Sept 17-21, 2025
Annual Autumn Retreat
for Mandala Members, Priestesses, & Sibyls
of the Mount Shasta Goddess Temple
2025 Theme:
Women’s Handiwork
There are both In-Person & Online options for presenting and attending, and submissions for workshop proposals are open now! Scroll down to apply before April 28.
In-Person: $444 (includes lodging)
Online: $111
As the leaves turn and the shadows lengthen, we gather for Matergenesis—our new annual Fall Equinox retreat for the Mount Shasta Goddess Temple. This convergence of Mandala Members, Priestesses, and Sibyls is a time to honor the creative spirit amidst autumn and the mystery of the Mother who spins, stirs, and shapes the world with the labor of her hands. In 2025, our theme is Women’s Handicraft, and we will immerse ourselves in tactile devotion, ancestral creativity, and the ritual of homemaking as sacred art. This is a time to remember the hearth-magic of our foremothers and the generative force of women’s work.
We will spend our days making candles to light the dark, baking bread that nourishes body and soul, making cheese and simmering jam like the kitchen witches we are. Through the labor of our hands, we will connect to the lineage of creatrices before us—mothers, sisters, weavers, healers, and priestesses who shaped culture with yarn and song, story and sculpture, flavor and flame. We will visit Marie Laveau’s grave and pay her tribute. Evenings will be filled with laughter, ceremony, warm tea, and a ghost tour that lifts the veil on those who walked before us in the haunted New Orleans landscape.
You are invited to submit a proposal for a 30-minute workshop that shares your love and knowledge of Women’s Handicraft. Whether your offering is a creative technique, an ancestral biography, a devotional practice, or a guided experience of making—bring us something from your heart and hands to share with the circle. Presenters will be chosen for their ability to inspire, connect, and offer grounded, heartfelt wisdom in a communal setting. Submissions are due by April 28.
And of course, we warmly invite you to attend—whether or not you are presenting. Come with your apron, your drop spindle, your knitting needles, your baking instincts, your grandmother’s recipes, your fierce love of beauty, your ghost stories, and your altar crafts. Come sit among sisters in a sacred circle where creative expression is a prayer, where memory lives in the loom and the ladle, and where the hearth becomes an altar of blessing. Matergenesis is our place to remember, to remake, and to rejoice in the sacred power of women's creativity.
Women’s Extra-Ordinary Inventions
Through time and space, women have turned necessity into innovation, transforming the domestic sphere with brilliance and creativity. From Mary Anderson’s windshield wiper to Josephine Cochrane’s dishwasher, women have quietly shaped the modern world from our kitchens, gardens, and laundry rooms. These inventions, often born of daily toil and an eye for efficiency, speak to a lineage of practical genius. Whether improving safety, streamlining chores, or beautifying the everyday, women’s household inventions have been acts of love and ingenuity that changed life for everyone.
Sacred Art
Sacred art is Spirit’s whisper made visible, and women have long been its devoted vessels, crafting everything from art to cultural paradigms. Through painted icons, beaded regalia, temple textiles, ritual dance, and ceremonial pottery, women have encoded cosmologies in color, gesture, and form. Whether offering our work to the altar or the ancestor’s memory, women’s sacred art expresses devotion, tells mythic truths, and sustains cultural soul. This is the art that blesses, protects, heals, and remembers—the art that channels the divine through the willing hands of the creatrix.
Creatrix-Ancestress
Some women seem to be born with beauty in our fingertips—those who made gardens bloom in concrete, who stitched dreams into fabric, who carried grace into every room we entered. Think of Georgia O’Keeffe painting desert blooms, countless unwritten Aunties shaping memory in henna, or Frida Kahlo layering pain with color and folklore. These women did not simply make beauty—they were beauty in motion, conjuring from within their lives a vision of the possible. Women’s creative work reminds us that to create beauty is not to escape the world, but to transform it.
Apply to Present
Do you have a symbol you’d like to explore, an Ancestress you’d like to introduce, a craft you’d like to teach, or an important woman’s invention you’d like to explain to a group of eager, caring Goddess women at Matergenesis? Submit your 30-minute presentation topic for consideration by April 28.
Matergenesis Schedule 2025
Wednesday, September 17
Arrive & Settle in for an evening of socialising
Thursday, September 18
10am
Opening meditation and shamanic journey circle to call in the benevolent Ancestors
11am
Tour of St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 (including Marie Laveau’s grave)
Lunch
Shopping in the French Quarter
6pm
Dinner
Evening
Ghost Tour of the French Quarter
Friday, September 19
10am-12pm
Candle-making workshop
12-2pm
Lunch
2-6pm
Make bread, cheese, butter & jam
6pm
Dinner (with what we’ve made!)
Evening
Making Marzanna Dolls to ward off winter malaise
Saturday Sept 20
10am-12pm
Fibrecraft Presentation & Activity
12-1pm
Lunch
1-6pm
Presentations
6pm
Dinner
Evening
Fall Equinox Ritual
Sunday Sept 21
11am
Brunch & depart
Ready to Sign Up?
Early Bird Tickets are now available for our In-Person Gathering!
We have a house with 7 beds, and if we fill this space we will rent a second house. Get your ticket now!
Join your Temple Sisters for a magical retreat in New Orleans! Laissez less bontemps roulez!
What’s included (In-Person):
Breakfast daily
St Louis Cemetery No 1 Tour
Ghost Tour
Matergenesis Symposium activities (including supplies for candle-making, bread, butter, jam, fibrecraft and Marzanna dolls)
Brunch on Sept 21
Lodging in your own bed in a shared room
Goodie Bag with gifts and offerings
What’s Included (Online):
St Louis Cemetery No 1 Tour Online
Matergenesis Symposium activities (you will supply your own food items, and craft items will be mailed to you)
Goodie Bag with gifts and offerings
What’s Not Included:
Flights/Travel Costs
Other meals
Shopping and other personal spending money