Mentorship with Goddess

In this episode I talk with Kay Aldred. Kay is a Shaman, Priestess and a facilitator.  In this chat we talk about Mentorship with Goddess, archetypes, rites of passage, perimenopause rites as well as embodiment and Kay's vision for education.
Grab a drink and join us for a very informative chat
Love
Liz

Kay's details:
Website is www.kaylouisealdred.com
Instragram: kaylouisealdred

Kay is writing her own books. Mentorship of Goddess: Growing Sacred Womanhood was published June 2022 and is available now at www.thegirlgod.com and online stores.

Making Love with the Divine: Sacred, Ecstatic, Erotic Experiences is scheduled for February 2023 and Somatic Shamanism: Your Fleshy Knowing as The Tree of Life is scheduled for June 2023. 

Finally, Kay and her husband Dan Aldred, are co-authoring a book together, Embodied Structure: Creating Safe Space for Learning, Facilitating and Sharing, which will be available late autumn 2023. 

Books can be pre-ordered at www.thegirlgod.com 

If you want to comment or get in touch with me in the following ways.
Email:  spirituallyspeaking222@gmail.com
Instagram: spiritually_speaking_222
Facebook:  spirituallyspeaking222

Transcript

 Hi, this is Liz, and welcome to my podcast, Spiritually Speaking with Liz. Today I'm joined by Kay Alred. Kay Visions catalyzers, individual, institutional, and collective evolution through education, embodiment, and creativity. Amalgamating, metacognition. Intuition and instinct. She's an advocate for fleshy knowing and tangible divinity alongside inclusion, accessibility, and reducing barriers to spiritual and sacred education, exploration and wellbeing.

Kay's written two books. One published one nearly published. The published one is called Mentorship with Goddess Growing Sacred Womanhood, and the one nearly published is called Making Love With the Divine. Kay, welcome and thank you for joining me. Thank you for having me Liz delighted. Oh, my pleasure.

You're also writing, you've got another two books as well, haven't you? You just can't stop, can you ? No, no, I said I was gonna spend. 3, 20 20 I started, So I said it was gonna work until 2023. Writing, um, that three, again, three year projects. I like to, um, work in three year cycles. So yeah, that's been the last three years.

 So I'd like to jump straight in and say in your past you were a school teacher and I'd like to know where you went from being a secondary school teacher to being on your Priestess and shamanic path. Yeah, so I was a teacher, um, qualified in 19. Six and, um, started off as an re teacher. So that was the specialism that I was trained in.

Um, but I only actually. Full-time re teaching for three years cuz I had my children. And then when I went back, I moved across lots of different subjects. So English history, re um, and then settled as a, a leader in health and social care and psychology and childcare. Um, and then moved into pastoral work.

So when I left teaching, I was actually, um, ahead of year in sixth form. And what moved me to the Priestess and Shamanic path was, um, illness and then an accident. So chronic fatigue and um, fibromyalgia and chronic migraine. Um, but it was really an accident that I had in 2015, knocked out all my teeth, um, was really quite a severe accident that pushed me literally into a different path.

Um, moved me. Being really, ill and hiding that. So not actually being off work to physically not being able to get up one day after the accident. Um, and then volunteer redundancy, um, gift me the funds really to move to a different, a different life path. Wow. So you were really pulled to your calling you know, literally you're not doing what we want.

Yeah. Yeah. And, and then I would've used the. I don't think I would've left teaching because I adored it. Um, had the opportunity of the random opportunity of volunteer redundancy not come up because I, I had three children. I don't, I don't think I could have taken that leap without some financial support.

Yeah. Which the, and also the. I would've felt I was giving up if I'd just resigned, but it was, there was slack in the, in the staffing, so it allowed me to step without feeling like I was letting anybody down as well, which was important for me. Mm-hmm. , that's amazing. Which came first then? The shamanism or the priests?

The, the shamanism, the she, the shamanic path was, was the first, um, it was the very first thing that I did after I did the basic, , you know, ground yourself and start to get better. Yeah. Um, I, I then I, and then start to seek, I read and then I was like, Okay, what will I commit to? And it was the shamanic path.

So, and it was a long training. It was three years, uh, well, two, two really. Um, so yeah, that came first. It was good. And that's a whole other subject that I'd like to have you back for please. Oh yeah, I could, I could talk for like 40 minutes on that, so don't get me going. Yes, please. Yeah. Well, that's another one.

Please. I'll book you in, get you in the diary. So what I've brought you here for today, what I've asked you to come for is to talk about your book.  Which is available on, Well, I'll put all the details in the show notes, um, where you can get it from. So you described this book and something you wish you could have shared with your daughter and with the, your younger self.

What do you mean by that? What's so important about it?

Yeah, so rite of passage. It's moving from one life stage.. I see a rite of passage is moving from one form of self to another. Usually a life stage usually involves a physical maturation, so a physical process. Um, and rites of passage are embedded in most cultures and most religions. Um, but we have very strange rites of passage.

Now in the west, you know, you're 21st, you go out and get. Drunk and things like that. But the rites of pass, I mean, I'm thinking of the right way to put it, , but the rites of passage that are embedded in indigenous cultures still, um, particularly around womanhood. So moving through your rite of passage of your first period, um, is missing in our society.

And yes, it's, it's a hallmark of, of the physical change as well as, uh, uh, Looking upon the period as a gift, a gift of your ability to mother. So not necessarily a, a physical being, but mother, the world mother bring you, come into your creativity. So, That's what I mean by it. And I wrote, I wish, I wish that I had known it for myself, but also that I'd known the content before my daughter had gone into puberty, because I did it completely unconsciously.

I hadn't realized really the magnitude or the, the specialness of the moment. Um, . Yeah. So it's a deep regret that I wasn't able to, and that I wrote the book with her in mind. It doesn't matter what she does with it, but Absolutely. Yeah. That other people have that access. And also it's a right passage perimenopause, which is the second adolescence where we have a chance to do it again.

Mm-hmm. . So it was born out of my own journey of giving myself a rite of passage of moving through my second puberty. It's so true though because it, it's something in our culture, like you say in African cultures, in Indian cultures, it's celebrated, but in our culture it's almost like shame, isn't it?

Yeah. Yeah. Brush shut into the carpet often. They'll say, Oh, you're having problems, your, your um, periods, and after a month or two, let's go on the pill. I know, rather than actually sinking into the cycle. The, the, the wisdom that is within that, within the, the woman's body of the experience of the cycle.

It's. Great, um, loss, I think to our society it is cuz I, I remember my starting my first period, it was the day before my 11th birthday and I was at school with my friends, I didn't know what to do. I know my mom had a cupboard cuz I've got an older sister. So she had a cupboard where sanitary things were kept.

But it was just, I, I was taught by my school friends. And I was, you know, I think I went home and told my, told my mom, I've started my period. Oh, right. Okay. And, and that was it. It, it, it's not something that's taught, It's not something that's celebrated or embraced, is it? It's, it, it is sort of shunned as if it's something that's dirty.

And it's not. Yeah, And having it is, You're exactly right, Liz. And having taught it as a teacher, so having taught sex education and, and you know, yeah. I did that so unconsciously, I, I never thought about the celebratory aspect or it was just very functional. Um, you know, it's your cycle. You ovulate then use a condom, you know, just we, it wasn't.

I can't believe it now. I can't believe it wasn't on my radar. The concept of the sacredness, but also the power of the cycle. Um, yeah. You live and learn though. You do. You do. And then now you, you are able to, to share with, with other, with other women, with other girls, with other women, the importance of it.

So in the book, I'll just flick to. Well, first of all, I'll ask you the, so how do all these things mixed together? So we've got paganism, we've got shamanism, we've talk about chakras, we talk about archetypes, goddesses. How do they all come together? Have you just picked all the things that correspond and then brought them together?

How does it work? That's a great question. So it is, so my wellness journey, so me educating myself, having to pay quite a lot of money at certain times, um, has formed the basis of the knowledge that has made this curriculum. So the teacher in me kind of gone, Oh, I know all this content. How can I make it accessible for the, in the cheapest way?

Mm-hmm.  because, Firmly do not believe that this knowledge should be hidden, paid for, uh, at the only, for the elite only for those who have time. It should be embedded in the school curriculum. That is my long term vision for everything that I do now, is how can I make it accessible? So the content is from my own healing journey and edu and learning and research.

I then, and it's a holistic content on how to live as a sacred woman, which includes energy, it includes about your nervous system, includes about your physiology, parts of your body. It includes the archetypes of goddess, the potentiality of woman. So what you can embody, the Warrioress the mother, the maiden.

And then I've streamlined it into a curriculum with lessons not, it's not like, you know, going to school, I promise you, , but it's accessible. So it has information and then activities and the activities appeal to all types of learners. Um, visual art. journaling and actually ritual. So that's how it went from being really big into a book.

Does that answer the question? Yeah. Yeah. And, and it is a physical workbook, isn't it? There's places for people to write down what they want, their findings, and there's tasks to do it. It's a very complex structure I thought puts into simple, I won't say bite size chunks cuz they're not bite size as such.

Cause you know, there's a lot going on with them. But just linking them like that and coming back to the center, I, I just think it's, it's quite easy and I think it would be a nice thing, like you say, to be in schools, but also maybe to do groups, you know, where people, where they have it as the workbook and then the work.

You know as groups where they meet up once a month or something. Yes, and at the start there's a whole section on for facilitators or group leaders, because it is year long curriculum, but you could deliver it in a week, you could do a summer camp, you could do, or because it is for perimenopause as well, you could do a women's group where you works through it in a week, um, rather, or two weeks rather than a a year.

But if you were a group of friends and you wanted to go through a year together, Then you could work through it. Yeah. And it's trauma informed, so the facilitation is in a way that creates a safe space. And there's some guidelines on that as well. No, it is, it is very well held, if that makes sense. So, because I've been, talking quite a bit about perimenopause, and I will be talking further with people about perimenopause through my own experience, because my friends were of an age where we're going through this.

How could this help any perimenopausal ladies? What would this do for them?  Um, so I, I'll come back to what I said before. The perimenopause is the, for me is the second adolescence. So anything we have not resolved in our first adolescence will come up for, for us to have a second go at

Oh does it! Yeah, it really does. It really does. Um, and the point of that is because we are meant to become individuated. So from a. Bigger psychological point of view at 28, we're to individuate. We're meant to become our fully formed adult self. But because as women, particularly of our our age, Liz, um, and our mothers were caught in their own stuff, we didn't have the mentorship we needed.

So this is our chance to re mother. And mentor ourselves into that fully fledged mature adult self and become who we were. I, I don't like to say born to be, hang on, To become who? Our potential, our potentiality, our greatest version of ourselves. It's free and expansive and outspoken and everything. So how the book helps, it's, it doesn't matter whether you are 13 or 43 or 53, you can pick it up and be reparented through that age range that ups and downs. Extreme emotion looking after your physical health, whether it the, you know, the hormone shifts that happen in perimenopause. Working with any end of the cycling that's still going on. But the book offers you the lunar cycle if you're not bleeding.

So if you're grieving the end of your bleed as you go through many menopause and you haven't had an opportunity to work with your bleeding cycle, you can still work with the moon cycle in the same way. So it's just an anchor. It's a wellbeing tool, and it's also a way of realizing the the power of the sacredness of the woman's body, mind, spirit and self.

Yeah. And so needed. Mm-hmm. , I think it's, this is one of the plus sides I think, of social media, that there's a lot more, Maybe it's just who I follow, I dunno. But there seems to be a lot more knowledge, a lot more teachings about the moon, about the moon cycles, about how women can sink with the moon that didn't.

Seemed to be about, I mean, even when I went into this world, into the spiritual world in like my early twenties, and there were, we knew about the moon and putting crystals out in the moon, but it, it wasn't embraced as much as the feminine then. Was it? No, I, I think that's just exploded in the last three years personally.

Yeah. I dunno about you. You'll know more from Yeah, I agree. Yeah. Um, and it's on TikTok. Um, my niece is heavily into it. My daughter's actually missed that timeline. She's 21 this year. But my niece is 16 next year and she's, you know, crystal heaven, uh, as you know, cause I came and got some crystals for her.

So there's a great interest in witchcraft, the paganism aspect. Yes. Um, Wicca and the, the time is here. And, and they're also very connected to the witch archetype, which means that all of these things that are being connected to the feminine form, the feminine, um, and even goddess. was Glastonbury, wasn't it?

But even that has becoming more mainstream. Very much so. Um, yeah, I think the last three years personally, I think  means that we've gone, Oh, we've had time to think and seek. Seek. Yeah. It's a good word. Yeah. It, it has. And then there were people like you that were doing things to support people.

Through those times and I think, yeah, it, it has, it has grown through that. But I think as well there's, there's the growth of good books coming out, good literature coming out, and there's more, there is more a lot goddess type things, um, than I ever remember. When I started it was All Angels. It was fairies.

You, you had the, archetypal goddesses, the Pagan and the Roman, but there wasn't anything, you know, it just, Oh, Diana was the warrior, but that was it. You know, there wasn't any, it was just book knowledge, if that makes sense. Where I think now people have, have taken, taken that and just expanded on it more and.

Padded it out more. It was, it was just like, these are the words. That was it. Where now it's been fleshed out, hasn't it? I totally agree with you. And it used to be around the lens of classical mythology. So the Greek and Roman Goddesses were the only things you could find. But people as a theologian,  you can go to any world religion now and see how the women are seeking their feminine goddess so that God as woman within their religion.

Um, so Mary Magdalene is massive, isn't she? Yeah, massive. Um, and Mother Mary. And then you've got, well, Kali's massive as well. So there's a whole conversation around , cultural appropriation and um, Pop Goddess, which is a different conversation, but my lens is very much about that. These are all strands of energy within a woman and they are filtered through different religious. Paradigms and words, but it's, it's still part of being in a woman's body. We have these potential to be Kali, the anger, the holy rage, or the nurturing mother. we have it within us. A lot of Kali in perimenopause! she's the number one. She takes the reign, doesn't she? She does. Yeah. And, and from a, and from a Christian perspective, you know that we've got Black Madonna, So she's the, she's the flip of the white Mary, Virgin Mary. You've got Black Madonna, right? I don't, I don't know anything particularly about that. Okay, tell me about that. I'm intrigued now. Well, Black Madonna is the dark goddess of, of the Christianity of Christian faith, she's quite big in, um, Latin America. So she's a statue of the Mother Mary, but she's black and she's the mother that holds you in the darkness. But from my perspective within that is that ability to the destroyer Yeah. Has never been talked about within the Christian faith. You know, Mother Mary's up there, she's whoa.

Whereas , um, black Madonna is down there. The, the womb space. So I think there's a flame within her not as quite as destructive as Kali. Mm-hmm. But yeah, she is there if you seek her within Christianity. It's like the Taras though, isn't it? I dunno. A great deal with Buddhism but you've got the different colored Taras.

Haven't the white Tara, the Green Tara. Um, Durga, there's a lot. Um, where in Eastern cultures, they're really celebrated aren't they?. Massively, I mean, well, it's a triple gods and it's truest form , and the lover, So you've got maiden mother crone, but the lover part, which is the one of the sides of mother, um, within that is the fire.

And, and she can race holy hell. Um, and it is, it's been missing even from the sun. I think from the sanitized triple Goddess you know, that destroyer aspect, they think or with crone. There's another side to. Um, which I talk about in the Making Love book,  that rise of energy that can come through as anger or creativity, it's all the same energy.

It's just how we use it. And is that the kundalini energy? I think yes. Um, life force, I, I try to give it like a general name. Mm-hmm. . Cause I like to keep it open to everybody, but life force, it just is how we channel it is our, is our intention and our need at that point. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. It's, that's fascinating. I could go forever.

I'm trying to Yeah, we could. I've got some questions and I'm trying to stick to them. So one thing I wanted to ask you about, and it's so. I have strong thoughts about, and strong belief about is that you talk quite a bit,  generally, but in your book about the importance of embodiment, can you explain what embodiment is, why it's important, and what, why are people not in their body?

You say you got strong opinion in 10 minutes. I dunno whether we're on, whether we, whether we're on the same page. Um, okay. Yeah. Wow. This is my thing. So, tangible divinity and fleshy knowing, spirituality. Has been used as a resource to escape being human, in my humble opinion, spiritual bypassing.

So off you go, we'll ignore all the poverty in the world and all the difference because I'm om-ing out and I'm going up here. Yeah. So for me, that's not the path. The path is to be human.  to empathize, to advocate for the good wellness of all who are living, um, all sentient things. And so for me, if we can't be in our body and, um, live within, um, within  the difficulty of that is life then with spiritual bypassing. So, and, but then also as you do spiritual practices, if you're not trauma informed, being in the body can be quite hard. So I write from the lens of that we need to strengthen our body. We need to be make friends with our body. Create health in order for us to really step into our spiritual wellbeing and hold the energy of that, um, in a, in a way that is helpful for, for all.

Did I answer the question? Yes. And I totally agree. I was gonna say, how does that resonate? Yeah. Perfectly.

Okay, so let's shift gears now and I'd like to ask you about wisdom Ablaze. So you just happened to drop this in your email that , that your dream about running a spiritual school and you put an educational and discussion space for visionary professionals and those working in social justice. Charitable and grassroot context who are ready to inquire, explore, and engage in change agency.

tell me that's a long term vision. , so speaking to the spiritual school first, um, I, I think that. This sort of education. And the other books, which I'll come back and speak about, I'm sure, um, should be embedded in this, in, in the curriculum. So I often think when I'm training, um, shaman practitioners and I see them all in line doing different things. It's like watching Harry Potter. It's like a Hogwarts scene. But these things should, should be in schools, it should be normalized, how to clear your Chakras. So, I don't want to run a business. I, I want to somehow get this mainstream. It's a big dream, and I realize that there's two different paradigms running together, which brings me to Wisdom Ablaze.

There are so many professionals, so many people that I've worked with who are going automatically through their day to day jobs. I know there is something different but don't have the head space or the luxury that I had to be able to explore. So I don't know how it will manifest, but my vision is that there is a place where those professionals can come, those who are in charitable contexts and still don't feel like it's quite shifting, can come together and be educated about things like patriarchy, capitalism, consumerism, extractivism, all the isms that are out at the moment, ableism and be, cuz I've had the luxury of being able to educate myself in these things and if there was a space where we could have an education center and say, You're not going mad. This system isn't working. Here's some education. Come and meet this person who will support you when you try to have these conversations with your boss or will support you when you try to create your own change agency, whether it being in your community or your families, that's a big dream.

Um,  and, and I just, I dunno how the hell I'm gonna fund it and I dunno where it's gonna be, but I would like it all to be based on reciprocity. Of course we can't take money out of it, but there must be other ways of doing it. I really believe that. Um, you just totally, when you, I think when you've got a passion like you have, and when you've got a vision like that, you just have to Just keep visualizing. Keep it,  alive, keep sharing it with people. And that's how it starts, isn't it? Somebody will say, Oh, well actually I've had an idea. Why don't you do this? Somebody else will be, Why don't you try this aspect? And it will all come together. But that does sound very, very exciting.

Thank you. I mean, my big, my big thing is, , you know, physically I'm. As strong as some people. Yeah. So that is, is not my skill, but I have, because I've been stationary cuz I haven't been, had the bandwidth to always do things and physically I'm not the strongest. As I said, I've been able to educate myself.

That's the one thing I have been able to do. And. So I want to reciprocate with being able to educate back, share resources, create resources,  and, and I will give, I mean, I will teach and share as freely as some people can. You know that I do. No, that's lovely. And, and that's one of the things that I love about you is you're so passionate and you live what you teach.

Yeah, I do. You know, it's not book knowledge.  If you ever meet Kay or see Kay, she literally glows from the inside out. There aren't many people that do that, but she truly does glow because she's living what she's supposed to be doing. I feel

thank you. I cannot, I do not teach anything. , and my children would tell you that I'm, I'm a husband. Um, I, I never say anything that I haven't, I don't actually embed in my own life. I'm aligned with that. Yeah, no, I get that. And you are truly aligned with what you're doing, for sure. 

Well, thank you so much for joining me. I've really enjoyed it. And please can we book in for another one? And I'd like you to talk about your Shamanic journey, how you got there, and  a little bit more about that. Please, if you'd like to come back. Absolutely delighted to. Okay.  📍 Thank you for joining me.

 I will put all Kay's details in the show notes below. We do stock the books in Karma, but there's also Girl God books. It'll all be down below. And there's also be a link to Kay's Instagram page, her Facebook and her website too. So thank you for joining me, and I'll see you soon. Bye. Thank you.