Perdita Finn

Author of Take Back the Magic and co-founder of the beloved non-denominational fellowship The Way of the Rose Perdita Finn offers a profound invitation to remember and recover the power, presence, and wisdom of the Mother Figure. At a time when so many of us feel unmoored from guidance, care, and belonging, Mothers of Magic is a profound call to return to our deepest sources of knowledge, nourishment, and kinship. When Perdita Finn found herself at a crossroads with her health, she embarked on a search for healing that led her to confront a heritage of misogyny and violence-and to summon the wisdom of her ancestors to unravel the trauma woven into her story and the story of civilization itself. Braiding memoir with cultural history, Finn introduces readers to a pantheon of maternal figures, from the loving spirit of St. Anne and the defiant courage of Joan of Arc to the very Earth itself, who have long offered refuge, instruction, and love. Through these stories and her own journey of transformation, Finn reveals what becomes possible when we recover an ecological feminism that restores our relationship with our bodies, our mothers, and the body of our world. Alongside the narrative, she shares practical ways to summon all of our mothers-ancestral, spiritual, and earthly-to help us navigate our everyday challenges and deepest wounds. Radical and restorative, Mothers of Magic is an intervention for our time and a map back to the maternal wisdom that has always been ours-a path toward true connection and the deepest sources of love.

Renowned spiritual teacher and co-founder of The Way of the Rose Perdita Finn teaches the art and healing power of connecting with the dead, as she guides readers through the magical process of conversing with the unseen world. This expanded paperback edition includes a new foreword and afterword from the author, and testimonials from readers who have used Finn's techniques in their own spiritual lives." Finn weaves a spellbinding meditation . . . an affecting ode to the power of the unseen." -Publishers WeeklyWhat if you could live in a world where the guidance of those who were gone was available, right at your very fingertips? It's possible, if we are open to it. Anyone can reclaim the forgotten guidance of the dead, and anyone can return to the realm of magic and miracles. In Take Back the Magic: Conversations with the Unseen World, author, spiritual teacher, and co-founder of The Way of the Rose Perdita Finn reveals that life is beginningless, love is endless, and those who have passed don't truly go anywhere when they die. Weaving together memoir, history, and a non-denominational spirituality based in ecology, Finn invites readers to live the experience that the stories of our lives are much older, bigger, and more merciful than we have been led to believe. Take Back the Magic takes the reader on a journey of healing, possibility, and love, as the story of how Finn healed her relationship with her bitter, patriarchal father long after his death. Along the way, readers will learn how they, too, can reconnect with the generous guidance of the soul's long story through deep time, recovering their lost relationships with their ancestors and the Earth itself. Throughout, Finn shares guidance, tips, and practical advice that will aid readers in forging their own relationships with those who have passed, as she invites every reader to reconnect with their own inner knowing and to call forth magic from the most ancient parts of humanity. An inspiring invitation to healing in this life, and to experience that we are never alone, Take Back the Magic shows that the whole world is simply souls reaching out to and finding each other-and no one is ever truly lost to us, if we allow ourselves to begin our own conversations with the unseen world. Throughout this expanded paperback edition, readers will find real testimonials from students who have used Perdita Finn's techniques to enhance their own spiritual lives and connect with their loved ones across the landscape of deep time.

"Finn weaves a spellbinding meditation . . . an affecting ode to the power of the unseen." -Publisher's WeeklyWhat if you could live in a world where the guidance of those who were gone was available, right at your very fingertips? It's possible, if we are open to it. Anyone can reclaim the forgotten guidance of the dead, and anyone can return to the realm of magic and miracles. In Take Back the Magic: Conversations with the Unseen World, author, spiritual teacher, and co-founder of The Way of the Rose Perdita Finn reveals that life is beginningless, love is endless, and those who have passed don't truly go anywhere when they die. Weaving together memoir, history, and a non-denominational spirituality based in ecology, Finn invites readers to live the experience that the stories of our lives are much older, bigger, and more merciful than we have been led to believe. Take Back the Magic takes the reader on a journey of healing, possibility, and love, as the story of how Finn healed her relationship with her bitter, patriarchal father long after his death unfolds over the course of thirteen moving chapters. Along the way, readers will learn how they, too, can reconnect with the generous guidance of the soul's long story through deep time, recovering their lost relationships with their ancestors and the Earth itself. Throughout, Finn shares guidance, tips, and practical advice that will aid readers in forging their own relationships with those who have passed, as she invites every reader to reconnect with their own inner knowing and to call forth magic from the most ancient parts of humanity. An inspiring invitation to healing in this life, and to experience that we are never alone, Take Back the Magic shows that the whole world is simply souls reaching out to and finding each other-and no one is ever truly lost to us, if we allow ourselves to begin our own conversations with the unseen world.

Hidden in the darkness is an ancient secret suppressed by every aspect of our light-drunk modern world--there is a Great Mother from the bottom of time who has always guided us through perils and calamities. Now is the hour of Her return." An exigent, affecting summons to rediscover the night."--Kirkus ReviewsIs darkness synonymous with ignorance and evil? Or is it the original matrix from which all life emerges, and the Mother to whom it returns? Higher and higher levels of artificial illumination have suppressed our contact with the numinous since the Industrial Revolution, with dire consequences for society, our planetary ecology, and our souls. This mystical testament weaves together paleobiology, memoir, history, science, and spiritual archaeology to lead readers back into the lost mysteries of the dark. Not since The Teachings of Don Juan or Ishmael has a book diagnosed with such urgency and cultural coherence the problems at the heart of modern life. In Waking Up to the Dark, Clark Strand offers penetrating insight into the spiritual enrichment that can be found when we pull the plug on our billion-watt culture. He argues that the insomnia so many of us experience as "the Hour of the Wolf" is really "the Hour of God"--a wellspring of rest and renewal, and an ancient reservoir of ancestral wisdom and inspiration. And in a powerful yet surprising turn, he shares with us an urgent message for the world, received through a mysterious young woman he calls Our Lady of Climate Change (aka THE VIRGIN MARY), about the challenges we all know are coming.

What happens when a former Zen Buddhist monk and his feminist wife experience an apparition of the Virgin Mary? When a vision of a mysterious "Lady" invited Clark Strand and Perdita Finn to pray the rosary, not only were they disinterested in becoming Catholic, they were finished with institutional religion altogether. Their main spiritual concerns were the fate of the planet and the future of their children and grandchildren in an age of ecological collapse. But this Lady barely even referred to the Church and its proscriptions. She spoke of the miraculous power of the rosary to transform lives and heal the planet, revealing the secrets she had hidden within the rosary's prayers and mysteries--secrets of a past age when forests were the only cathedrals and people wove "rose garlands" for a Mother whose loving presence was as close as the ground beneath their feet. She told Strand and Finn: The rosary is My body, and My body is the body of the world. Your body is one with that body. What cause could there be for fear? Weaving together their own remarkable story of how they came to the rosary, their discoveries about the eco-feminist wisdom at the heart of this ancient devotion, and the life-changing revelations of the Lady herself, the authors reveal an ancestral path--available to everyone, religious or not--that returns us to the powerful healing rhythms of the natural world. Advance praise for The Way of the Rose "My favorite part of this robust and exquisitely written book is the storytelling. I love the way the authors work together to weave a luminous tapestry of travel memoir, tender awakening, and championship of Our Mother the Earth. While the particular spiritual insights are consciousness-raising and heart-opening, it does not matter what the reader's religious orientation (or lack thereof) may be: This is a universal story of love, a huge-hearted invitation to step up and into the field of the sacred feminine, a gratifying guide to a life of joy and service."--Mirabai Starr, author of God of Love and Wild Mercy "Clark Strand and Perdita Finn have answered a collective need to help us discover the empowering and miraculous non-denominational spiritual practice of prayer. The Way of the Rose is brilliantly written and filled with a wealth of stories meant to inspire us. I feel blessed by reading this beautiful and sacred book."--Sandra Ingerman, author of Soul Retrieval and The Book of Ceremony