The Awakening: Rebirth of Atlantis Book Study Guide:

Introduction:

The Awakening: Rebirth of Atlantis is a book of Visionary Fiction. Visionary Fiction embraces spiritual and esoteric wisdom, often from ancient sources, and makes it relevant for our modern lives. It uses story as a gateway to spirituality. Practical magic and spiritual gems are embedded in story form, so that the characters’ experiences catalyze esoteric wisdom from within yourself. It can be likened to a spiritual quest through a story. The ancient Celts called spiritual journeys an Imram. This novel’s Imram offers the opportunity for a Goddess Mystery School Initiation, where we find that the ultimate magic is the power of embodied love. The emphasis is on our limitless human potential, where transformation and evolution are entirely possible.

Visionary Fiction envisions humanity’s transition into evolved consciousness. While there is a strong spiritual theme, it in no way proselytizes or preaches.

I invite you to keep this overall introduction in mind and heart as you enter the story of Geodran, in The Awakening: Rebirth of Atlantis.

“Visionary Fiction speaks the language of the soul. It offers a vision of humanity as we dream it could be.”   ~ Jodine Turner

Suggested reading guideline:

Week 1          Prologue, Chapters 1-4, pages 1-54

Week 2          Chapters 5-10, pages 55-99

Week 3          Chapters 11-13, pages 100-151

Week 4          Chapters 14-20, pages 152-212

Week 5          Chapters 21-25, pages 213-275

Week 6          Chapters 26-29, pages 276-328

Week 7          Chapters 30-34, pages 329-390

Week 8          Chapter 35-45 and Epilogue, pages 391-473

Download a copy of: The Awakening_ Rebirth of Atlantis Book Study Guide week 1-8.

Week 1 Reflections:

These questions are invitations to drop deep into the story’s meaning for your own, as well as global healing and transformation.

1. What is a priestess? Consider this definition:  A priestess is a mediator between the worlds of the seen and unseen, between heaven and the deep earth, form and formlessness – bringing spiritual energies through to the physical. A priestess is service oriented, devotional and works through ceremony, ritual, art, dance, healing, writing, or teaching. Would you add anything to this definition?
   
   
2. As Geodran leaves her home in the landglider, she feels a sense of foreboding deep in her gut. Have you ever experienced an intuition that told you something was wrong? If so, did you heed your intuition…or not? What were the consequences of your response to your intuition?
   
   
3. Theolon has mysterious dreams of a young girl with silver-blond hair and a star shaped birthmark on her neck. One night the dreams turned urgent, the girl calling his name in desperation. Have you ever experienced recurring mysterious dreams, perhaps even prophetic dreams?
   
   
4. The waystation is a towering landmark in Atlantis, the source of energy and power for the continent, an amplifier of the intentions of the people it serves.  What were your thoughts as you learned about the many functions of the Atlantean waystation? Did its description and purpose trigger anything within you?
   
   
5. Jaquine, Filbreth, and Selene have a verbal confrontation with dissident Assembly members about centralized governmental control vs. individual free will. What are your thoughts about these two ways of governing? Can you find examples of these styles of governing in today’s world – in government or any other institution?

Week 2 Reflections:

These questions are invitations to drop deep into the story’s meaning for your own, as well as global healing and transformation.

1. Mekala uses herbs, essential oils, and crystals to aid in Geodran’s healing. Stargazer travels Shamanically to the Inner Realms of soul and spirit to aid Geodran. Have you experienced any of these modes of healing, or used them for yourself or others? Do you concur with the possibility that these healing methods may have originated in Atlantis?
   
   
2. A velvet sack containing four magical objects is found in the crashed landglider: a sword, a rod, a blue cup rimmed in gold, and a black stone. In legend these are four magical implements sourced in the Realm of Faery. They are used in magical rituals to this day. Have you heard of, or had any experience with these types of implements?
   
   
3. Who do you think the gold shining beings who emerged from the oak tree roots are?
   
   
4. Jaquine is drawn to commune with the Weaver Goddess in the prophetic Seeress Hall to learn about Geodran’s fate. What was your experience of Jaquine’s interchange with this Goddess?
   
   
5. At the forested sub-city’s council meeting, we learn about the six star lineages that seeded the population of Atlantis. Do you think star lineages are possible in our world?

Week 3 Reflections:

These questions are invitations to drop deep into the story’s meaning for your own, as well as global healing and transformation.

1. In Chapter 11 Stargazer connects into ‘the silence of the void’ to prepares himself for a divinatory reading using special stones. The void is that place of no-place, no-time, no-thingness, and it also holds the potential of all creation. What is the ‘void’ for you? Why is it important to connect to that still and silent place of the void before divinatory readings, meditation, ritual?
   
   
2. In Chapter 12 Geodran struggles with feeling frail, but more-so, feeling different and changed since her accident. Geodran fights her changes. Oftentimes, injuries or accidents catalyze deep spiritual awakening. Has this ever happened to you? What signs does Geodran show as she progresses into inner transformation and awakening?
   
   
3. The Goddess of the Stars and the Sea is the evolutionary force of embodied love. She helps humanity through the turbulent times preceding major shifts in human consciousness. How does She help us? She is known by many names, perhaps the most famous in Western culture as Mary (mar means sea), Star of the Sea.
   
   
4. Jaquine tells Stargazer and Filbreth about her agonizing choice to promise her unborn child to the Goddess of the Stars and the Sea for the greater good in return for her baby’s safe birth. Have you ever faced a choice, large or small, where you had to make a sacrifice? Do you think Jaquine should have told Filbreth about this choice sooner?
   
   
5. Allaria is consumed with the desire for power. What are her motivations? What are the reasons and life experience that fuels her desire?

Week 4 Reflections:

These questions are invitations to drop deep into the story’s meaning for your own, as well as global healing and transformation.

1. In Chapter 17 Geodran feels a deep longing for the sea and the Goddess despite her resistance to her mother’s suggestion that she begin her priestess training. Have you ever felt a soul-born longing for something, or for the Goddess? Have you ever felt a calling or mission in life that you resisted…or…are you experiencing challenges of stepping up to meet that call? Are you listening to your most authentic  heart?
   
   
2. Preceding major human shifts in consciousness, there is a storm before the calm (not the calm before the storm as we often say!). The storm shows up as turbulence in weather patterns, violence, war, political corruption, or religious and business degeneration, for example. There is always destruction before renewal, death before rebirth. How is Atlantis showing the signs of storm? What institutions are showing signs of degeneration? Are there any corollaries to be made in our own present-day society?

Week 5 Reflections:

These questions are invitations to drop deep into the story’s meaning for your own, as well as global healing and transformation.

1. Geodran struggles to have the strength to connect with her own inner voice and inner knowing vs. what the world or status quo, or conditioned conformity of her Temple training and her Elder Priestess Preanna demands. Geodran must learn to trust her inner spiritual authority vs. authority from outside. She has great spiritual power; she’s put in a mystery school where she doesn’t fit in or conform. In what ways does Geodran not fit in her Priestess training? Have you ever experienced the pull between conforming vs. inner spiritual authority?
   
   
2. Malor and his priests are using the waystation power for their experiments to achieve immortality. How do you think this will affect the waystation? How do you think this will affect the Holy Temple and its priests and priestesses? The people of Atlantis?
   
   
3. Theolon speaks to Geodran about the rites of Sacred Union and presents her with a gift inspired in one of his dream-trances. It is a necklace pendant of two interlocking circles with a line through their center forming the symbol of the Vesica Pisces, shaped and carved with tones and sound. This is a symbol of sacred union. What does this symbol inspire in you? What sort of sacred union do you think it represents?

Week 6 Reflections:

These questions are invitations to drop deep into the story’s meaning for your own, as well as global healing and transformation.

1. Geodran’s menses finally begins and she receives her long-awaited Blood Mystery Initiation. Have you ever felt the calling of the Goddess, of the Divine Feminine? How did the call come to you? How did you respond?
   
   
2. Through her communion with the Goddess of the Stars and the Sea, Geodran finds healing of her relationship with her own mother, Jaquine. Has your relationship with Divine Mother, the Divine Feminine, impacted either your relationship with your own mother or with mothering of yourself?
   
   
3. Mystery Schools were ancient schools that taught the essence of spirituality. They provided spiritual tests designed to transform the limitation and fear inherent in living a human life in order to bring about evolved states of being. Do you think that living life itself, with its challenges and choices, provides a Mystery School Initiation? How so?
   
   
4. Allaria murders Geodran’s parents. After that fact, Geodran learns the secrets of her starseed ancestry. She learns an important lesson when she performs the death rites for her parents and finds that she must face not only formidable outside forces, but her own grief, loss, suffering, and her dark side to get to true healing and fulfill her destiny. Do you see value in accepting and embracing your suffering on a deep level and moving through it to heal it? What happens to your whole being when you transcend, or rise up and out of your suffering?
   
   
5. Geodran’s destiny is challenged by Malor and Preanna’s interference. She is learning how to respond with an authentic heart. She must also learn how to embrace her true power and her calling, vs. political forces and religious forces that want her to conform. The path of the Divine Feminine is emerging amidst the established path of the unhealthy masculine in these ways: cooperation vs conflict; power with vs power over; connectedness vs. isolation; embodiment vs. transcendence; authority within vs. outside of ourselves; win-win vs win/lose; trusting the power and wisdom of the heart; being and receptivity balanced with doing and action; and focusing deeply within vs transcendence. Given these different ways of expression, how do Malor and Preanna each respond to life? How do you see these principles in action in your life? In the larger world around you?

Week 7 Reflections:

These questions are invitations to drop deep into the story’s meaning for your own, as well as global healing and transformation.

1. What is causing Senkot to break down, to change?
   
   
2. The Goddess of the Stars and the Sea tells us our destiny, our transformations, and our healing is through embodied love, where healing is approached through the body, where you go deeper into the infinitely within, rather than transcending up and outside of ourselves. Evolving and growth are accomplished through transformation rather than transcendence. Embodied love is about embracing the divine within matter, in physicality, and transmuting it with divine love, rather than seeking to transcend physicality by leaving the body and earth behind. Divine love is the most potent alchemical transformative power. Divine love IS the Goddess, the Divine Feminine, the Sacred Feminine, the Mother IN God, the God in physicality. It is something you can choose to participate with consciously. Do you feel this is so…or not? What were your thought and feelings…your experience…of Geodran’s communion with the Goddess of the Stars and the Sea, and her union with the man of the sea?
   
   
3. Geodran, in partnership with the five other young woman of starseed lineage, join together to balance Malor’s mis-use of the star power within the waystation apex. Their further purpose and instructions are to save the ancient Atlantean wisdom traditions by seeding and midwifing them in the larger world. Looking at our world today, do you think Geodran and her group of starseeds were successful?  How so?
   
   
4. The Goddess of the Stars and the Sea asks Theolon to allow Her to embody within him, in Her form as her son, the man of the sea, to lend the actual physical strength Geodran needs to be a bridge through which the Goddess can awaken the consciousness of humanity into its next evolution – the embodiment of love merged with spirit. But it comes at a price for Theolon. Why do you think Theolon agrees to the sacrifice this involves?

Week 8 Reflections:

These questions are invitations to drop deep into the story’s meaning for your own, as well as global healing and transformation.

1. The story addresses the concept of ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ energies. Can you explain what that is, and how it is woven into the story?
   
   
2. Embodied love is the alchemy of sacred union of inner masculine and feminine within your body, mind, and heart. It is practical and down to earth. It is your capacity to love and be loved, in all of love’s forms. It comes through harmonizing your inner female (receptive principle) and your inner male (the active doer principle). It is the Divinity within matter. Embodied love is the practice of receiving and sustaining and giving out more and more love. It is about keeping an open heart amidst your anger, despair or suffering.  How does Geodran do this? How does Theolon do this? Your body is divinity expressing itself in form. Your body is Her, the Goddess’s, body. If we transcend, if we go up and out, we leave behind our shadow, our wounds, where they can run amuck, where they can act out in all sort of destructive manners. How does Geodran discover embodied love? How do Malor and his priests reflect the force of transcendence where their shadow runs amuck? How did Malor and his priests mis-use the starpower of the waystation apex?
   
   
3. How is Atlantis’s demise a turning point for humanity?
   
   
4. How were Geodran, Theolon, and the other star lineages instrumental in the evolutionary transformation of consciousness? Are we facing something similar in today’s world? How can we consciously participate?
   
   
5. In a golden era of spiritual evolution for humankind, a Shift of the Ages, the Goddess of the Stars and the Sea, the Sacred Feminine, the energy and power of embodied Divine Love, is here to show us the way in making these shifts in consciousness. We can all successfully make these shifts by tapping into the Divine Feminine. We can all transform our darkest pain through the power of Her Divine Love. How do you see that possibility within yourself? These shifts call people to do great things in their ordinary lives. How do you see these shifts in your own personal world? In our world today? How can you participate?