Podcast: The Revelation Project Podcast

Episode Title: Take Back the Magic: Conversations with the Unseen World

Host(s): Monica

Guest(s): Perdita

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Monica (Host) | 00:00:03 to 00:00:26
Welcome to the Revelation Project podcast. I'm Monica Rogers, and this podcast is intended to disrupt the trance of unworthiness and to guide women to remember and reveal the truth of who we are. We say that life is a Revelation project, and what gets revealed gets healed. You. You.

Monica (Host) | 00:00:26 to 00:00:54
Hello, dear listener. Welcome back to another episode of the Revelation Project podcast. I'm your host, Monica Rogers, and today I am welcoming back one of my favorite guests, Perdita Finn. You may know Perdita as the author of one of my favorite books, the Way of the Rose. And today we're celebrating the release of her new book, Take Back the Magic.

Monica (Host) | 00:00:54 to 00:01:53
And it's all about the wisdom our ancient ancestors embraced, a wisdom that has been suppressed for millennia by religious authorities who wanted to mediate our interactions with the other side in order to retain power over us. So this conversation is really all about reclamation and reclaiming the direct intimacy of these relationships, which can give us unshakable confidence, empowered intuition, a liberated imagination, and the ability to make miracles happen in the world around us. I've had my own personal experience reconnecting to ancestral wisdom of late, and indeed, miracles have been brought to my life. So it's pretty extraordinary. And I'm so excited to be able to have this conversation with Pradita, particularly because she is such a fabulous storyteller.

Monica (Host) | 00:01:54 to 00:02:32
I know you're going to love her. And for those of you that are not familiar with her or her daughter, Sophie Strand, or her husband, Clark Strand, you can look back in the archives and look at additional episodes. But for sure, look them up online, google them, be introduced to their work. Because all of them are incredibly gifted and have so much wisdom to share with all of us. Before I introduce Perdida officially, I also want to invite any of you who are not already on the newsletter, the Revelations newsletter, to please sign up.

Monica (Host) | 00:02:32 to 00:03:43
Enroll yourselves, because we have a very special offer coming from Perdida, who wants to invite you to participate in something happening through the Shift network in celebration of her new book. I think you're going to love this offer, and I hope you enroll, because within each newsletter, which comes monthly, you'll find special offers, but also resources and connections to other books, other podcast episodes, and other interesting personal revelations that I've been having. So please go to jointthervelation.com, sign up, and become part of that broader community happening through email and be the first to know when we make special invitations. Also, I wanted to thank you again for your generous listening, for leaving a review on Apple podcasts, and for sharing these episodes with your friends. We are in the top one and a half percent of all podcasts worldwide, which is pretty amazing, but every time you share this podcast is able to make a bigger impact.

Monica (Host) | 00:03:43 to 00:04:04
So please share these episodes with your friends and family, and you can also, feel free to respond to the monthly newsletter. I read absolutely everyone who ever reaches out, and I'd love to hear from you personally. Okay, here we go. Ready to dive in? Welcome, perdita Finn.

Monica (Host) | 00:04:04 to 00:04:22
Hey, Perdita. Hi, Monica. Thanks so much for having me back on. Oh, my gosh. I just love talking to you in all the ways I was having this image of literally sitting at your feet like I was a little girl and just being like, tell me all the stories, Perdita.

Monica (Host) | 00:04:22 to 00:04:35
Tell me all the stories. Although I put you in my lap, I wouldn't let you. I'll be in your lap any day, anytime. Yeah, well and I love that you're writing this book. It is so needed.

Monica (Host) | 00:04:36 to 00:05:02
And you and I had the opportunity to talk really quick before we jumped on, and you used the word like, it's kind of scary to write this book. It's kind of scary to write about these things. I wanted to get more curious about that with the listeners. Well, I finished Take Back the Magic and it's coming out in September, so that's all done. I'm working on another book that's the really scary one.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:05:02 to 00:05:41
Okay. The book that's done is less scary because it's over. And it's not over because it's just about to come out. I think when you work with the dad, you set yourself against the conventional culture a great, great deal. And like many, many people, I feel like I straddle both a desire to be an ordinary mom in my community and be an ordinary, functioning person in this culture and living entirely outside of it, and in a world where the unseen feels very, very real.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:05:41 to 00:06:25
And the older I get, and the more experiences I have, the less interested I am in straddling any aspect of conventional culture and more and more surrendering to the magic and possibility of the dead. But there are reasons that that world is scary. And we've been conditioned to experience the dead as frightening. For our ancestors, our most ancient ancestors, there were only the living and the dead. And they experienced them as perpetually trading places and a dance of birth, death, and rebirth that was ongoing and sustainable for hundreds of thousands of years.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:06:26 to 00:07:07
Our ancestors walked lightly upon the planet. They experienced themselves as coming and going, returning. And part of all that was and then there comes this kind of juncture moment where there are a number of interesting possibilities about why, but we stop hunting and gathering. We stop being pilgrims through the Earth, and we settle down. And the moment we settle down and start forcing the Earth into a state of fertility and forcing animals into a state of domesticated fertility, a lot of bad things start to happen.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:07:07 to 00:07:15
And it's a slow process. It doesn't happen overnight. It takes thousands of years. In the beginning, it doesn't seem like a big problem. Yeah.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:07:15 to 00:07:39
Just having a glass of wine every night you know what I mean? And it's like, not a bad problem in the beginning, and then suddenly it is. And what happens and what grows out of agriculture and domestication of animals is what we call civilization. Civilization is different than culture. Those ancient ancestors 100,000 years ago, they had art, they had musical instruments.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:07:40 to 00:08:02
They had everything we consider beauty. They had decoration. They had a sense of wonder and joy. What they didn't have any evidence of was war, slavery, or misogyny. Yeah, and that's what emerges.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:08:03 to 00:08:37
We begin to force the Earth into a constant state of fertility with agriculture, and we begin to force women into a constant state of fertility to produce the children to work those fields, and everything goes wrong. We start fighting each other over the land. Disease occurs in a completely different way, and religion emerges out. Both religion and science emerge out of the desire to control the Earth. There are two branches of the same impulse.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:08:37 to 00:09:11
I often say that mono crops give way to monotheism, give way to monsanto, that capitalism is the final kind of outgrowth of all of this. And in order to keep people in line, agriculture is hard work. And in order to keep people doing it, you need slavery, and you need systems of domination. You have to keep people under control. You need police forces, and religion becomes a kind of police force.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:09:11 to 00:09:43
And you want people to be listening to the Word on high. And before that, before there were gods and goddesses and saints and angels, there were simply the ancestral realm. You walked across the land telling the stories of your ancestors. Your ancestors told you where to walk. These were the song lines of our people, and there was the guidance from beneath and below us.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:09:44 to 00:10:11
In the beginning of religion, in order to gain control, the priests had to silence the conversation with the dead. And there's a lot of evidence of that. In fact, Max Dashu, the feminist scholar, has documented how the priests in the early days of Christianity were often writing their superiors, saying, we can't get people to stop going to the cemeteries and talking to the dad. They won't listen to us. They're just listening to their old grandmothers.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:10:12 to 00:10:41
How do we get them to shut them up? And so what do you do is you create a culture of fear demons, vampires, zombies, ghosts, hauntings. Even now you find people doing ancestral work who talk about approaching it with precautions and care and not letting bad spirits or bad energy in. And what I always say is, I'm not scared of the dead. I'm not scared of any of the dead.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:10:42 to 00:10:56
Hitler's dead. Stalin's dead. Popod's dead. I'm scared of the living. I got to keep my eyes on who I'm really scared of, and I'm not going to be fooled by the trick that wants me to be scared of the wrong thing.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:10:56 to 00:11:21
Making people scared of the dead disempowers them. Yeah, I want to really kind of go back to a few things you said, Pradita. I love everything that you're laying out like breadcrumbs. I want to kind of go and feast on now because there's so much here. So first of all, I want to talk about being scared of a living because it's closest to what you just said.

Monica (Host) | 00:11:21 to 00:12:14
And also that what I make up about. That is and I understand this, and I feel this and I see it because the more you understand the tactics of separation separation from self, separation from our true nature, separation from our cycles, separation from our mother, our great mother, our ancestors. The more you understand the story of separation, the more you understand that fear is the tactic that is used in order to keep people in line. And when people are in fear, they cannot remember the truth. They cannot remember the truth and they will do harm to themselves and to others in this fear always.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:12:16 to 00:12:49
And I think this is crucial, absolutely crucial to understand fear. I mean, I think two things come up for me with this. One is, first of all, we've been conditioned to be fearful and we've been made actively fearful. The 200 year period in Europe of what I call the European gynacide where so many women and some of their male allies were burned or hung or tortured as witches what they were most often accused of doing was talking to the dead. And Barstow's documented this in her book Witchcraise.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:12:50 to 00:13:29
That was the single thing that instinct like, oh, Mama, can you help me, granny? Can you give me some advice that could get you labeled a witch. And these were not women who thought of themselves as witches, who are practicing herbalism or midwifery. These were just ordinary people behaving in the indigenous ways they'd always behaved in who suddenly found themselves under attack. But one of the ways of making people frightened was getting daughters to turn in their mothers, mothers their daughters and friends their friends and dividing women from each other, making them fearful of each other, of their own intuition and their own instincts.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:13:29 to 00:13:53
And that war never goes away. It becomes colonialism. It becomes enacted upon the bodies of black and brown women. And it's endemic in civilization. That fearfulness, I think when people are very frightened, very frightened, they want to be told what to do so they can stay safe.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:13:54 to 00:14:37
And that really puts us in danger of fascism of all kinds and totalitarianism of all kinds. And we just saw an example of this that none of us, I think, can unsee, right? Which is the way, again, that being microdosed and macro dosed. All these stories of fear all the time through mainstream media puts us in this total trance that continues to separate us from ourselves, from each other, and fear all of these exterior things that are, quote unquote, coming to get us. Or that's when we start putting safety alarms on our houses.

Monica (Host) | 00:14:37 to 00:14:44
And that's when we like all of the things I know. I don't even yes.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:14:46 to 00:15:09
So what's the antidote to fear? And that's what I want to talk about, the antidote to fear. And twelve years ago, I've been working with the dead now for over 25 years, very actively. I mean, we all work with the dead, but I've been really working with them for a long time. But twelve years ago, my life, as you know, took a really decisive turn away from the culture in some ways.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:15:09 to 00:15:38
And it took a turn away from the culture because two primary things happened. One, my husband and I, who are freelance writers, lost our main client overnight. And that happened in the midst of a medical crisis for our daughter, in which we'd already spent all of our savings. So we found ourselves with no money, no savings, no resources, and a sick child. And that child we had gone to the best doctors, the fanciest doctors, and they had no answers for us.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:15:39 to 00:16:20
They all said, Something's the matter, and we don't know what. So the monetary system, the medical system, all these things that normally hold you, fell apart for us. And what we were left with was prayer and the unseen world. And what we began to learn slowly, step by step, was how to live in an economy of prayer instead of an economy of money, in an economy of love instead of an economy of fear, because the dead are waiting to help us. All the dead are waiting to help us with everything in our lives.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:16:20 to 00:16:34
And that's all of my workshops that I teach, are that. I could just tell you that, and you could take that information and go work with it on your own for the rest of your life, and all kinds of miracles could come to you.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:16:36 to 00:16:53
It's just that we have to decondition ourselves from our fear and discover these lost dances of devotion with the Ancestral Realm. And that's what I like to do, is create communities to recover this dancing. Oh, my gosh. Yes. I had a personal experience.

Monica (Host) | 00:16:53 to 00:17:22
I've had many personal experiences with this. But as I shared with you when we kind of caught up this past summer, I had told you about my experience inviting my dad to help me plan my trip to Scotland. Yes. And I was completely it was like, So shall it be, or even something better. It was so much better than anything that I could have planned for myself.

Monica (Host) | 00:17:22 to 00:18:01
Like, what happened? It was literally every desire that I had. And all of these ways that he kept showing me that he had a hand in it, all of these clever, incredible ways that he kept showing me over and over and over again. And my dad has, like, a thing with threes, so no matter where we went, there would be three dragonflies three deer. There were just all of these ways that my dad it was literally like I felt so seen.

Monica (Host) | 00:18:02 to 00:18:39
I felt like I was completely in this incredible dance with him and discovery process, and I revealed so many ancestral mysteries for my own life simply by bringing him into it, by consciously co creating with him what I wanted to experience when I went, yeah, I mean. This is what I see all the time. And can you prove it to someone else? Does it matter? Take out a lab report.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:18:39 to 00:18:52
No. What you prove it the place you prove it is in your heart. Yes. In the joy, in the resilience, and the fearlessness began to manifest in the world. Yes.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:18:52 to 00:19:03
Because you feel not alone. I'll tell you a great story that just happened two days ago. Every day I have a miracle with the dead. I mean, literally every day. It's hard to keep track of it.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:19:04 to 00:19:34
So I've started a new book. The first book, Take Back the Magic, is how I healed with my father, with whom I had a very difficult relationship, and who, after he died, I found had cut me out of his will. And so how we healed is the how do we heal with the difficult dead, the people in our lives whom we're angry at, frightened us, and how that can happen from the other side. We don't need to heal the dead. The dead need to make it up to us will if we let them.

Monica (Host) | 00:19:35 to 00:20:02
That actually makes me emotional. It's really powerful. And there's some talk it's very upsetting to me when people talk about we need to heal our traumatized ancestors. Oh, they're dead, they're fine, they're healed. But they need to heal us from the legacy they've left to us in those wills, and we have to give them an opportunity to make amends.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:20:03 to 00:20:24
I always say, don't talk yourself into forgiveness. Create forgiveness. So my mother had a brother with whom she was always at ODS and fighting. And one day he did something I'm no longer allowed to tell you what it is because he made it up to me, and I told him I would never tell the story again. He's dead.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:20:24 to 00:20:47
And I just was so mad at him one day, and I said, you know, I'm still mad at you, Uncle Leston. Oh, I'm so mad at you. Do something to make me not mad at you anymore. And that night, I got an email from his daughter, from his second marriage, who I barely know. I don't even know how she got my email saying perdita.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:20:47 to 00:21:15
I wanted to know, didn't your mother die of non Hodgkin's lymphoma? Because my boyfriend is the lead lawyer in the case against Monsanto for people this relatives died of non Hodgkin's lymphoma. I said she died of complications of non Hodgkin's lymphoma, heart weakening from the chemotherapy. She said, I'll ask him about it. And he said, Yep, we'll include her.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:21:15 to 00:21:42
And so that happened literally within 24 hours of asking her father for help, weaving us into place of healing. Weaving. I'm not going to tell you why I was mad at him, because I'm not mad at him anymore. And he brought healing for me with his daughter. He brought healing into me about my mother and how upset I was about the way she died.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:21:42 to 00:22:20
He brought healing for him and my mother, and love flowed out in the ten directions. I've seen this again and again in working with people with the dead that we often feel like we have to forgive the people who've been monsters in our lives. In fact, all we have to do is give them a dare, an opportunity. An opportunity. Prove to me that you get how much you hurt me and make amends, and then watch what magic unfolds.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:22:20 to 00:22:39
Now, you don't want to do that too soon. You don't want to move too fast. You don't want to rush. I always say you can never get in trouble moving too slowly with the dad. They move very slowly, but there are opportunities to be healed we cannot imagine.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:22:40 to 00:23:08
Now, of course, people like your father that you're describing, the other thing is like so I started this book about my mother. That's my next book, The Body of My Mother, and I'm a little scared of writing it. As you said, it's a journey through deep time about what has been done to the bodies of our mothers. Yes. Exploring desire and sexuality and appetite and imagination and power.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:23:08 to 00:23:37
And it's a very intense book to write. And I was feeling a little scared as I was working on it. And out of the blue, as I'm sitting at my computer, a message pops up on Facebook, and it says, Hi, Pradita, I just want to tell you I love your daughter's book. It's so good. It's from a woman who's read my book, The Way of the Rose, and is a member of our Way of the Rose Fellowship.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:23:38 to 00:23:54
And I write thank you. It's a mom. You're very proud of your children. And I noticed that she lives in my hometown, where I grew up in Massachusetts. And I say, I notice you live in, you know, in Madapoisa.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:23:54 to 00:24:04
I grew up in I was the town next door. They're both tiny little towns. I grew up in Marion. She said, oh, really? She said, I grew up in New Bedford, and I 60 years old.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:24:04 to 00:24:15
I said, I'm 60 years old. And suddenly we knew all these people in common. It was sort of a sweet moment. And then I said, what kind of work do you do that? She said, oh, I'm an oncology nurse.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:24:16 to 00:24:24
I said, oh, my mom was treated for non hodgkin's lymphoma. She said by Dr. Hansen. I said by Dr. Hansen.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:24:24 to 00:24:27
She said, I was your mom's oncology nurse. Oh, my gosh.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:24:30 to 00:24:57
It's hard for me, Monica, to describe what that moment was like. Yeah, that my mother you talk about. It was so profound to know that my mother was there, that she had endured. And my mother had said when my mother got cancer, she said the doctor had given her three months to live. And she said, But I don't have grandchildren yet.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:24:58 to 00:25:10
I have to know how the story goes. What can you do? And he said, Well, I can bombard you with chemotherapy and radiation. We might give you a couple of months. She said do it.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:25:12 to 00:25:42
Three years later, my mother was in remission and she held all of her grandchildren and they all knew her. And I have photos of her with all of them crawling all over her, loving her profoundly. I mean, her heart was terribly weakened from three years of chemotherapy and she ended up dying of heart failure. But she just knew that she had to hold those grandchildren.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:25:45 to 00:26:02
Thinking of that nurse who guided her through the torture of that chemotherapy and been her guide and to have met her. It was just like, you talk about your father. How can you express that feeling of love and connection?

Monica (Host) | 00:26:04 to 00:26:31
It's also like people talk about miracles, but miracles are a change in perception, you know what I mean? Like miracles, they're organic. They're organic. And it's like opening in a way or seeing in a way that you have never allowed yourself to see or be. Can I give you an example?

Perdita (Guest) | 00:26:31 to 00:27:01
I think because of technology and science and industry have conditioned us to imagine a miracle as something outside of the natural and the organic. And I'll never forget one of our very first way of the rose circles in person in Woodstock. People were experiencing miracles every week. In the beginning, it was astounding one woman didn't think she had the money to buy a house. She could never get a loan.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:27:01 to 00:27:22
She didn't have enough savings. The next minute she finds a person at the bank telling her about a program for people in her condition. And the next thing you know, she's buying a house and and and people and one woman, you know, says, I want to find love, but I refuse to get on the dating apps. Two days later, her dentist invites her out on a date. You know what I mean?

Perdita (Guest) | 00:27:22 to 00:27:47
Every week was filled with these stories, but they were entirely organic. They were each person for whom they experienced experienced them as miraculous. But of course, you could explain them away. They weren't sudden. I don't know, the sun turning in the clouds.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:27:47 to 00:28:09
And some of these people talked about wanting to go to Magigoria and see the sun turn in the sky and the technicolor explosions. But what we need are ordinary miracles. Sometimes it's a miracle to get a human being on the other end of the phone, right? Yes. Sometimes it's a miracle to be given a reprieve.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:28:10 to 00:28:38
A woman in one of my workshops with the dead. Two days ago, she was given a terrible diagnosis. And literally during the class we talked about assembling a team of ancestors for her to work on this. She got off of the workshop and there was a letter in her email from her doctor saying, you know, I was reviewing your scan and I'm wondering if something else isn't going on. I think we're going to postpone surgery and do some more tests.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:28:41 to 00:28:58
Is that a miracle? I say so. Is she through the woods with her healing? No, it just means she's got to learn to dance with the dead and the Ancestral realm. Now, we're not going to escape dying.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:29:01 to 00:29:36
We're all going to die. And that is I think sometimes the fantasy of civilization is we're going to live forever. We're going to upload our consciousness to some computer and we're going to live forever. But that's because we imagine that we only have one life to get it right. That's because we think we live inside of a merciless, terrible story that imagines that you've only got one life.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:29:36 to 00:30:11
Those ancient ancestors of ours walking across the earth, they knew that they had all the lifetimes in the world. Tyson Yankaporta, in his marvelous book Santalk describes how for his people, the word for great grandmother is simply child, because they're experiencing departure and return. Now we live in a world where we imagine we have to be awake all the time and alive all the time, and we're exhausted and stressed out. It's like so ironic.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:30:13 to 00:30:26
I love going to bed at night. I love getting into bed. I love sleeping. And death isn't will be no different. I mean, not that we don't I miss the embodied presence of my mother so much.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:30:26 to 00:30:39
What I wouldn't do to hold her hands and just sit in her lap and smell her hair. Do you know what I mean? Yes. And I do miss it. And yet I know my mother is with me and I know she's alive.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:30:41 to 00:31:02
And I'll confess this to you. My mother's been dead 22 years, and I have this feeling I'm going to meet some extraordinary young woman or young man and go, oh, it's you. So I'm waiting for that moment too. Yeah. I mean, there's so much to say here.

Monica (Host) | 00:31:02 to 00:31:15
But I love what you just described about the embodied presence because my dad's been gosh, like, I was 20. It was right before my 21st birthday that he passed.

Monica (Host) | 00:31:19 to 00:31:49
It's been a long time. And there are those ways as a physical being that that is kind of our embodied connection is like the Grecian formula that he would swoop through his hair or the smell right. All of the sensorial. But I think the extra sensorial ways that I can connect now are so precious.

Monica (Host) | 00:31:51 to 00:32:18
And there are other ways that he makes his presence known, whether it's seeing a man who, you know, or he smells like the grecian formula or whatever. It is formula on your ancestry. Absolutely. And just like loving him in a way that I couldn't actually love him when he was alive. And that's the other thing.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:32:20 to 00:32:38
We're very complicated beings and we all have these relationships and it's interesting. There are people I think, boy, when you die it's going to get easier because it's hard and it's complicated.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:32:42 to 00:32:59
My father in law died this past summer at 91 and for my husband they had a very complicated relationship and they had done a lot of the work of forgiveness but there were certain kinds of forgiveness that could only happen after he was gone.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:33:01 to 00:33:16
And the thing is relationships are never over. Right? That's the wonderful thing. Love is never over. It's unfolding and reorganizing and so interesting.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:33:17 to 00:33:36
My first husband died six years ago and we had not been in touch since. Our divorce when I was 27 had been a very brief, disastrous marriage. The starter marriage that some of us have. I know a lot of us have. But he died of ALS at 69.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:33:37 to 00:33:46
Horrible way to die. My sister died of ALS as well. Oh, I'm so sorry. Yeah, it's a horrible way to die. What was her name?

Monica (Host) | 00:33:47 to 00:34:15
Her name was Lisa. Lisa. So sorry. But I hadn't been in touch with him and he had gone and gotten remarried and had his own family and then I heard about his death and I was upset that I felt nothing, that I felt cold and nothing and I thought like what's the matter with me? And I couldn't work with him, I couldn't think about him.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:34:15 to 00:35:00
The whole marriage felt like a mistake. I felt that there were ways that he had never made amends to me in life or things that I had taken responsibility for that he hadn't taken responsibility for. And then one night, Monica, six months ago, I had a dream. And I was in a building, and I'm walking down hallway in like a hotel or apartment building, and there he is at the other end of the hallway and he is as I remembered him when I was in my early twenty s first fell in love with him as this kind of antic loving, delightful person. And my heart leapt up in the dream to see him.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:35:01 to 00:35:15
You are remember you hi. And he came over and took my hands and hands and said it's so good to see you. And I said, do you want a cup of coffee? I love a cup of coffee. I said, Let me go get you a cup of coffee.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:35:15 to 00:35:43
And so I go downstairs and then suddenly I'm outdoors on a mountainside, beautiful mountain and there's a stone with a coffee pot on it. An old fashioned percolator coffee pot which I had when we first got married. And I walk over to the stone with the percolator coffee pot and suddenly water gushes forth from the stone. A spring. Of the most delicious sweet mountain water that I start to drink.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:35:44 to 00:36:03
And I'm filling up the coffee pot and I'm laughing because there's so much water. And I woke up and my heart had opened, stone cold heart. And I said, I guess, Stan, it's time for us to do some work together. Yeah. And I gave him a job.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:36:05 to 00:36:24
So I had a workshop that I thought was going to be a big hit. I thought, this is going to be a great workshop this fall. And one person had signed up for it. I was like, oh, man, how did I miss the mark with this one? I said, Stan, get me some participants for this workshop so it flies within an hour.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:36:24 to 00:36:30
I had more people than I knew what to do with an awaiting list. I did nothing but ask for help.

Monica (Host) | 00:36:32 to 00:36:50
I love that you just said the word ask. That's the hardest thing for us to do with the dead, because this civilization we live in, it trains us not to ask for help. We should be self reliant. We should be independent. We shouldn't need anyone.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:36:51 to 00:37:07
In fact, what we need to do is we need to buy what we need. That's the economy of money. We can buy everything we need. We can buy cleaning and healing and helping and loving. We ought to buy an app for that or a product for that.

Monica (Host) | 00:37:15 to 00:38:16
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Monica (Host) | 00:38:16 to 00:39:00
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Monica (Host) | 00:39:00 to 00:39:37
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Monica (Host) | 00:39:37 to 00:39:42
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Monica (Host) | 00:39:49 to 00:40:04
Well, back to the fantasy of civilization. I just want to say it's a friggin nightmare. First of all, it's a nightmare. It's a nightmare. And I want to go back as well.

Monica (Host) | 00:40:04 to 00:40:50
Like, there's a couple of things I want to go and revisit with you, and one of them is like this fear of death. Yes, because I want to get curious about this because I have a theory about it. But it's like, first of all, I believe that the fear of death lives in the ego. And I believe that when we do our shadow work, we are no longer afraid of death because our ego has to die in order for us to do our shadow work. Can I use some language that's different than writing psychology, which has been so hateful to women?

Perdita (Guest) | 00:40:50 to 00:41:17
Would that be okay? Yeah, I want to talk about our hearts. Yeah, because I think we all come into each lifetime with heart growing to do. We have seeds in our hearts that we want to grow. Everything you see, like those bulbs that are beginning to push up through the dirt right now, they want to flower, and they want the bees to come to them, and they want to pollinate.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:41:17 to 00:41:41
And my mother didn't want to die. She wanted to see those grandchildren arrive. She wanted to know the story was going to continue. The mountains are praying for rain, and they don't want to die until they experience the rain on their bodies. And so we come into this lifetime with longing and desire, and there are things we want.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:41:42 to 00:42:27
We want love, we want healing, we want connection, we want intimacy, we have work we want to do. And I think because we don't value the heart and the desires of the heart, we're frightened to die because we haven't done what we were supposed to do in this lifetime. And sometimes what we were supposed to do is find someone and love them or help someone and love them. But there's love, work we're supposed to do. And I think the more in touch with our hearts we get, the more we step onto the path of the heart, the less frightened of death we become, because we know that that path doesn't die and we carry it from lifetime to lifetime.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:42:27 to 00:42:39
Now, look, I pray. I'm taking care of my body. I want the grandchildren. I want the great grandchild. I want to be the 90 year old lady doing yoga.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:42:39 to 00:43:01
I love this body. I love it. This body was such a gift. I've been given and it's brought me tremendous pleasure and joy, and it's brought me into connection with other bodies and souls, with a lot of joy. And because I'm doing my heart work, I know that it will continue after I die.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:43:02 to 00:43:25
But I also know that when we die, when the story is over, when it's time to go to bed, sometimes you don't want to go to bed, right? The party's too much fun. The moon is out, the moon is full. Sometimes we're ready to go to bed, right? We're not ready for the dance to be over.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:43:25 to 00:43:37
And sometimes we're exhausted. Sometimes I pray to be have one of those nights where you can barely get your pajamas. I just want to go to bed. I just want to go to bed.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:43:39 to 00:44:19
And we reach that point, I think, at a certain point where we're ready to go to bed. Yeah, but I know a psychic who says that when we die, the dead start to show up. And what seems like death on this side is reunion on the other. And all of our mothers from all of our past lives are waiting to hold us and kiss us, and they begin showing up as we're dying. And so one of the things that the more I get to know the dead, the more intimate and alive my relationship with them is, the more my own relationship to my own death transforms.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:44:19 to 00:44:41
Because I know there's going to come a moment when I'm seeing my mother and my father and my Uncle Leston, who I've healed with and my first husband, and they're going to be showing up and they're going to say, you're invited to the party. You ready? Yeah. And I will be ready. I'll have to leave this party to go to that party.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:44:42 to 00:44:44
And that's always hard.

Monica (Host) | 00:44:47 to 00:45:04
That's always hard. But babies arrive in this lifetime crying. And they arrive crying because they also have left a party. They have left their mothers from other lives to come and be born from our bodies. So it's all coming and going.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:45:06 to 00:45:13
Joy and sorrow are so woven together, so part of the same fabric of existence.

Monica (Host) | 00:45:17 to 00:45:38
So what are we so afraid of? Perdita? We're afraid that we only have one life to get it right. And would you also say that we're afraid to truly be embodied? Well, we're afraid to be embodied because our bodies have been really traumatized by civilization and they've been really hurt.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:45:38 to 00:46:16
And civilization has been a war against the body of the earth, a war against the body of our mothers, and a war against the body itself. So all of the spiritual gnosticism and I will attack gnosticism because my own daughter said gnosticism is a trauma response. It's the disassociation of the traumatized body that those early Christians had experienced radical genocide and radical torture. So of course they say the body's bad, I want to get out of it and into a disembodied state. The Buddha had experienced the death of his mother and sickness, old age and death and said I want extinction, I want to get out of my body.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:46:16 to 00:46:46
These are just trauma responses and they're the trauma responses of civilization. So how do we heal from the trauma of civilization? And before this interview began, I called in the old mothers. And the way I'm going to heal this is with my ancestors who existed before civilization and with my animal mothers and my mountain mothers and my tree mothers. And I do not mean that archetypically, I mean it literally.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:46:46 to 00:47:28
I mean I have been animals and had owl mothers who will teach me how to be in my body and whale mothers who will teach me how to be in my body again and how not to fear. Our fear in civilization is real. Look at what's happening to bodies around the world. Look at what is being done to women's bodies and black bodies and brown bodies and indigenous bodies around the world and look at what being done to the body of the earth. Horrors are being enacted and no wonder I think so many people are experiencing autoimmune illness because the mother herself is experiencing autoimmune illness.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:47:28 to 00:47:52
Her own body is so under attack and so on fire. So we have a lot of healing work to do, but we can call in all the dead. And the dead are not just our traumatized ancestors from the past couple of thousand years. They're all our ancestors going back 350,000,000 years, going back billion years.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:47:56 to 00:48:10
We have lots of ancestors who know what it is to have a body without trauma to help us heal. And those ancestors who inflicted trauma on each other have a responsibility to make amends and show us how to heal.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:48:14 to 00:48:22
Does that answer question? Yes. I mean, I'm sitting in kind of just the potency of what you just said.

Monica (Host) | 00:48:28 to 00:49:10
How would you approach so as the listeners are kind of listening to all of this amazingness and all of this resonance because I make up that they're feeling as much resonance in their body as I'm feeling in mine. How would you guide them to begin approaching this work? Slowly and simply start with what you want and start with what you need. Ask for help. I want to get a person on the telephone when I call.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:49:11 to 00:49:27
I want to not have the diagnosis be as bad as I think it's going to be. I want to find a parking space, right. I believe it all the time. Yeah, I mean, we believe in the gods of traffic and parking. Let's start there.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:49:27 to 00:49:39
Yes, I want my child to call me, you know what I mean? And we begin with what we want, simply asking for help.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:49:42 to 00:50:07
Here's what I always say. There are three parts to my work. The dead are real. They want to collaborate with you in living and they have all the time in the world to do that, and we have all the lifetimes in the world to do that. So prayers that aren't answered.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:50:08 to 00:50:33
A man came to Way of the Rose recently. He had just read the book The Way of the Rose, and he had a terminal cancer diagnosis, brain cancer. And he said, I read your book, and it was like an answer to my prayer. And I started praying the rosary, and I said, that's wonderful. And a week later, he was dead.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:50:33 to 00:50:54
Monica, now he's going to be reborn already having claimed that memory. Do you understand? Like, he found what he needed to cross to the other side, and he'll be reborn with those prayers on his lips. Ready to go? Yeah.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:50:55 to 00:51:30
I always think of my grandmother. She had six children and 36 grandchildren, and just life was food and making ends meet, right? Yeah. And in her 80s, she took a watercolor class at the local library and started painting. And they were pretty banal little paintings which I have in my house and which I treasure because I think of that little girl reborn, already painting, ready to paint.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:51:30 to 00:51:42
You can't stop me this time. I've already claimed my heart's desire. I'm ready to go. Yeah. So it's never too late, with the help of the dead, to start walking the path of the heart.

Monica (Host) | 00:51:47 to 00:52:11
So it really is. I'm going to go back to what you said earlier about civilization is very different from culture, right? Yes. And I also hear in the word civilization domestication. Exactly.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:52:11 to 00:52:31
We domesticated ourselves. In fact, there's a fascinating Harvard philosopher who wrote a book called Deep History in the Brain, and he says, we may have been domesticated by the grasses, the wheat and the corn. We think we domesticated them, but perhaps they domesticated us for their world domination.

Monica (Host) | 00:52:33 to 00:53:01
Right. I think part of what I love the most about unbecoming is turning everything on its head, looking literally everything. You think, you know, turn it upside down, because we live in the upside down. Like everything is upside down here. And I say by design.

Monica (Host) | 00:53:01 to 00:53:20
By design. And so I say by design, because that's the trap. That's the trap of separation and fear. Well, let me talk about design and the fabric of existence. We talk about the veil between the worlds and the fabric of existence.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:53:20 to 00:53:43
But that veil is made of threads going in and out and in and out. And if we think of those threads as our souls in and out, one lifetime, back and forth, life and death, the coming and going, it's the whole fabric of existence. There is lots of time. We are held by it. And that design.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:53:43 to 00:53:54
What if we could see that design from afar? We don't with a thread. It's hard for us to see the whole design. But what if we could? I think the dad can see the design.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:53:54 to 00:54:07
It's like I used to do embroidery as a child. And on the one side of the embroidery, it'd be a lovely little picture, a rose or an apple on the back. It would be like a mush. Yeah. It would be like, what a mess.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:54:08 to 00:54:18
Yeah. We live in the what a mess. We live on the side of what a mess. The knots, tangles, threads, the mush. The dead see the big picture.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:54:18 to 00:54:36
The dead see the design from the other side. And the reason I'm in relationship with the dead is they help me begin to catch glimpses of that. Yes. How can I see the big picture of the soul's? Long story.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:54:36 to 00:54:45
Through deep time. Yeah. And I love thinking of those glimpses as revelations. Well, that's what they are. That's what a revelation is.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:54:45 to 00:54:59
That's it. The revelation is that glimpse of the big picture from the other side. I love that so much. And that's a miracle too. We feel the miracle and that's a miracle too.

Monica (Host) | 00:54:59 to 00:55:12
Yes. Oh, my goodness. I love that so much. Okay. What haven't I asked that you would like to talk about?

Perdita (Guest) | 00:55:13 to 00:55:15
Oh, what an interesting question.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:55:18 to 00:55:21
What haven't I talk about? Anything.

Monica (Host) | 00:55:24 to 00:55:30
Well, let me go here for a minute because I have a feeling.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:55:32 to 00:55:39
Doubt. Something about doubt. How about talking about, what if I'm crazy? Okay. What if I'm making this up?

Monica (Host) | 00:55:39 to 00:55:54
Yeah, let's go there. How about go there? Because one of the great dangers that we fear is what if this stuff makes me crazy? What if I'm somebody who's seeing signs everywhere and everything? Or what if I get it wrong?

Perdita (Guest) | 00:55:55 to 00:56:23
Exactly. My answer to all that is to create communities of friends, of like minded friends and to have conversations just like we're having, Monica, because I hear you tell me about your father and I know I can hear the joy that's bringing to you. Yeah. And the dead don't bring us fear. They bring us joy and they bring us healing, and they bring us love.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:56:24 to 00:56:47
It's the living who bring us fear. And the frightened living bring us fear. But I do think communities of conversation, we don't want to be stuck in our heads with this stuff. We want to live in our hearts with it, and we want to live in our hearts and communities. And that's why I'm really committed to creating communities of storytelling for anyone who studies with me.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:56:47 to 00:57:25
I offer a group called Monthly Magic, where on the third Sunday of every month, people can come and chat with me about everything that's happened with them, about the dead that month. And that becomes an opportunity to validate each other's experiences with the dead and to share what works and what doesn't work. So I do think, am I making this up? Am I just imagining it? My psychic friend always said, imagine what do you think imagination is the conversation with the dead.

Monica (Host) | 00:57:25 to 00:57:39
Oh, yes. I love that. I also it made me think perdita about what haunting really is. Yeah.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:57:43 to 00:58:02
I have experience and I write about this book. I've had r1 ghost encounter, I've had visions and things like that, but I had a real experience of, quote, a ghost. And I'm not going to tell that whole story now. It's in my book. And what I've learned is for the dead to materialize in our presence takes enormous energy.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:58:04 to 00:58:30
So they're doing it for a reason and not to frighten us. It can be frightening because we're not used to I think, for our ancestors who lived close to the earth, these were not uncomfortable experiences for us. They so tear the fabric of our reality that they're upsetting. But if you do experience something frightening, ask the dead for help. Give them a job to do.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:58:30 to 00:58:56
And sometimes that job is to go on a quest far, far away from you and never, ever show themselves again to you and frighten you so much. Yeah. But they've shown up to give you help. And so that all the frightening manifestations of the dead are just an attempt to catch our attention. And if we can listen to the still, small voice within, they don't have to show up so much in our presence.

Monica (Host) | 00:58:56 to 00:59:15
Well, right. There's a way that we can get really in our heads about that versus, like you said, in our hearts about it. Yeah. And that feels a lot like the haunting. And being in the Fear is, again, about living in separation or living up in our heads versus in our hearts.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:59:15 to 00:59:38
I mean, if you put me in some what is the classic horror movie? Think about how many horror movies we have to frighten people. Capitalism is all about frightening people with relationship to the dead so that they buy things to soothe themselves. Addictively. Imagine you're in a haunted prison or a haunted mental hospital where people died in terrible ways.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:59:38 to 00:59:48
That's the classic horror movie trope, right? Yeah. I would call on all of those souls to create healing. Right? Yeah.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:59:48 to 00:59:58
Ring forth the healing that we need. Let me listen to your story. I am here to listen to your stories. Come and tell me your story. Help me.

Perdita (Guest) | 00:59:58 to 01:00:03
Let me collaborate with you so that no one has to experience this again.

Perdita (Guest) | 01:00:06 to 01:00:21
We talk a lot about feeling the sorrow in the landscapes where we live of the peoples who died there. Let's go and listen to their stories and let's collaborate with them to renew those landscapes.

Perdita (Guest) | 01:00:23 to 01:00:36
Our job is to collaborate and garden with them. So I brag that I have many friends that can speak to the dead. Me too.

Monica (Host) | 01:00:38 to 01:01:01
And I have a dear friend, Mary, who came to my house in Maine, and she woke up one morning and she said, I got a chance to talk to the spirits out on the porch who used to live in this house. And they missed the front walkway and the garden.

Monica (Host) | 01:01:03 to 01:01:30
And I said, Was it my dad? Was it my aunties? And she said, no before then, the spirits who used to live in this house before then. And they just kept talking about what a beautiful walkway went to the front door and the garden that used to be outside. And we talked about how she was going to kind of continue the conversation, but then she ended up having to abruptly leave.

Monica (Host) | 01:01:30 to 01:02:25
But again, it brings up, like what you were just saying. It's like there's this way that it's so loving, it's so simple. There are all of these ways, I think, that communication can happen in our daily lives and, like, actually summoning the dead, as you did before our call just to be with us as we create this conversation, to just be open to another way of perceiving to another way of being in relationship to ourselves and others, including all of those who have lived before that. These are simple desires, simple needs, simple requirements, simple it doesn't even have to be complicated. No.

Perdita (Guest) | 01:02:25 to 01:02:52
Our ancestors prayed for everything they needed for food, for healing, for what plant should we use to eat next? Where are we going to find a place to stay tonight that's warm and dry? How will we get the fire going for the baby being born, for the old person dying? They were calling on ancestral helpers all the time. And when we start to do it, we feel the ground beneath our feet again.

Perdita (Guest) | 01:02:52 to 01:03:19
Pick up a handful of dirt, I say, and you're holding the bodies of the dead where you live, literally holding the bodies of the dead. If I go out where I live right now, I'm holding the vanished bodies of the chestnut forests that have gone extinct in these mountains. I'm holding bodies of brachiopods and trilobites from the vanished oceans that once surrounded these hills. Literally. Sometimes you can find them.

Monica (Host) | 01:03:20 to 01:03:42
Yeah. And those souls are still there waiting to collaborate with me. Yes. And this brings me back to this little story, because had she not had this experience, now whenever I go home, I presence, right? Like, I presence them and I'm communicating with them.

Perdita (Guest) | 01:03:44 to 01:03:48
And they love you and they want to help you make home.

Perdita (Guest) | 01:03:51 to 01:04:16
I can tell you stories of the dead that go, I mean, I can do nothing but spend 15 hours telling you miracle stories about the dead. I believe you. And they weave us together and they're seemingly inconsequential dead. Who. Because all of the dead have been when we really work with the dead deeply, we get to a place where we realize we've all been each other's mothers.

Monica (Host) | 01:04:16 to 01:04:31
Yes. And so you said you began saying, I would love to sit at your feet and listen to stories, and I say, I love sitting at your feet and listening to stories. And I'm reminded of DA Vinci's image. I don't know if you've ever seen it. He shows St.

Perdita (Guest) | 01:04:32 to 01:04:44
Anne, the Great Mother. And in her lap is the Virgin Mary. Held. And then in the Virgin Mary's lap is the child who's reaching out an arm to hold St. Anne.

Perdita (Guest) | 01:04:44 to 01:05:04
And it's a circle of holding, of bodies, holding each other, loving each other, coming and going. And what we begin to realize is that we've all birthed each other and we've all been birthed by each other. And how would we treat each other if we knew we'd all been each other's mothers?

Monica (Host) | 01:05:06 to 01:05:29
I think that's a great place to just leave us. Yeah. And Perdita, anything else that you want our listeners to know? And I'll be sure to put links in the show notes so that they can join and join the groups. Take part in your incredible courses that you're offering.

Monica (Host) | 01:05:29 to 01:05:59
Buy the books. And for our listeners as well, please know that I have former episodes, both with Sophie Strand, who is Pradita's incredible daughter, and her husband, Clark. And so you'll find past episodes, which I will also be sure to put in the show notes so that you can experience the full family of brilliance. And someday you'll have my son on there too. Oh, I would love to.

Monica (Host) | 01:05:59 to 01:06:11
He's the only one yet that I have yet to meet. He is the earthiest of us all. He's interested in permaculture gardening. Oh, well, then I just absolutely want to talk to him. Yes.

Monica (Host) | 01:06:11 to 01:06:19
And until next time, more to be revealed. And Pradita. Thank you again. Thank you so much, Monica.

Monica (Host) | 01:06:22 to 01:06:41
We hope you enjoyed this episode. For more information, please visit us@jointhevelation.com and be sure to download our free gift, subscribe to our mailing list or leave us a review on itunes. We thank you for your generous listening, and as always, more to Be revealed. You.