.

You can register for free here. https://shiftnetwork.isrefer.com/go/yammPF/a25018/

She’ll guide us through a deeply moving meditation, where we will invite a maternal spirit from the other side to assist us with a personal challenge, helping us rekindle the eternal bonds of love that transcend the story of a single life.

As we connect with this maternal presence, our eyes will be opened to the vast possibilities for love and support available to us, and that love is not about moving on but about returning, again and again. 

During this illuminating hour, we’ll explore how we can summon all kinds of mothers to answer our prayers, alchemize our relationships with our own mothers, and connect to our future mothers in incarnations to come.

Click here to register. https://shiftnetwork.isrefer.com/go/yammPF/a25018/

We hope you’ll join us for this hour-long free online event Thursday, July 11, at 5:30pm Pacific. RSVP for free here. https://shiftnetwork.isrefer.com/go/yammPF/a25018/

This FREE talk is an introduction to my 7 week course with the Shift Network Mothers of Magic. Those who register early will receive a BONUS video of a conversation I had with icon artist Sue Ellen Parkinson (see her gorgeous painting above of the older Magdalene). That hour long tour through her images of the ancestral mothers is one of the most healing visual journeys I have ever taken. If you don’t know her beautiful work, check it out!

Perdita Finn is the co-founder, with her husband Clark Strand, of the feral fellowship The Way of the Rose, which inspired their book The Way of the Rose: The Radical Path of the Divine Feminine Hidden in the Rosary. They are currently at work on their next book together Circles Not Lines: Spiritual Community Beyond Patriarchy.  To find out more about her devotion to “ecology not theology” visit wayoftherose.org

In addition to extensive study with Zen masters, priests, spirit workers, and healers, she apprenticed with the psychic Susan Saxman, with whom she wrote The Reluctant Psychic. Perdita Finn now teaches popular workshops on Getting to Know the Dead. Participants are empowered to activate the miracles in their own lives with the help of their ancestors and recover their own intuitive magic. Her book Take Back the Magic: Conversations with the Unseen World is an intimate journey through her recovery of these lost ways. She speaks widely on how to collaborate with those on the other side, on the urgent necessity of a new romantic animism, and on the sobriety that emerges when we claim the long story of our souls. Her next book is The Body of My Mother.

She lives with her family in the moss-filled shadows of the Catskill Mountains.