#11 Creative Practice as Priestess Work

Creativity isn't just self-expression. It's soul work. It's alchemy. It's how we make the invisible visible.

In this episode, I explore creativity as a spiritual channel—how art-making processes grief and trauma, how different parts of yourself can create through you, and why creative energy is sexual life force (Shakti). I share my lifelong relationship with art, my intergenerational creative lineage, and what happened when I let my teenage part paint whatever she wanted (spoiler: she became friends with my Lilith energy).

This episode debuts new intro music composed by my dad, Mike Dunne—a lifelong musician now stepping more fully into his creative calling. Let us know what you think in the episode poll!

Mike Dunne's music: [Spotify link]

What we cover:

• The astrology transit of the week: Venus conjunct Mars in Capricorn (creative desire meets action)
• My creative journey across mediums: visual art, poetry, dance, color as language
• Creativity as alchemy: externalizing grief, trauma, and complex emotions into form
• Creativity as channel: inviting parts of yourself and goddess energies to create through you
• Shakti and Medusa: creativity as sexual life force and reclaiming power
• The artist wound: dismantling capitalism's belief that art is only valuable if it makes money
• The vulnerability of being seen: fear, judgment, and the "too much" lie
• Fall and winter as creative seasons: the underworld priestess creating in darkness

Plus: A closing creative practice to let something move through you right now.

If you're an artist, a healer, someone who creates from your depths—this episode is for you. Your creativity is sacred. Your fullness is not too much. Your art matters whether anyone buys it or not.

Casey's poetry books: [Author Page Link]
Free resources: www.the-goddess-coven.com
Support the podcast (includes exclusive visual art prints): www.patreon.com/TheGoddessCoven_PriestessInitiations

This podcast offers spiritual and psychological education and priestess wisdom. This is not therapy, counseling, or mental health treatment.

#10 The Fall—An Initiation of Old

Seven months ago, I fell 75 feet while rappelling. My equipment failed. I held onto the rope with both hands and sustained third-degree burns requiring 22 skin grafts. My partner caught my falling weight from the bottom—something that has a 1-2% survival rate for both people. We both walked away alive.

This is the story of a modern initiation. The complete death of the maiden and the painful birth of the mother.

Content warning: This episode contains detailed descriptions of a traumatic accident, medical procedures, and physical injury. Please care for yourself while listening.

What we cover:

• The two weeks before the fall: claiming priestess, meeting Kali, knowing something was coming
• What happened during the 75-foot fall and why I chose to hold on
• The physics-defying miracle of how we both survived
• Isis's reassembly magic through 22 skin grafts and faster-than-expected healing
• Lilith learning vulnerability: being fed, cared for, held by community
• Kali's death gift: destroying the maiden who thought she was invincible
• The psychology of identity death, earned secure attachment, and post-traumatic growth
• Where I am now, seven months later, still integrating

This episode is raw, vulnerable, and real. If you're in your own initiation—in the death, in the shattering—you will survive this. You will reassemble. You don't have to do it alone.

Free resources: www.the-goddess-coven.com
Support the podcast: www.patreon.com/TheGoddessCoven_PriestessInitiations

This podcast offers spiritual and psychological education and priestess wisdom. This is not therapy, counseling, or mental health treatment.

What do you do when you've been shattered? When pieces of yourself have been lost, scattered, taken?

Isis teaches that nothing is ever truly lost—only waiting to be gathered. And the magic isn't just recovering what was broken. It's creating what's missing.

In this episode, we explore Isis—the Great Assembler, throne goddess, healer of lineages, the one who resurrects through love and magic. We're releasing this right before the asteroid Isis opposes the sun on December 26th, making her energy most illuminated and available for healing work.

What we cover:

• Isis before patriarchy made her small (she was POWER itself, not just devoted wife)
• The magic of reassembly vs. restoration—you don't come back the same
• The psychology of fragmentation: Internal Family Systems meets goddess magic
• Soul retrieval and ancestral healing through the mother line
• My plant medicine journey with Isis clearing the lineage mother wound
• How my 75-foot fall and 22 skin grafts became an Isis initiation

Plus: A guided practice for gathering your fragments with Isis holding space.

If you've been shattered and need to reassemble yourself—not into who you were, but into who you're becoming—Isis is with you.

Free resources: www.the-goddess-coven.com
Support the podcast: www.patreon.com/TheGoddessCoven_PriestessInitiations

This podcast offers spiritual and psychological education and priestess wisdom. This is not therapy, counseling, or mental health treatment.

We're in the threshold—between Winter Solstice and Chinese New Year, still in the Year of the Snake. And the Snake's final teaching is the shed.

In this raw bonus episode, I'm naming what I've been afraid to say: I'm a therapist (MA, LPCC) AND a priestess. For too long, I've kept these split into two separate identities, two separate businesses—not because they're contradictory, but because I was afraid. Afraid of the licensing board. Afraid of being too clinical for spiritual people, too woo for therapy people. Afraid of being rejected by both worlds.

What we explore:

• How the matrix fragments us: body = doctors, mind = therapists, spirit = churches
• Why healers who work with the WHOLE person (body-mind-spirit integrated) are so powerful
• My decision to eliminate all one-on-one spiritual guidance through The Goddess Coven
• What it means to be a credentialed priestess who teaches psychology alongside goddess wisdom
• The Snake's teaching: shedding happens when you stop asking permission

This isn't abstract "breaking the matrix" talk. This is real risk in the real world. This is walking out of the cage—even when there's no path, even when you're the first one through.

If you're a helping professional who's been hiding part of yourself, or if you're ready to shed your own old skin in these final dark nights before the Fire Horse year—this episode is your permission slip.

Free resources: www.the-goddess-coven.com
Support the podcast: www.patreon.com/TheGoddessCoven_PriestessInitiations

This podcast offers spiritual and psychological education and priestess wisdom. This is not therapy, counseling, or mental health treatment.

Standing at a crossroads? Between who you were and who you're becoming? Hecate is with you.

In this episode, we explore Hecate—the torch-bearer, the key-holder, the goddess of liminal spaces who teaches us that wholeness means holding all phases simultaneously, not choosing between them.

We're recording this between Winter Solstice (December 21st) and Chinese New Year (January 29th, 2026), in the final weeks of the Wood Snake year before the Fire Horse gallops in. This liminal time between shedding and forward motion is Hecate's domain—the threshold where transformation happens.

What we cover:

• Hecate's true mythology (before patriarchy made her "just the crone")
• Why crossroads are initiations, not destinations
• What it means to claim your keys and your sovereignty
• How to hold the torch for others while walking your own path
• The maiden-to-mother threshold and teaching from the in-between

Plus: A guided Hecate practice for standing at your inner crossroads.

If you're in liminal space right now—if you're neither one thing nor another, if you're shedding but not yet ready to run—this episode is for you.

Free resources: www.the-goddess-coven.comSupport the podcast: www.patreon.com/thegoddesscoven

This podcast offers spiritual and psychological education and priestess wisdom. This is not therapy, counseling, or mental health treatment.

Medusa wasn't born a monster. She was a woman, a priestess, a rape survivor who was punished for her own violation. Patriarchy turned her into a warning: this is what happens when women have boundaries too fierce to cross.

But what if the transformation wasn't a curse? What if the serpent crown was sovereignty, and the petrifying gaze was the ultimate boundary—the power to stop anyone who approached with harmful intent?

In this episode, Casey reclaims Medusa's story and explores:

• The real myth of Medusa
• Why the serpent crown is sacred feminine wisdom, not monstrousness
• The petrifying gaze as absolute boundary: "Look at me with respect, or do not look at all"
• Rage as protective medicine—holding the line, not lashing out
• The difference between traumatized rage and sovereign boundaries

• Who the real monsters are (spoiler: not Medusa)

Casey shares her own ongoing healing journey with sexual trauma and what Medusa continues to teach her about holding sacred boundaries in partnership.

Content warning: This episode discusses sexual violence and may be activating for survivors. Please ensure you have support.

Includes a practice for reclaiming your gaze and your power to protect yourself absolutely.

Join the coven: patreon.com/TheGoddessCoven_PriestessInitiations
Transcripts & resources: www.the-goddess-coven.com

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

Lilith is the goddess who said no. The first woman, made equal to Adam, who refused to submit and was cast out for claiming her sovereignty.

In this episode, Casey reclaims Lilith's story from the demonization and explores what she actually teaches: autonomous sexuality, sacred refusal, primal rage, and the power of saying no without apology.

You'll discover:

• The real myth: Lilith as Adam's equal who chose exile over subordination
• Lilith as the serpent teaching Eve to wake up and claim knowledge
• The difference between immature rage (lashing out) and integrated rage (protective boundaries)
• Why Lilith is essential for domestic violence survivors: "Get out. You deserve better."
• Lilith doesn't hate men—she demands they show up as equals
• The evolution from traumatized Lilith to sovereign Lilith to softening in right relationship

Casey shares her full Lilith journey: from PTSD and immature rage, to suppressing Lilith and ending up in emotional abuse, to reclaiming sovereignty and learning to trust again with her partner Matt.

Includes a practice for reclaiming your sacred no.

If you've been called too much, if you've been exiled for your truth, if you've ever chosen yourself over subordination—Lilith walks with you. This episode teaches you that exile isn't punishment. It's freedom.

Join the coven: patreon.com/TheGoddessCoven_PriestessInitiations
Transcripts & resources: www.the-goddess-coven.com

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

Welcome to the goddess episodes. We begin with Persephone—the maiden who descends to the underworld and becomes Queen of the Dead.

In this episode, Casey reclaims Persephone's myth from the patriarchal telling of innocent victim to the initiatory reading of sovereign queen. You'll discover why the descent wasn't an abduction but an initiation, what dies when the maiden goes down, and what it means to become queen of your own underworld.

You'll explore:

• The myth retold: Why the pomegranate seeds were choice, not trap
• What actually dies in the descent (innocence, control, the old identity)
• How Persephone becomes sovereign through the underworld, not despite it
• The six-month rhythm: honoring descent time and emergence time
• Why you don't descend once—you spiral back to Persephone throughout your life

Casey shares her own Persephone initiations—from her first heartbreak at fifteen to the fall five months ago—and what it means to keep choosing the depths, to keep eating the seeds.

Includes a guided descent meditation to meet Persephone in your own underworld.

If you've ever lost yourself completely, if the earth has opened beneath you, if you've been dragged into grief or rupture—you've met Persephone. This episode teaches you how to become queen.

Join the coven: patreon.com/TheGoddessCoven_PriestessInitiations
Transcripts & resources: www.the-goddess-coven.com

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