The Alchemy of Descent

A Samhain Temple Journey into the Dark Half of the Year

Descend. Release. Emerge transformed.

Halloween. All Hallow’s Eve. Día de los Muertos. All Souls Day. Samhain.

Across cultures and traditions, this sacred threshold at summer’s end marks a portal of passage: when the harvest is complete, the veils between worlds grow thin, and the journey into the dark half of the year begins.

As the wheel turns, we gather to honor the turning of the seasons, and explore what awaits us in the depths of our own shadows.

In this guided temple journey, we will enter an ancient timeless myth of descent, release, and renewal. Through guided visualization, embodied ritual, and sacred reflection, we will descend into the inner underworld to meet, with compassion, the parts of ourselves long hidden in shadow.

This is an initiation into truth, clarity, and renewal - a chance to lay down the burdens and identities that have grown heavy, and reclaim the gifts waiting for those brave enough to make the journey. Reborn, we rise again - emerging with renewed clarity and realigned with your soul's essence.

Come if you are ready to:

Honor the turning of the seasons and the wisdom of the dark
Walk the archetypal path of the feminine descent and return
Release the emotional or energetic baggage that no longer fits who you are becoming
Reclaim clarity about your soul’s direction in this next cycle

This temple is for those called to sacred transformation—to meet their depths with courage, compassion, and love.

Together we descend. Together we emerge.
Together, we transform.

📅 When: Saturday November 1st, from 7-9pm

📍 Where: Arise Healing Arts - 204 Courthouse Lane, downtown Toms River, NJ

✨ Tickets: $33

🧡 Spaces are limited to honor intimacy and depth🧡

✨Claim your place in the temple, and step into your light✨

Additional details like location, directions, and other frequently asked questions (What should I wear? Do I need to bring anything? ) can be found in the Accessibility link below (under Location) and directly beneath the banner at the top of the page.

Two questions that are important to answer up front:

What even is temple? What does that mean?

In short, temple is an initiation, a deepening within the alchemical field, that leaves us transformed.

The longer version is that divine feminine temple is a portal, a sacred technology, incorporating energetic work, archetypal invocation, and ritual, to support embodiment, spiritual initiation, and deep healing. Temple asks us to deepen more fully, to face our shadows, and become our own medicine. In temple we encounter invocation, embodiment, ritual, song, movement, stillness, breath, silence, your shadow, your light, your own edges and resistances, your growth, your humanity, your divinity, the goddess herself, and the mystery and clarity of the soul’s journey.

How is temple different from women’s circles?

Women’s circles and Sacred circles are beautiful and deeply needed, and they hold sweet medicine. In circle, the structure is fully egalitarian, the focus is on sharing and mutual support, and the primary goal is to create a safe space for women to connect, share what’s happening in their lives, and receive validation. We share our stories, listen and are received without judgment, and connect around ritual, song, and shared experience. Circle celebrates the journey, holds the story, and honors where each person is on their path without pushing for change. It reinforces sisterhood and community, offers nourishment for the spirit, and helps members feel connected and less alone.

Circle meets us where we are.

Temple leads us into our becoming.

In temple, the focus is on moving beyond identity and story to embody and become our healing. We use practices including invocation, embodiment, ritual, and archetypal work to drop deeply in, connect with our embodied wisdom, confront shadow material, and achieve profound, lasting change.

Where circle is talk-based, temple is embodiment-based; we are invited to stop telling the familiar stories that keep us stuck in our patterns and our small-self identities, and instead to listen to the soul voice that speaks quietly from within. We drop down below our narratives and into the essence underneath. We do not come to temple to tell our story, we come to be unshackled from it.

Where circle is non-hierarchical, temple is led by a practitioner who is trained in the sacred technologies and arts of temple guidance, and who intentionally creates—and holds—a strong, coherent energetic field that serves as the portal for the deep work. This resonant alchemical field holds us in accountability and in compassion, as we bypass the "mind" and its ego-based stories, to listen in stillness to the body and the soul.

Where circle meets us where we are, temple asks us who we have come here to be. Beyond the supportive listening of the circle, participants are asked to show up authentically with the conviction and courage to surrender to the process - essentially to get out of our own way - to make space for the inner shifts that create profound and lasting transformation.

The Alchemy of Descent: A Samhain temple journey into the Dark Half of the year

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