0:07

Hi,

0:10

I'm Michelle Peely, the Managing Director and publisher

0:13

of Hay House UK. I'm

0:15

very excited today to be in discussion with

0:17

Dr Sharon Blackie, the author

0:19

of the fantastic best-selling book If

0:21

Women Rose Rooted. Today we're going

0:23

to be discussing the new oracle

0:25

that Sharon is creating for Hay

0:27

House, but just to introduce her

0:29

a little more detail, she's a

0:32

award-winning writer of fiction and nonfiction

0:34

and a psychologist who is specialised

0:36

in neuroscience, narrative and mythology and

0:38

chaotic studies. She's

0:40

an international best-selling author and

0:43

recent book Haggitudes has garnered fantastic

0:45

reviews. Sharon offers

0:48

workshops, seminars worldwide, in person

0:50

and online. So I'm

0:52

very excited today to be talking

0:54

to Sharon about the Rooted Woman

0:56

Oracle, this beautiful deck that

0:59

she's created with the illustrator Hannah Willer.

1:02

So welcome Sharon.

1:05

Can I ask you first of all what inspired

1:07

you to move from your writing fiction to

1:10

nonfiction and to creative when women rose

1:12

rooted? Yeah, it wasn't intentional because I've

1:14

always very much enjoyed writing

1:16

fiction. That's how I always saw myself as

1:18

a writer, but in my other life at

1:21

the time I was running a very small,

1:23

very small literary publisher and we were publishing

1:25

a magazine called Earthlines which was effectively nature

1:27

writing with a bit of myth and folklore

1:29

thrown in and I was doing quite

1:31

a bit of place-related writing myself and one day an

1:33

agent approached me and said have you ever thought of

1:36

writing a book? And I hadn't

1:38

thought of writing a nonfiction book about

1:40

place and belonging, but of course at that point

1:42

I did and to cut a very long story

1:44

short it sort of transformed

1:46

itself into a woman who was rooted.

1:49

Were you surprised by the impact and the success

1:51

of the book? I was hugely surprised because at

1:54

the time that I wrote it nobody really knew

1:56

what to do with it because

1:58

it just wasn't a book. The thing

2:00

about time for people to put me

2:02

into as Memoir and Nature Wednesday and

2:04

literally nobody knew what for on the

2:06

shelves in oh so you have to

2:08

review it. And so it had its

2:10

success korea purely by word of mouth.

2:13

And and now because everybody's doing math

2:15

and a memoir and that show, I

2:17

think so that's that's kind of that.

2:19

kind of nice today. and I think

2:21

it's it's not. Quite. Said Katie

2:23

Nice authorities, influential family women on the internet

2:25

than a tremendous impact. Yeah, and it's kind

2:28

of funny when you do that. finishing it

2:30

feels as if the book is sort of

2:32

out of your hands. you know? I know

2:34

it sounds silly, but it's difficult to take

2:37

credit for it when it's doing. it's Anglican,

2:39

the world and as constant source of astonishment.

2:41

And tonight though level of it and use

2:43

the term equal heroin to just so bloated

2:46

Obama well enough woman rigid what I was

2:48

trying to do with to look at the

2:50

impact of. Stories.

2:52

From the five hundred and forty one

2:55

and ability of the Celtic Lands in

2:57

the Lancet for Celtic languages and what

2:59

I have discovered an over because many

3:02

as most that and most of those

3:04

stories put forward women as guardian from

3:06

success of the Land of Either and

3:09

Body and the Land or in some

3:11

way been responsible for it And so

3:13

having. Had a bit of a. Concern

3:16

about the hero's journey just a humble

3:18

transit, The hero's journey and the fact

3:20

that I didn't really think that that

3:22

had very much to do with women.

3:24

I was interested in the harrowing Seine

3:26

and it didn't need at that meeting.

3:28

with you're looking at a harrowing Journey

3:31

it was by definition an eco home

3:33

and shiny because of old of the

3:35

stories talking about limited demands and I

3:37

just seemed that was not which the

3:39

journey that was needed. And these times

3:41

of environmental catastrophe you know and how

3:43

many stories and on eight of traditions

3:45

pointing to. Women as having the footsie ability

3:47

for the land and it seemed like. Like

3:50

a good return to use No, No.

3:52

A powerful and and you speak with

3:55

an extension of that about the suppression

3:57

of feminine qualities such as creativity, an

3:59

intuition, in favor of the

4:01

masculine attributes of the rational and the

4:03

goal setting. Could you

4:06

describe how important taking those

4:09

feminine principles and the whole

4:11

ideas of relationality

4:14

and connection are and why it's so important

4:17

to rediscover those and work with

4:19

those more effectively? I think that

4:21

that began really way, way

4:24

back in Plopo's times. When

4:26

women were associated with nature and

4:28

men were associated with rational and the

4:30

intellect and as a consequence that was

4:32

elevated and so both women

4:35

and by association nature were

4:37

seen as second class characteristics. The

4:40

enlightenment and the scientific revolution have led

4:42

to many, many wonderful ways of being

4:44

in the world but there is a

4:47

tendency these days to only value the

4:49

masculine and the scientific and the intellectual and

4:52

what that does is it stops us being

4:54

able to communicate with each other and be

4:56

in relationship with each other and with the

4:58

land. It just seems

5:00

to me that a world that is so

5:02

profoundly out of balance is inevitably

5:04

going to result in crisis

5:07

after crisis which we are seeing these days and what

5:09

we need to do now is just to make sure

5:11

that women's voices and women's ways of being in the

5:13

world, those feminine qualities which of

5:15

course are both possible in

5:17

men and women are more valued as

5:20

well. Not for one to replace the other

5:22

but just to have the two in balance. Absolutely

5:24

and the heroine's journey is vital to

5:26

offering us a way forward. I

5:29

think so because the heroine's

5:31

journey, the way

5:33

that Joseph Campbell first conceived of it

5:35

was very individualistic. It

5:38

was pretty linear, there was a beginning and a middle and the

5:40

end. It was

5:42

all about being better than

5:45

everybody else. The hero

5:47

is exceptional and coming back

5:49

and saving the world. Campbell talked a lot

5:51

about characters like Jesus and Gandhi and what

5:53

have you which most people can't aspire to.

5:57

That didn't seem to me to relate very much

5:59

to most men. way of being in the world, not

6:01

the West Women's way of being in the world. And so

6:03

I think if we think about what a

6:05

heroine's journey would look like, we bring in

6:08

all of those qualities of community instead of

6:10

individualism and

6:12

of not of exceptionalism but of

6:15

being one amongst many other people who can

6:18

make an impact on the world. And

6:20

do you perceive there's a call that we need

6:23

to heed, particularly in these times? Yes, I mean

6:25

I think the classic curious journey begins with a

6:27

call to adventure. Well, I wouldn't call it the

6:29

call to adventure because I think that kind of

6:31

sets the scene for the kind of swashbuckling dragon-flames,

6:33

kind of the clava that we often,

6:37

that people at Campbell often focus upon.

6:39

And I think really, you know, if you

6:42

look back at a lot of our

6:44

old myths and fairy tales, that's

6:46

not what they're about. And so the

6:48

call in most fairy tales actually is

6:51

a call to transformation, not a call

6:53

to adventure. And all of these old

6:55

myths and stories have

6:58

transformation at their heart and the

7:00

ability to grow into a person

7:02

with heart rather

7:05

than somebody who wins a

7:08

beautiful gift and comes back and saves

7:10

the world with it. It's just a

7:12

different plant on what life is about. I

7:17

think you've really conveyed that in the creation

7:19

of the Oracle that you've created for us,

7:22

which is so wonderful. Did

7:24

you see, you're talking about the imagery and shooting

7:28

Hannah Willow. There was obviously a strong attraction

7:31

to her work. Could you just talk about

7:33

how you saw her work mirroring

7:35

so beautifully what you were saying

7:37

in terms of the vision of your ideas

7:39

for the answer? Yeah, well, I've known Hannah's

7:41

work for a long time. And in fact, I

7:44

interviewed her for my book, The Enchanted Life,

7:46

when I was looking at people moving from

7:48

more corporate existences and being able to make

7:50

a living out of their creativity. So I

7:53

was very familiar with it. I just loved

7:55

the way she made everything so magical,

7:58

but in a very grounded way. She

8:00

paints the land and she paints animals. And

8:03

so it feels very grounded to me, which is

8:05

really, really important when you're talking about missing stories

8:07

so that it's not too magical thinking. And

8:11

the atmosphere, the mood of

8:13

the images and

8:15

particularly the way she paints midnight

8:17

and night scene, which are my

8:19

favorites of all. And it

8:21

just seemed to me that that focus on

8:23

the land and the animals was exactly what

8:25

I wanted to convey. Yes. In

8:28

this oracle that it's a very grounded way of being

8:30

in the world. And so Hannah seemed perfect

8:32

for that. No, that was certainly stunning, something

8:35

worth being very encouraged together. But yeah.

8:37

And in general, do you see

8:39

a value for oracles in these times and

8:42

the Dracula wisdom? I do,

8:44

I mean, it's not something. I've worked with Tara

8:46

quite a lot over the years because I love

8:49

the depth of the archetypes and the

8:51

fact that they're so easily transferable across

8:53

cultures. I've not worked so much with

8:55

Oracle decks, but I love the freedom

8:57

to interpret the images in

8:59

a way that you might be a

9:01

little bit more confined with Tara. Yes.

9:04

So for me, it was very much about being able to deepen some

9:08

of the ideas and expand on the ideas that

9:10

were in, if women were rooted. So that it's

9:12

very different, it's based in some way on the

9:14

books, it's very different because it's much more, it

9:18

has many more images in it,

9:20

it has many more archetypes in it. And yeah,

9:23

there was just a freedom to kind

9:25

of play in creating the deck.

9:27

And I think that's probably the beauty of being

9:29

able to use it as well, but it's not

9:32

quite so constrained. And you can kind of work

9:34

with the imagery on the cards and the words

9:36

in any way that you want to, rather than

9:38

feeling that you've got to use it in a

9:41

particular way as it's so often the case with

9:43

Tara. You talk about it as being able

9:45

to use it to enter the Mundus

9:48

in marginalis, to the imaginal space. Could

9:50

you speak about oracles as a kind

9:52

of portal into that world? Yeah,

9:55

I mean, this dates back again. Well,

9:57

it dates back to Plato, it dates back to ancient Sufis.

10:00

ideas and even our own ideas about the

10:02

other world, this idea that actually there is

10:04

a world, if you like, for want of

10:06

a better way of putting it, that isn't

10:09

necessarily a separate place, but that kind of

10:11

envelops this one, so it's almost like a different

10:13

way of perceiving. And

10:16

it's within some circumstances you can see into

10:18

it, because that world in any of those

10:20

traditions is the place where

10:23

archetypes live, where stories

10:25

come from, where synchronicities come

10:28

from, where dreams come from, and all of

10:30

those are capable of guiding us in any

10:33

tradition in the world. And so I think

10:35

anything that offers you a portal into that

10:37

world is going to prove fruitful

10:39

in one way or another.

10:41

And the images that we

10:44

were working with in this deck are designed

10:46

to do that, to kind of slip through

10:48

the veil a little bit and offer

10:51

you some insight into issues that

10:53

you're worried about or working with.

10:57

Oh, wonderful. Your

10:59

article has 53 characters, which is a

11:01

lovely and unusual number. Could you

11:04

talk about the structure of the deck

11:06

for us, please? Yeah. So there are three

11:09

suits in it. So there are places. And

11:11

as I said, if women are rooted in

11:13

my whole focus. Of

11:15

all of my writings, it's about place. So the

11:17

place suit has archetypal

11:20

landscapes like bog, the

11:23

enchanted forest, the lake,

11:26

and it also has a couple of slightly more otherworldly ones

11:29

like the land of women and the

11:31

Fisher King's court, which appear in the

11:33

old British and Irish mythology. Then

11:36

we have the allies suit, which picks

11:38

up on the women in these old

11:41

Celtic myths and stories. So we have

11:43

some of the goddess figures like the

11:45

maragon and the c s

11:57

s is

12:00

rooted with a few extra stages

12:02

in. So it might be types

12:04

of journey, like pilgrimage, or Imran,

12:07

or Hawken and Labyrinth. Or

12:10

it might be stages of the journey,

12:12

like the call to adventure and the

12:14

return. And so each

12:16

of these three suits is designed

12:19

to represent different aspects of

12:21

the journey that people might undertake. I

12:25

think it's so beautiful that you can work with them individually

12:27

or put them in combination together and you

12:29

have this lovely spirit, particularly with a call

12:31

to journey spread, which is picking

12:33

one card from each of the seats. And

12:36

you talk about the vision of that.

12:38

Yeah, so, I mean, again, they're all

12:40

designed, as you say, to have enough

12:42

imagery and enough words around them, so

12:44

that just picking one card can hopefully

12:46

inspire you. But the idea

12:49

of picking a play suit and then an

12:51

ally, and then a journey,

12:53

a card from the journey suit, to

12:56

actually represent a kind of mini journey,

12:58

so that if you're grappling with a

13:00

particular issue or you're at a transition

13:02

point in your life and you're looking

13:04

for inspiration or for some kind of

13:07

guidance about what this period of

13:09

your life is all about, then you

13:11

can look at the qualities of an archetypal

13:13

landscape. So if

13:16

you get the bog, for example, then

13:18

something is bowed in the bog. The

13:20

bog hides bodies and hides butter and

13:22

all kinds of things that are found

13:25

buried in the bog. So

13:27

that would imply that there is something under the

13:29

surface, perhaps, that you need to do that. And

13:31

then if there is an ally along the way,

13:34

so you might choose the cunnier, and

13:36

she is very much a character who

13:38

is the guardian and protector of the

13:41

land and represents endurance and staying

13:43

power. So that might suggest to you that

13:45

the journey is about that. And then the actual

13:47

journey itself, I mean, let's say you pick the

13:49

labyrinth and

13:51

that idea of walking in and

13:54

out of the spiral labyrinth, particularly,

13:56

which suggests that you have to go deeper and then you have to

13:58

pick something up along the way to bring back out. again. So

14:01

the idea is really that you

14:04

get a bigger perspective and a

14:06

deeper insight into a big issue

14:09

in your life, I suppose. Yes.

14:11

Wonderful. And you, the standalone cards, one

14:13

of them is the peregrina. Could

14:16

you speak a little bit about peregrina?

14:18

You have one of the beautiful poems

14:20

about the peregrina, which I really love.

14:22

Thank you. Yeah, that well, she represents

14:24

the person standing there waiting to

14:26

go on a journey. And peregrina,

14:28

because the

14:30

name relates to the peregrini

14:33

who, particularly in the Irish tradition,

14:36

were people who would go on

14:38

a journey for religious

14:40

reasons, from the Christian tradition

14:42

predominantly, but they would just set out. So

14:44

for example, they would go on a boat

14:46

and they just set out to see and

14:48

see where God take them. It took them

14:50

and see where the divine kind of led

14:52

them. And I like that idea that there

14:54

wasn't, for the peregrina,

14:56

there isn't a fixed path. There isn't

14:58

even a fixed point to the journey,

15:01

but it's just a sense of, okay,

15:03

something needs to shift. I'm open. Guide

15:06

me. And it just seems that that was the perfect

15:08

image for this deck, which is

15:10

very much about being open to

15:12

whatever comes to you, whatever

15:15

your imagination, wherever your imagination leads

15:17

you. Oh, wonderful.

15:20

And the talk as well,

15:22

very strongly, is using the imagination

15:24

to work with Jungian concepts of

15:26

the act of imagination and dream work

15:29

in the deck. Can you see the Holocaust tools for being

15:31

able to do that effectively? Yes,

15:34

because again, the cards, the imagery on

15:36

the cards are designed to be really

15:38

thought about. They are

15:40

archipelae imagery in lots of ways, so

15:43

they're intended to take you very deeply

15:45

and to look into the idea. And

15:48

one of the best ways that I have found

15:50

of working with images is to use this kind

15:52

of act of imagination technique, which is basically,

15:56

effectively, to put yourself in a very deep

15:58

state of relaxation. say

16:00

that you're not half a seat, but you're

16:02

relaxed, but at the same time alert and

16:04

very focused, and then to bring an image,

16:06

say the card, the image of the card,

16:08

into your mind and just literally wait for

16:11

something to shift. So it's not like a

16:13

guided visualization in the way that you're directed.

16:15

You go down the middle of the path

16:17

and then you meet this person and then

16:19

you ask them this question. It's just like,

16:21

here's an image. The union

16:24

perspective on it is you wait for the image to move.

16:27

You wait for something to happen. You wait for something to

16:31

leap out at you, whatever

16:33

might happen. So it's the

16:35

last directed way of just allowing

16:37

the card and the imagery

16:40

to work on you so

16:43

that you're not defining

16:45

it. There is

16:47

a sense that if you try to over

16:49

interpret a card, that in some way you're

16:51

confining it as well. You're not letting it

16:54

be all of the things that it can

16:56

be to you. So the act of imagination

16:58

technique as opposed to guided imagination

17:00

technique is designed to

17:02

allow that to happen. Yeah. I find

17:04

that very useful with terror as well,

17:07

just like waiting and sometimes it's really

17:10

vital thing. Fantastic. I was

17:12

just asking overall

17:15

what you would be hoping that people

17:18

will receive when they work with this article.

17:20

What do you feel that you're hoping it's

17:22

going to create for people? I'm

17:25

really hoping, I suppose, that it's going

17:27

to help people develop relationships

17:30

with their places as much as anything else. I mean,

17:32

clearly I want it to be able to guide them

17:34

and give them the insight and inspiration and all of

17:36

the things that an oracle should do. But I think

17:39

for me, one

17:41

of the best ways of developing

17:43

relationships with our places, apart from knowing

17:46

the physicality of it, apart from knowing the

17:48

environment and the ecology and what the animals are

17:50

and so on, is to be able to perceive

17:52

this mythic overlay. Yes. So with a

17:54

bog, for example, it's lovely to know exactly what is

17:56

in the bog and what the bog consists of, what

17:58

the peat consists of and what the and what flowers

18:00

grow and what birds are there, but there

18:02

is also this kind of mythical overlay of

18:05

what the bog represents in the

18:07

imaginal sense. And to me, both of

18:09

those, because

18:11

the mythic stuff kind of catches the imagination in

18:13

a way that often the physical stuff does. The

18:16

combination of the two, I think, really helps

18:19

us go deeply into a sense

18:21

of connection to the class. And

18:24

as a psychologist, throughout

18:26

my life and all of the ways I've worked as a

18:28

college, that ability to

18:31

capture the imagination is absolutely

18:33

critical, both through relationship and

18:37

to transformation. So that's

18:39

really, I suppose, the other thing that we're

18:41

trying to do with it with the older,

18:43

that would really, really work on people's mythic

18:45

imagination and help people kind of grow

18:48

it and

18:50

see what's possible in working with it. Thank

18:53

you, I'm sure it's going to do

18:55

better. It's such an extraordinary deck that

18:58

you've created. Thank you for giving me

19:00

the opportunity. I really appreciate it. Thank

19:02

you so much, then. Thank you. Thank you. Thank

19:29

you.