Why is this important? On the Plant Medicine Path we speak of alignment and right relationship with the plants, lineages, and the practices we come into contact with. Obviously this is very important, but what does it really mean and what in the world does it have to do with Venus and the Underworld?
Venus has been the guiding map for many cultures, including the Mayan, connecting us with the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. This is fascinating as this same journey is seen in the lives of women through menstruation, pregnancy, perimenopause and menopause. However, this path is also mimicked when we enter the Medicine Lands during ceremony or with microdosing as descent, dissolution, and transformation. A rising and descending takes place in our energy, traveling to the depths of the Underworld, stripping the shadows and programming keeping each of us tied to old versions of ourselves, before hanging on the hook in the Underworld as essence and bone. From this point we rise again, regaining our gifts renewed and dusted off the unwanted that kept us small or unaligned. This process is our birthright and yet few of us live our lives on this spiral path.
The Maiden, Mother, and Crone cycle moves through us not as a circle but in a winding fashion deeper into the center of our being and out again. It is not a linear journey that comes to completion, rather a microcosm that means the larger macrocosm initiation through Rites of Passage. The Underworld is an essential, yet often neglected, part of this story in the quest for Love and Light. Let’s take a look, shall we.
THE MAIDEN: New Beginnings, Leadership, Warrior
The Maiden is reminiscent of the Fool or Pilgrim in Tarot decks, yet is the path all girls take entering the world on their way to womanhood. It is also akin to beginning the plant medicine path with curiosity, naivety, boldness or shyness all rising to the occasion when stepping on the road ahead, seeking out what her soul craves before even having the vocabulary to name it.
The Maiden in most cultures is prized for her freshness, sensuality, and her inquisitive simplicity. Sadly, she is also pigeonholed into staying that way to gain security and favor by the systems in place that fear her true power. Many women get stuck in the Maiden or try to retain her youthfulness, trading in the power that is gained through experience of aging for the lesser influence of attractiveness.
Interestingly, we meet the Maiden again in our Second Spring after entering Menopause, the Wise Woman Years of the Crone. It is here we reinvent ourselves, see love, relationships, spirituality, and purpose with fresh eyes. While the naivety of the Maiden has been replaced by wisdom gained through maturity, there is also a reentering of the descent leaving behind the aspects of our lives that no longer fit, felt like betrayal, or were suppressed through familial, religious, or cultural expectations. On the plant path this can be seen as “hearing the call”.
THE MOTHER: Fullness, Nourishment, Witch, Queen
We all come from a mother and live on the Great Mother who cares for us in every way we need, yet take her for granted, which can be seen in how we treat the Earth, women, and oftentimes our own mother with disdain. The ability to give birth is a powerful gift, necessary for the survival of a species, connecting women to the Witch archetype through the ability to bring a soul from the immaterial to the material world. Women have always been connected to plants, the spirit realm, and intuitive abilities through their cycles linked to nature’s rhythms, creating fear and awe in patriarchal religions and cultures.
The Mother Goddess traditions have been traded for Father Sky God ways, reducing the Earth (and women) to resources to be used and nothing more. In plant medicine and indigenous cultures the Earth as Mother is more than a concept, rather a way of life to be tended, supporting the Ayini (reciprocity) through ritual, ceremony, and right relationship in gardening, agriculture, and medicinal needs.
Ayahuasca, interestingly, is referred to as “Mother” in indigenous traditions, and “Grandmother” in neo-shaman and Western circles aligning her more with the Crone wisdom. This reveals a deep wound in humans’ connection to the Mother, not just as an archetype, but in how we relate to the power of the feminine. The absence felt in personal or global relationships with the Mother points to the loss of lived Earth-based spirituality. In fact, their are many plant medicine stories regarding the Sacred Earth Medicines connected to the Mother such as, Mother Mycellium, Agua Colla (Queen of the Waters - San Pedro/Huachuma), or Madre Hikuri (Mother Peyote), yet over time the stories have been shifted to be seen as masculine.
THE CRONE: Completion, Wisdom, Medicine Woman, Shaman
The Crone is the Wise Woman and Shaman, governing the realm of the unseen, dying, dissolution, forbidden or threshold knowledge, and is who we meet at the crossroads. Her power is the ultimate Rite of Passage, and when embraced is the hub of mystery beckoning us towards the wisdom necessary for the ultimate initiation, death. Yet, we fear aging, doing everything we can to prolong the inevitable, often becoming resentful and missing out on the intelligence that comes when meeting this vital part of ourselves.
In terms of Sacred Earth Medicines it makes sense the Crone is most naturally aligned with psychedelic experience, more so than Maiden or Mother due to the territories she governs, which is exactly the terrain plant medicines are often said to open. She IS the shaman leading us to the Underworld, bearing witness to our journey rather than dictating it.
THE UNDERWORLD: Down and In
Many plant-medicine traditions frame the underworld not as a place of punishment but as a realm of death-and-rebirth you visit deliberately. Ayahuasca ceremonies in Amazonian shamanism are often described as a controlled descent — dissolution of the ego, encounters with ancestors or spirits, a “little death” followed by the return. Psilocybin mushrooms carry similar language in Mazatec curanderismo, recycling what no longer serves by composting the old. Datura and other solanaceous plants (henbane, mandrake, mugwort) show up across European witchcraft lore explicitly as underworld/threshold plants — associated with Hecate, Queen of the Witches and Crossroads, with journeying to the dead, poison-as-passage, and facing oneself in the dark. And let’s not forget Inanna, whose story is the first told in writing over 4000 years ago, mimicking Venus’ path across the cosmos as the original resurrection myth.
Women understand this story as a lived experience when entering menstruation, pregnancy, and through perimenopause to menopause. The Venus Path maps onto how plant medicine ceremonies are often narrated: you go down and in, facing parts of yourself that are hard to bear but require bravery to see, cleaning out the old programming, and rising on the return with new skills for your life and the community.
The descent is vital, yet often neglected or bypassed out of fear. It is not enough to take plant medicines, rather you need an awareness of the gateways, tests, and sacrifices to be made in order to receive the gifts, healing, and insight that comes with the journey. To ignore these is to get stuck on the hook, the in-between space, leading one towards confusion, discontent, depression, or even psychotic breaks.
The cycle of Venus with her rising and descent, metamorphosis and underworld phases is a map of the physical and spiritual that can align us with the cycles of the cosmos, leading us collectively and individually towards wholeness. The reclaiming of her wisdom for women is essential for encompassing the Rites of Passage we go through with consciousness, embodied health, and connection to the Great Mystery.
Interested in more? Join the Upcoming UNDERWORLD program or reach out with any questions.
Until then, Stay Wild!
September 28th, 2026 - Cusco, Peru
