Joy Herbst, and the Sophia Sanctuary

04/05/2026

Death, resurrection an rebirth

Egyptian Goddess Hathor with her
vulture headdress playing a frame drum.

The oldest hieroglyph for the goddess of Upper Egypt

~~~~~~
The first historical cultures worship many female deities representing the Paleolithic goddesses fundamental aspects of creation preservation and regeneration.

She gives birth, she protects, she consumes and resurrects.

The vulture goddess represents one of the oldest mythologies of death and resurrection . One that lies at the heart of initiation rites.

As vulture, the goddess does not kill .
She consumes the dead in order to transmute the soul once again to life in the form of an egg.

The sacredness of the egg as a symbol of regeneration goes back further in time than we can trace.

Birds are twice born.
First the mother lays the eggs then the chick breaks out of its shell, in effect giving birth to itself.
The second birth enables it to soar into higher realms as a winged being.

The ancient mythological path of the bird goddess is a process of breaking forth from outgrown structures of personality and behavior just as the chick breaks out of the outgrown shell.

This is the basic metaphor of initiation.

Until that shell is broken what lies outside must remain unknown.
Once broken the shell can never be put together again.

It is the wisdom of no return, the womb cracked open lost forever in the initiates rebirth as a winged being whose spirit can fly through the three realms of heaven, earth and underworld.

And music, particularly drumming is always present in the rituals of initiation.
~ When the Drummers Were Women by Layne Redmond

04/05/2026

“The waiting is the hardest part — but also the holiest.”
– Caroline Myss

She sits veiled in white beside the tomb, because she has “nowhere else to go”. There is no map for what happens next. How many times have we been in that place, where one thing leaves, the next has not yet come and we are feeling lost and a bit hopeless? Knowing so much, we can’t possibly go back, but the fog is thick and moving up the mountain could find us in absolute disaster.

And so we sit, and we wait. This is the threshold.

Key Principles:
Liminality, holy waiting, surrender, sacred unknowing, faith beyond vision

Context:
This card is Magdalene at the empty tomb, the moment before revelation. She doesn’t yet know resurrection is near. She is suspended between loss and miracle, between what has died and what will rise. In this image, her back is turned to us, but we instinctively know how she feels. She has nowhere else to go but into the stillness.

Jungian/Alchemical Insight:
The threshold is the nigredo, the dark stage of the soul's alchemy. It is the moment when we have lost our bearings but not our essence. Magdalene here represents the sacred state of “not knowing,” which opens us to divine transformation. The ego cannot resurrect what it has not surrendered.

Artwork Description:
Magdalene is seen from behind, cloaked in white, seated before a barren, abstract tomb space. The simplicity is intentional: it reflects how the sacred often appears as absence, and serves to remind us that waiting consciously is a holy act. She is still, but the image carries a charge — something is about to happen. It is a reminder that all is not lost, that Love is not gone.

Card Meaning:
You are in a holy pause. There may be no answers, no direction; only stillness. But beneath the silence, something is quickening. Do not try to rush across this threshold. Wait, listen, trust. You are being transfigured.

Mantra:
I remain at the tomb, not because I have certainty — but because I have love. And there is nowhere else on this earth for me to go, so I shall wait.

“Awaiting the Gardener (Magdalena)”, from the upcoming “SheWhoIs” oracle
Mixed Media
2025

Prints:
8X10 Matted & Signed: https://shewhoisart.etsy.com/listing/4326021602
4X6 Altar Art: https://shewhoisart.etsy.com/listing/4326016439

04/02/2026

The joy in this movement, and in those sharing it with me.

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

03/29/2026

The Hamsa was once a sign of the Goddess. ✨

In the world of Ceremonial Weaving, we often talk about protection. This vibrant piece, Protective Amulets (1992) by the late Palestinian artist Laila Shawa, captures that sacred intent perfectly.

Though painted in the 90s, Shawa’s work vibrates with a much older frequency. As Perdita Finn and Clark Strand write in The Way of the Rose: "Known as the hamsa, it took the form of a hand with an eye superimposed over the palm, and examples of it have been unearthed throughout the world—from the Middle East to Asia to Mesoamerica... it was once a sign of the Goddess."
Whether woven into a textile or painted on canvas, the Hamsa acts as a visual prayer—a boundary against the "evil eye" and a beckoning of good fortune. To us, the intricate geometric patterns in the palms look like a master weaver’s draft, interlacing color and symbol to shield the soul. 🖐️👁️

How do you incorporate protective symbols into your own creative practice or altar spaces? 🧶👇

Artist Laila Shawa "Protective Amulets,"1992 Divine Feminine & Ancient Protection

03/16/2026

She discovered that breast milk changes based on whether you're feeding a son or daughter—and it meant everything we thought we knew about milk was wrong.
California, 2008. Evolutionary anthropologist Katie Hinde sits surrounded by hundreds of breast milk samples from rhesus macaque mothers. Thousands of data points. Spreadsheets that should tell a simple story about nutrition.
But one pattern keeps appearing. And it makes no sense.
Mothers with sons are producing milk concentrated with fat and protein—dense, energy-packed nutrition. Mothers with daughters are producing higher volumes with entirely different nutrient profiles—more milk, different composition.
It's not random. It's consistent across every sample.
Katie checks her methodology. Runs the numbers again. Reviews everything twice.
The pattern doesn't budge.
She presents her findings to colleagues. The responses come quickly:
"Measurement error." "Statistical noise." "Probably coincidence."
Because if milk composition actually changes based on whether you're feeding a son or daughter, that would mean something biology textbooks never considered:
Milk isn't just nutrition. Milk is communication.
For generations, medical science treated breast milk as biological fuel. Calories go in, baby grows. A natural formula delivering nutrients. Simple. Straightforward. Case closed.
But if milk were only calories, why would it change for different babies?
Katie trusted what the data was showing her. And the data was pointing toward something that would change everything.
She kept digging.
Across 250 mothers and more than 700 samples, the picture grew more complex.
Younger, first-time mothers produced milk with fewer calories but significantly elevated cortisol—the stress hormone.
Babies drinking high-cortisol milk developed differently. They grew faster. Became more alert, more vigilant, more cautious. More anxious.
Milk wasn't just building bodies. It was shaping personalities. Programming behavior. Broadcasting information about the world from mother to child through pure chemistry.
Then Katie discovered something that shattered every assumption.
When a baby nurses, microscopic amounts of saliva flow backward into the breast tissue.
That saliva carries biological intelligence—chemical signals about the infant's immune system, about pathogens the baby has encountered, about whether illness is coming.
The mother's body reads those signals like a diagnostic report.
And within hours, the milk transforms.
White blood cell counts surge. Antibodies appear—custom-designed to fight whatever pathogen the baby's saliva revealed.
The milk becomes medicine targeted to threats the mother's body has never personally encountered.
When the baby recovers, the milk returns to normal.
This wasn't nutrition being delivered. This was dialogue.
A biological conversation refined across millions of years of evolution. Mother and infant exchanging chemical information in real-time.
The mother's immune system tutoring the baby's defenses before symptoms even emerge.
An intelligence transfer happening with every feeding.
And medical science had completely overlooked it.
Katie began surveying existing research. What she found was staggering:
There were twice as many published studies investigating erectile dysfunction as there were studying breast milk composition.
Consider that for a moment.
Breast milk is the first food every human being consumes. The biological system that sustained every single one of our ancestors long enough to have children of their own. The substance that literally shaped how our species evolved.
And we had barely studied how it actually works.
Because research funding reflects cultural values. And women's biology—particularly motherhood—has historically been considered less worthy of serious investigation than male sexual function.
Katie decided that had to change.
In 2011, she launched a blog called "Mammals Suck...Milk!" The intentional double-meaning worked. Within a year, over a million readers were asking questions science had never properly answered.
The discoveries accelerated.
Milk changes throughout the day. Morning milk contains more cortisol to help babies wake up alert. Evening milk has melatonin precursors to help them sleep.
The first milk (foremilk) differs from the last (hindmilk). Early milk hydrates. Final milk delivers concentrated calories, naturally teaching babies to finish feeding.
Human milk contains over 200 complex sugars called oligosaccharides that babies cannot even digest. They pass through completely unchanged.
Why include indigestible compounds?
Because they're not food for the baby—they're food for beneficial bacteria in the infant's gut. Milk simultaneously nourishes the child and cultivates their microbiome.
Every mother's milk is biologically unique—customized not just to our species, not just to her individual baby, but to the specific moment in that baby's development, the specific environment they're in, the specific immune challenges they're facing right now.
In 2017, Katie brought this research to the TED stage: "What we don't know about mother's milk." Over 1.5 million people watched.
In 2020, her work reached millions more through the Netflix documentary "Babies."
Today, at Arizona State University's Comparative Lactation Lab, Dr. Katie Hinde continues revolutionizing how we understand infant development, neonatal care, and public health.
The implications reach everywhere.
Lactation has been evolving for over 200 million years—longer than dinosaurs existed.
What we dismissed as simple nutrition is actually one of the most sophisticated communication systems biology ever created. Adaptive. Responsive. Intelligent.
Preterm infants in NICUs receive fundamentally different care now because of this research. Formula manufacturers are redesigning products. Lactation support has improved because we finally understand what milk actually accomplishes.
But here's what matters most:
Katie Hinde didn't just uncover new facts about milk. She exposed how half the human experience—the biology of mothers and infants—had been systematically under-researched because it was considered less important.
She proved that nourishment is intelligence. That the first relationship every human has—mother feeding child—isn't passive delivery but active conversation.
An information transfer. An education in immunity, behavior, and survival.
Today, comparative lactation is a growing field. New researchers entering. New questions being asked. New discoveries emerging constantly.
All because one scientist looked at data that contradicted accepted models and asked:
"What if the data is correct and the model is wrong?"
Sometimes the most significant revolutions don't require new technology or massive funding.
They come from someone paying attention to what everyone else overlooked.
From someone trusting what the evidence reveals even when it contradicts textbooks.
Katie Hinde thought she was analyzing milk composition.
What she uncovered was a conversation 200 million years in the making—sophisticated, adaptive, intelligent—hidden in plain sight because no one had thought to truly listen.
Now we're listening.
And what we're hearing changes everything.

03/06/2026

Andrea Dworkin 🌹

03/05/2026

Hello beautiful friends!

I hope that the Winter has been a restful time for you, and you are feeling rejuvenated and rich with gentle and loving potential as Spring peeks upon us.

I have been enjoying a lot of quiet reflection in these dark months, and resting a lot. I have been dreaming of a new gathering place to come and enjoy community and the healing modalities that I am blessed to enjoy and share with you.

The Sophia Sanctuary, a living sanctuary for women — is a place to soften, awaken, and return to the wisdom within. Through movement, sound, meditation, and sacred ceremony, we cultivate spaces where healing unfolds naturally and community becomes medicine.

Here, women gather to honor their stories, nourish their spirits, and reconnect with the rhythms of body, heart, and soul.

Why Sophia?

Sophia is the ancient goddess of wisdom—the cosmic feminine intelligence that lives within all creation. She is the voice of intuition, the pulse of the earth, and the quiet knowing that lives in every woman’s heart.

Sophia Sanctuary was born from the belief that when women gather in presence, healing naturally unfolds. Through movement, sound, meditation, and sacred ceremony, we create spaces where women can soften, listen deeply, and reconnect with the wisdom that has always been within them.

This sanctuary is an invitation to remember:
your body holds wisdom,
your voice holds power,
and your presence is sacred.

I am gathering insights from the community about what you would like to see offered and join in at the Sanctuary!

The questionnaire is here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSceEgSQyTZt_pS3mQhVTbdogJVfJgCAd8pGjQSKvIkh6Sh5Rg/viewform

Thank you for reading and completing! I truly value your input.

Much gratitude and all blessings to you, Joy 🙏❤️‍🔥

I am gathering insights from the community about what you would like to see offered and join in at the Sanctuary! The Sophia Sanctuary is a living sanctuary for women—a place to soften, awaken, and return to the wisdom within. Through movement, sound, meditation, and sacred ceremony, we cultivate ...

02/27/2026

02/27/2026

In Homer’s Odyssey, Circe lives alone on an island. She is skilled, intelligent, self-sufficient. Men arrive at her door expecting hospitality and dominance. Instead, she gives them wine laced with magic and turns them into pigs.

For centuries, that transformation has been read as punishment. The dangerous woman. The emasculator. The seductress who strips men of power.

But look closer.

Circe does not hunt men. They come to her. They enter her space, consume what she offers, assume control. And suddenly they are revealed as what they already are—greedy, impulsive, ruled by appetite. The spell doesn’t create the pig. It exposes it.

What terrifies patriarchal storytelling is not that Circe is evil. It’s that she is autonomous. She lives without a husband. She commands knowledge traditionally coded as forbidden—herbalism, potions, transformation. She controls who stays human and who does not. She negotiates with Odysseus as an equal once he proves he cannot be easily subdued.

For women, Circe becomes a mirror.

She represents the fear society projects onto women who refuse submission. A woman with boundaries is called cold. A woman with power is called dangerous. A woman who refuses to soothe male ego is branded monstrous. “She turned him into a pig” becomes shorthand for “She took away his dominance.”

But there is another reading.

Circe is not destroying men. She is demanding accountability. She is the embodiment of consequence. Enter her world carelessly, and you will be transformed by it.

10/30/2025

How exciting!! In NY!

10/16/2025

Live, community experiences of art are deeply meaningful & their beauty is so deeply needed, now more than ever! Our Veil & Ember fusion dance concert has been carefully curated with hardworking local artists as a labor of love.

We cannot wait to present our spellbinding evening of fusion belly dance to you THIS Sunday, October 19th 4-6pm at the Bijou Theatre in Bridgeport. Please come & support our event!

Movement, magic, and mystery await.

Tickets: bitly/4oaGbVT or joyherbst.com