The Wheel of the Year as a Spiritual Psychology for Women
Kim Duckett’s “A Year and a Day Sacred Mystery School for Women,” which was established in 1997, is one of the oldest ongoing “Mystery Schools” specifically for and about women in this country.
The Mystery School offers a formal curriculum and educational program in Goddess and Women’s Spirituality, a unique and in-depth study of the Wheel of the Year and women’s psychospiritual development, and successive years of Ritual, circle facilitation, and/or Priestess training.
Because the Mystery School is based on a psychospiritual integrative model and approach, all of the explorations are places of healing and empowerment for the women involved and for Womankind in general. And because learning is not just an intellectual endeavor, each time we meet, along with a formal “learning,” we also invite learning through our bodies, emotions, and spirit in experiential and ritualistic ways.
A prerequisite class begins the Mystery School experience. The “Women’s Spiritual Journeys” course, a 13-week overview of women’s spirituality and an intense experience of Circle and Ritual and our specific Mystery School culture, is offered several times a year and is required of everyone participating in the Mystery School regardless of past experience.
This class is also the prerequisite for advanced classes in creating Ritual, Dianic Goddess traditions, and the “elements,” “tools,” and “spellcraft” of ancient and contemporary European earth-based shamanic traditions.
These classes make up the first year of the Mystery School.
Participants then continue their studies by exploring, and celebrating the Wheel of the Year (the name given to the connected seasonal processes of the natural world) and the “seasons” of their own lives by attending monthly day-long Intensives and community rituals celebrating the Solstices, the Equinoxes, and the Cross-Quarter Holydays of Imbolc, Beltane, Samhain, and Lammas.
After an overview of the Wheel of the Year, offered each January, an initiation into the Mystery School officially begins at Imbolc (February). Initiates then embark on a Journey through the Wheel and the corresponding seasons of women’s lives which include Spring Equinox and the Divine Girl-Child, the Maiden, the Desire and Menarche teachings of Beltane, the Summer honorings of the Mother/Creatrix/Queen and The Amazon: She Who Protects All That Has Been Created, Sustained, and Nurtured.
In the waning time of the Year we celebrate the Fruits of our Labors (Lammas) and the wonders and challenges of Mid-Life, Aging, Menopause, and Cronehood. We also explore issues related to Death and celebrate the birth/death/rebirth cycle inherent in the Wheel and Goddess traditions.
Kim’s expertise in Women’s Studies and Women’s Psychology and her theories regarding the pagan Wheel of the Year as an ancient, long-buried spiritual psychology is the basis of much of the learnings offered through the Mystery School.