Soul Sisters
The Five Sacred Qualities of a Woman's Soul: A Workbook for Women

Someday there will be girls and women whose name will no longer mean the mere opposite of the male, but something in itself, something that makes one think not of any complement and limit, but only of life and reality: the female human being." Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Soul Sisters is a unique workbook to help women cultivate their full potential through the lives and lessons of the heroines of world spiritual traditions - both ancient and modern.

In this book, Peay draws on her unconventional life journey as a seeker, a writer, and mother as well as the lives of other women who have forged their own independent spiritual path. The result is a rich narrative about how women today are recombining, reimagining, and revisioning all the assorted elements of their lives into a complex new mythology. It is also a story of the friendships and enduring bonds that exist between women: How they have uplifted, supported, and inspired each other as they have sought to carve out their own uniquely feminine path within - and without - centuries-old religious traditions dominated by masculine myths and images.

Filled with exercises, anecdotes, quotes, inspirational meditations, and personal stories, Pythia Peay's Soul Sisters shows how women today have courage, exemplify faith, create beauty, show love, make magic, understand friendship, and uphold the ideal of peace. In the same way the Persian storyteller Sheherezade spun fables that enraptured a vindictive and bitter king, transforming him into a kind and caring husband, Peay shows how women's "soul sister" stories can play a role in changing a depressed and lonely society into a more peaceful and loving culture. She examines how the depth and authenticity characterizing women's friendships are a form of creative sistering that help each woman weave soul into the fabric of her life. For whether joining together to help a neighbor die, drawing around a close friend suffering from her lover's suicide with prayers, or simply hiking and talking about men, children, business, politics, most girlfriends feel sustained by one another in a wordless, implicit understanding of what it means to be a woman.

Each chapter shows how to cultivate the five "divine qualities": Courage, Faith, Beauty, Love, and Magic. It contains a gathering of traditional perspectives from the world's wisdom traditions, and shows ways in which these qualities can be used to enhance and strengthen the inner lives of women today. However, just as ancient jewels are excavated, polished, and recast in new settings, some of these practices have been reconfigured in a way that addresses the needs and problems of contemporary women. The new feminist mysticism is not only about transcendent spirituality - it centers instead on the small, daily rituals of cooking, housecleaning, nurturing friendships, caring for pets, planting flowers in springtime, shoveling snow in wintertime, having babies, burying loved ones, making money, watching bodies change over time, and discussing dreams, astrology, and relationships. This feminine mysticism links women together in a potent form of "earth magic" drawn from the wisdom of the world's faiths.

As Peay writes in her introduction, "The heart of Soul Sisters is best expressed in a vision I had nearly ten years ago while traveling through Sedona, Arizona, with several women friends. In it, I saw all the women goddesses, saints, and mystics that had existed throughout time encircling the earth - Greek goddesses, Christian mystics, Buddhist saints, and Sufi holy women all joining hands in a ringing, singing necklace of love and support for our fragile planet. The spirit of that vision, I hope, will be the inspirational source illuminating this book."

Soul Sisters offers an abundance of examples of different female figures from the spiritual past and present who have embodied these characteristics in a distinctly feminine way. Through the road they have walked, readers can learn to discover their own individual heart-path to these strengths. Both an immensely practical workbook and an education in spiritual ideas, Soul Sisters is a companion for a lifetime.