#61: (re)wind: Elise Loehnen on Witches, the Divine Feminine, and the Deep Ancestral Wound Women Carry

THE IDEALISTS.

Welcome to THE IDEALISTS. (re)wind, where we revisit some of our favorite past episodes. This week’s rewind is Elise Loehnen, the former chief content officer of goop, the lifestyle and e-commerce company established by Gwyneth Paltrow in 2008. You may have also seen and heard Elise co-host The goop Podcast and The goop Lab on Netflix. This episode was chosen by THE IDEALISTS. host Melissa Kiguwa because Elise brings so much ideology and depth to the topic of divine femininity.

In the episode:

- Elise begins the conversation by sharing one of the thesis in her upcoming book: how easy it is to claim women should rise in the world, but how difficult it is to tactically and tangibly support women. She breaks down how often historical tropes solidify ideas about women's cattiness towards each other and around the ways women compete for the attention and protection of men.

- She discusses the trauma of witch-hunting over centuries and the millions of women killed during the hunts. One of the mechanisms of witch-hunting was getting friends to turn on friends and daughters to turn on mothers, which Elise describes as having left women with a collective sense of scarcity and fear carried over from generation to generation.

- Melissa asks if intergenerational trauma includes the fear of being disconnected from one's deep sense of power, how can women trust each other if we do not even trust ourselves?

- Elise answers by explaining the role of the crone, the third archetypal stage of a woman's life. The crone is an initiator and healer, as well as, the representation of life and death. She explains without the crone, young women are now going at it alone and suffering loss and disconnect.

- Elise describes what has replaced the crone and what the ramifications are for our political, economic, and social structures. She then describes how the gender binary keeps men and women at odds with each other versus understanding the masculine and feminine in all of us.

- She then outlines how various spiritual modalities help as a guide in healing the disconnection and getting back to our humanity.

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