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The Flowering Wand

Rewilding the Sacred Masculine

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About this listen

 • Reveals the restorative fungi archetype of Osiris, the Orphic mysteries as an underground mycelium linking forests and people, how Dionysus teaches us about invasive species and playful sexuality, and the ecology of Jesus as depicted in his nature-focused parables

• Liberates Tristan, Merlin, and the Grail legends from the bounds of Campbell’s hero’s journey and invites the masculine into more nuanced, complex ways of dealing with trauma, growth, and self-knowledge

Long before the sword-wielding heroes of legend readily cut down forests, slaughtered the old deities, and vanquished their enemies, there were playful gods, animal-headed kings, mischievous lovers, trickster harpists, and vegetal magicians with flowering wands. As eco-feminist scholar Sophie Strand discovered, these wilder, more magical modes of the masculine have always been hidden in plain sight.

Sharing the culmination of eight years of research into myth, folklore, and the history of religion, Strand leads us back into the forgotten landscapes and hidden secrets of familiar myths, revealing the beautiful range of the divine masculine, including expressions of male friendship, male intimacy, and male creative collaboration. In discussing Dionysus and Osiris, Strand encourages us to think like an ecosystem instead of like an individual. She connects dying, vegetal gods to the virtuous cycle of composting and decay, highlighting the ways in which mushrooms can restore soil and heal polluted landscapes. Exploring esoteric Christianity, the author celebrates the Gnostic Jesus of the Gospel of Thomas, imagining the ecology that the Rabbi Yeshua would have actually been referencing in his nature-focused parables. Strand frees Tristan, Merlin, and the Grail legends from the bounds of Campbell’s hero’s journey and invites the masculine into more nuanced, complex ways of dealing with trauma, growth, and self-knowledge.

Strand reseeds our minds with new visions of male identity and shows how each of us, regardless of gender, can develop a matured ecological empathy and witness a blossoming of sacred masculine powers that are soft, curious, connective, and celebratory. Customs & Traditions Other Religions, Practices & Sacred Texts Social Sciences Tradition Mythology Magic Users

Critic reviews

“If we want to locate the underlying source of our civilization’s headlong rush to destruction, we must dig deeper than capitalism, deeper even than the Western worldview, until we encounter the bedrock of patriarchy. In this exuberant tableau of resurrection, Strand reveals how even our most archetypal myths have been molded and devitalized to fit the patriarchal straitjacket, and Strand lays the groundwork for a regenerated masculinity--one that is liberated to explore life-affirming possibilities grounded in the deep wisdom of long-buried ancient lore.”
“Sophie Strand’s beautiful and poetic book is a game changer. With The Flowering Wand as a tool, it is possible to rewrite the mostly traumatizing patriarchal narratives Western males so often base their identity in and reconnect them with the underlying story of a cultural and natural deep history of mutual transformation with other beings beyond all modern binaries.”
“Sophie Strand writes with the urgency of a prophet and the musicality of a bard. Weaving myth together with botany, history with theology, her virtuosic linguistic skeins would do her beloved mycorrhizae proud. In The Flowering Wand, the masculine appears as lover, as partner, as inspirer, as friend. This is a book important in its joy, powerful in its love--exuberant in its curiosity. Taking us by the hand, Strand leads us into a garden of delights: tarot cards, ancient scriptures, Shakespearean comedies, sky gods, the Minotaur, the Milky Way. Strand holds the gates of wonder open and love comes flowing out. These are the birth waters breaking. Rejoice! The masculine is reborn.”
“A magnificent weave of ecology and myth--it is evident there’s some pretty rich dirt, culturally speaking as well as actual dirt no doubt, under the fingernails that have written this lyrical journey. A book filled with magical insight, revealing Strand’s wondrous curiosity and impressive learnings of the complex relationships between humans and nature.”
“The wisdom in this book is almost beyond expression. Sophie Strand’s The Flowering Wand reveals the full potency and profligacy of myth.”
“Sophie Strand’s work is a must-read for lovers of mythology and the Earth. Her work is poetic yet practical. It’s whimsical and transportive, yet it’s describing the world around you, inviting you back home to the reality of this mystical life and world we inhabit.”
“The Flowering Wand is a ‘wild thing’ and seeks out other forms of recombination and transformative fusion and gives them life. The surprising conclusion is, we humans have always been more-than-human. Are you wild enough to find out why?”
All stars
Most relevant
Sophie‘s writing is life changing. She reminds me that all life is a continuum, there is no end, death is ever present and alive

The Flowering Wand

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exactly the medicine we need for these times. thank you for the trip, I will come back to this often

absolutely delightful

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This book is astonishing! I found myself enthralled and deeply moved by this revisioning of masculine mythic figures. I didn’t agree with all of the author’s points but everything made me think in new and fertile ways like the very best of conversations with a beloved friend. Highly recommended!

Extraordinary, thought provoking book!

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Beneath the shiny received narratives of our time lie strands of connection deep beyond the frames of our (cognitive) existence. Sophie weaves a deeply considered, reflective and questioning analysis of the dominant stories of these times drawing upon the mystical and mythical, narratives that have been co-opted, substituted and revised to fit the story of the victor. In offering a tapestry of references from contemporary soil biology, gut biome, quantum connection and mythology from the ancients, Sophie invites us to consider ourselves related in different ways to life, the stories that are told and the way we orientate our lives and to join in to re sense the magical awe of the living world and in doing so create abundant alternatives to crowd out the singularity.

There was times I was lost in her incredibly deep exposition, floundering in my own insecurities that someone could be so erudite. My advise is to let the words wash over you like a balm, let the energy of aliveness enfuse you and touch your heart deep inside. This is an astounding work.

Thank you 🙏🏻

An astounding work. Thank you 🙏🏻

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Sophie Strand has created new territories for the way we relate, discuss and negate the masculine. She has done this in a way that morphs myth and magic, dedicating a perspective that messes the scale of what we think the gender, energy, history or role of the masculine is, and contoured it to find vitality in a wilder, honest and sensual knowing.

A sensual contouring of the archetypes of men

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