S1 ep. 2: What Initiation Actually Means

Season 1, EPISODE 2 TRANSCRIPT:

“Welcome back to Priestess Initiations: The Goddess Coven. I'm Casey and this is Episode 2.

Today we're talking about what initiation actually means. Not the sanitized, metaphorical version you see in self-help books. The real thing. The kind that breaks you open and puts you back together as someone unrecognizable.

If you're here, you've probably been through at least one initiation already. Maybe you know it, maybe you don't. By the end of this episode, you'll recognize it. And you'll understand why comfort was never the goal.

This podcast is spiritual teaching, not therapy or medical advice.

Let's start with what initiation actually is.

In traditional cultures, initiations were rites of passage—deliberate ceremonies that marked the death of one identity and the birth of another. The boy becomes a man. The maiden becomes a woman. The individual becomes part of the community in a new way.

These weren't metaphors. They involved real ordeals—isolation in the wilderness, fasting, physical trials, vision quests, encounters with death. You went into the liminal space as one person, and you emerged as another. There was no going back.

In our modern culture, we've lost most of these containers. We don't have elders guiding us through intentional rites of passage. But the initiations still happen. They just come uninvited.

Initiation is what happens when life breaks you open so completely that you can't return to who you were. It's the death of an old identity and the birth of a new one. And it's terrifying because there's a period in between where you're neither—you're in the void, the liminal space, the underworld.

Initiations come in many forms…the death of someone you love. A diagnosis that changes everything. A relationship that ends and takes your old self with it. A betrayal that shatters your trust. An accident or illness that forces you into your body differently. A spiritual awakening that makes your old life unbearable. Becoming a parent. Leaving a career, a home, a belief system.

What makes these initiations—and not just 'hard times'—is that they fundamentally change who you are. You don't 'get over' an initiation. You become someone else through it.

And here's what's important: you don't choose initiations. They choose you. You can resist them, avoid them, numb yourself through them—but if an initiation is meant for you, it will find you. The goddesses will make sure of it.

So when we're talking about initiation, transformation, we're talking about death and rebirth. We're talking about phoenix energy. And when I say death and rebirth, I don't mean it metaphorically.

I mean something in you actually dies. A version of yourself, an identity you built your whole life around, a way of being in the world—it dies. And you grieve it. You feel the loss of who you were, even if who you were was causing you suffering.

The maiden who believed she had to be perfect to be loved? She dies.

The woman who thought she could control everything if she just tried hard enough? She dies.

The part of you that believed you were broken, unworthy, too much, not enough? Slowly, but surely, that dies too.

But here's the hard part: the death comes before the rebirth. There's a period where you're in the underworld, in the void, in the liminal space—and you have no idea who you're becoming. You only know who you're not anymore.

This is the descent. This is where Persephone lives. This is where initiatory work happens.

And our culture hates this. Our culture wants you to skip the death, avoid the grief, bypass the void, and get straight to the 'healed' version of yourself. Transformation as a product you can buy. Rebirth without the mess of dying.

But that's not how initiation works. You can't become the queen without descending to the underworld. You can't become sovereign without first losing everything you thought made you safe.

You can't be reborn without dying first. And I'm not saying that you have to lose everything in your life, that you have to be unsafe. You deserve safety.

You get to have safety, but you create it for you as parts of you are are dying. And in the liminal space, that in between place where you're neither who you were, nor who you're becoming, that's the most sacred and unbearable part.

You're dissolved. You're raw. You're undefended, and you have no idea what comes next.

This is where the real transformation happens. Not in the 'after,' when you've got a nice story to tell about your journey. But in the middle, when you're still in pieces, still in the dark, still not sure you're going to make it through.

That's initiation. And it asks everything of you.

So if initiation is this intense, this destabilizing, this painful—why would anyone want it?

Here's the truth: you don't want it. At least, your ego doesn't want it. The part of you that wants safety, control, predictability—that part will fight initiation with everything it has. And that's the part that's dying.

This isn't love in light, bypass your ego. You don't transcend your ego. You go through your ego.

But when we're talking about initiation, your ego doesn't want it, but your soul wants it. Your soul knows that the only way to become who you're meant to be is to let who you've been die. Your soul signed up for this.

Your soul chose the initiations before you were born. And comfort is not the goal. Comfort keeps you small.

Comfort keeps you in the familiar. Even when the familiar is killing you. Comfort is the enemy of transformation.

I know that's hard to hear. We live in a culture that worships comfort. We're told that if we're uncomfortable, something's wrong. That we need to fix it, medicate it, avoid it, transcend it.

But initiations are supposed to be uncomfortable. They're supposed to break you open. If they didn't, they wouldn't change you.

The goal isn't comfort. The goal is sovereignty. The goal is becoming who you actually are beneath all the conditioning, all the armor, all the identities you built to survive. The goal is reclaiming your power—and that requires facing everything you've been avoiding. But you don't have to do it all at once. One goddess at a time, one part at a time.

And the goddesses aren't here to make you comfortable. Persephone drags you to the underworld. Lilith sends you into exile. Medusa turns you to stone if you can't hold her gaze. Kali destroys everything that's not real.

They're not cruel. They're honest. And they know that you can't become sovereign while clinging to comfort.

And so I want to reiterate again that I'm teaching from the threshold. And you may think I have it all figured out, but I don't. I've been in initiations.

I'm on the other side of some, but not all of them. I'm in the made into mother initiation transition place right now. I'm five months post my fall.

I'm still integrating that. I'm teaching grad students for the first time. That's a new role.

My relationship with my partner, Matt, you'll hear him come up sometimes, because relationships are part of transformation. But that's transforming. It's growing in a new way.

I'm relearning what it is to ask for what I need and not just ask to demand it, to say I know my worth and I trust you can meet it. And he does. And some of you are probably like, he what?

But he does. And that's equally healing and terrifying. I'm still learning Kali in my North Node.

I'm still being shaped by the goddesses. I'm not some guru on a mountain who's arrived. I'm walking this path with you.

And there might be initiations you're going through that I've been through. But there are ones that I'm going through at the same time. I'm teaching what I know and what I'm learning.

And that's what makes this teaching real, not theoretical. And I'm trying to model that you can hold space for others while holding your own process. Because ultimately, there is no arriving.

This journey, this transformation is a spiral. You'll walk it again and again. And the threshold itself is the teaching, the liminal space between maiden and mother.

You're sovereign and relational. That I know what I need, and I know you can meet it. Because I believe in you.

This, you know, spiral that I'm in, you return to the same places deeper each time. I know how to descend, and I'm still descending.

So when I teach you about initiation, I'm not speaking from some distant place of mastery. I'm speaking from the middle of it. And that's exactly where the teaching needs to come from.

Because initiation doesn't end. You don't graduate. You spiral deeper.

And this is maybe the most important thing I can tell you about initiation: it's not linear.

You don't go through one big initiation and then you're done. Even my fall, even after a near death experience, I'm not done. Right here, right now, in this moment, on this podcast, I am in an initiation.

You don't heal and then never have to face that wound again. You heal layers of the wound. You descend again and again.

Not once and then you go live happily ever after in the light. It's a spiral. You descend, you integrate, you emerge.

And in that emergence, well, I'm going to go off track for a moment here, but I really have this belief that you can, your light can only shine as bright as your darkness. And that's not about like unclaimed darkness. That's your claimed darkness.

That's your shadow work that you've already done. The deeper the shadow work you've done, the more layers, the brighter your light gets to shine. And the more gratitude and love and light there actually is in your life.

But it's not from bypassing the work. It's from going through it and continuing to go through it as life asks you again to descend again, deeper, more fully. And this time, with more capacity, with more support.

The maiden to mother journey isn't something you complete. You move from maiden to mother and then back to maiden and then to mother again. And maybe eventually to Crone, I'm not there yet. When I am, I'll tell you about it. But each time, you're more integrated, each time you can hold more, and each time you understand it differently. Persephone doesn't just descend once.

She descends every year, six months in the underworld, six months above. That's the cycle. That's the spiral.

You'll meet your rage again. You'll meet your grief again. You'll meet your shadow again.

But each time, you'll have more capacity to be with it, to let it teach you, to integrate it without being destroyed by it. This is why I can teach Persephone, Lilith, Medusa, Hecate, Isis, because I've been through those initiations. They're on my South node, and I've mastered them enough to guide others through.

That does not mean that I know everything. Lilith and Isis were there for me through my fall, and we'll talk about that. And I consider myself a priestess of Lilith and Isis.

And there's the priestess wound showing up right now and claiming that. But these goddesses, they channel through you, and I trust them. And every time I descend, I don't go alone.

I have my team with me, my team of goddesses, my team of guides, and my coven, and my partner. And all of that came into my life from doing shadow work. But Kali, Kali is on my North node.

She's where I'm going. I'm learning her now, and that means I'll be initiated by her for the rest of my life, in deeper and deeper ways. Trust the spiral.

That's the work. That's why it never ends, and that's why it's so fucking worth it. So I'm talking a lot, but I want to offer you a reflection practice.

So just take a moment and ask yourself, what initiation am I in right now? What initiation am I in right now?

And within that, what's dying? What part of you is dying? What part is ready to die?

You might know immediately. Or you might not be able to see it yet—sometimes you can only recognize an initiation in hindsight.

But if something in your life feels like it's falling apart, if you're in the void, if you don't know who you are anymore—you're probably in an initiation. And that means you're right where you need to be.

Don't rush it. Don't try to fix it. Don't bypass the death to get to the rebirth.

Descend. Let it change you. Trust the spiral.

And as you're sitting there, noticing perhaps the fear that's showing up in your body, noticing where that is in your body, noticing where any resistance is to the part that needs to die, to the old belief that needs to die, also take a moment to consider what's being born. What could be born if I let go of this belief? Let's say the belief is I'm too much.

If you really let that belief die, piece by piece, what could be born?

And this process is not linear, right? What's born is going to one day be stronger than the old belief. And that old belief, some of them will go away, and some will always have a tiny voice in the back of your mind.

But that, that new belief, that part of you that showed up in the transformational death, that's not going anywhere. You get to choose who you are, you get to choose what you believe. Everything we explore here lives in practice.

And so, I invite you as you really consider this question, what initiation am I in right now? What's dying and what's being born?

Join our free online website. It really is free. And you'll find our Ritual Grimoire, all of that's free. The Embodiment Library, all of that's free.

And there are a few free online workshops. And those are intended to support you, to support you through this process, right? When I say I want to be accessible, I mean it.

And you deserve to be supported through this journey. And so, subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode. But go take advantage of that Embodiment Library.

There are so many great sections in there, so many great practices. There's even one for connecting to your guides, connecting to goddesses. There's a ritual practice for connecting to guides.

Find your guides. And as we continue in a few episodes from now, we'll start working with goddesses individually, just a few of them. And if any of them call to you, I invite you to deepen, deepen that relationship, explore it.

And in the meantime, connect with other guides. There are so many other guides. There are ancestors. There are animal spirit guides. There are angelic guides. And it's all about your own belief system, right? How you relate to these. There are parts of you that are guides. You might have people in your life that are guides.

And the invitation is to deepen those relationships. To deepen those relationships. And find someone, find a guide, who is going to walk this path with you.

Going to help you through your initiation process. Who's going to help you feel safe enough to let go of what's dying. And each time you work with a guide, each time you develop that trust through their initiation, they stay with you through all the following ones.

All right. So that's the end of this episode for today.

And, you know, just descend. Let it change you.

Trust the spiral.

I'll see you next week.

This podcast is spiritual teaching, not therapy or medical advice.”

This material is protected by copyright, Casey Dunne.

From Priestess Initiations: The Goddess Coven: S1 Ep.2 What Initiation Actually Means, Nov 19, 2025