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The Flowering Wand

Rewilding the Sacred Masculine

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The Flowering Wand

By: Sophie Strand
Narrated by: Sophie Strand
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About this listen

• Reveals the restorative fungi archetype of Osiris, the Orphic mysteries as an underground mycelium linking forests and people, how Dionysus teaches us about invasive species and playful sexuality, and the ecology of Jesus as depicted in his nature-focused parables

• Liberates Tristan, Merlin, and the Grail legends from the bounds of Campbell’s hero’s journey and invites the masculine into more nuanced, complex ways of dealing with trauma, growth, and self-knowledge

Long before the sword-wielding heroes of legend readily cut down forests, slaughtered the old deities, and vanquished their enemies, there were playful gods, animal-headed kings, mischievous lovers, trickster harpists, and vegetal magicians with flowering wands. As eco-feminist scholar Sophie Strand discovered, these wilder, more magical modes of the masculine have always been hidden in plain sight.

Sharing the culmination of eight years of research into myth, folklore, and the history of religion, Strand leads us back into the forgotten landscapes and hidden secrets of familiar myths, revealing the beautiful range of the divine masculine, including expressions of male friendship, male intimacy, and male creative collaboration. In discussing Dionysus and Osiris, Strand encourages us to think like an ecosystem instead of like an individual. She connects dying, vegetal gods to the virtuous cycle of composting and decay, highlighting the ways in which mushrooms can restore soil and heal polluted landscapes. Exploring esoteric Christianity, the author celebrates the Gnostic Jesus of the Gospel of Thomas, imagining the ecology that the Rabbi Yeshua would have actually been referencing in his nature-focused parables. Strand frees Tristan, Merlin, and the Grail legends from the bounds of Campbell’s hero’s journey and invites the masculine into more nuanced, complex ways of dealing with trauma, growth, and self-knowledge.

Strand reseeds our minds with new visions of male identity and shows how each of us, regardless of gender, can develop a matured ecological empathy and witness a blossoming of sacred masculine powers that are soft, curious, connective, and celebratory.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2022 Sophie Strand. All Rights Reserved. (P)2022 Inner Traditions Audio. All Rights Reserved.
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Deeply connected

I felt totally and deeply connected the whole way through. New insights into ways of looking at narratives. Very refreshing, thank you.

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A profound invitation

This collection of short and beautiful essays invites us to revisit and rethink the foundational myths of eurocentric masculinity, which has been forcibly exported across the globe by colonialism, imperialism, and globalised white supremacist cisheteropatriarchal capitalism. Strand approaches the masculine via mycelia networks and connective tissues, inviting life and liveliness into calcified and petrified tales, buried beneath layers of asphalt, cement, and sediment. She charges all of us (esp those of us for whom these are our inherited cultural and mythological lineages) with breathing these old spaces and reimagining them into new integrity and mobility. Her readings of these ancient tales propose possible new directions, and ultimately a healing and regeneration via compost—not throwing out the old and the harmed/harmful, but offering them with honour and compassion to the earth where they might process, digest, metabolise, integrate, transfigure, and be reborn.

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Phenomenal and Magical

Sophie has a way of opening doors to worlds that we’ve always longed to explore, and The Flowering Wand is a beautiful example of her craft. This is a book I will definitely be reading again.

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