A Portal to the Great Mother: Clark Strand & Perdita Finn on the Rosary

What if the rosary is not a relic of patriarchal religion, but an ancient spiritual technology—older than Christianity itself—designed to open a living relationship with the Sacred Mother?

In this episode we're joined by Clark Strand and Perdita Finn, founders of The Way of the Rose and co-authors of the book by the same name, for a deeply embodied conversation about the rosary as a portal: tactile, erotic, ecological, and alive.

Drawing on paleolithic bead traditions, Marian devotion, mystery cults, Buddhism, and direct visionary experience, Clark and Perdita reframe the rosary as a practice rooted not in any particular dogma, but in the body—touch, rhythm, breath, grief, birth, death, and rebirth. We explore the rosary’s hidden history, its connection to the Great Mother across cultures, and its power to open liminal spaces where the living and the dead, the personal and the cosmic, meet.

The conversation then moves through themes of devotion without orthodoxy, apocalypse without judgment, reincarnation, climate grief, and the Sacred Feminine as a force that shows up—not as metaphor, but as a very real spiritual presence. By the end, we've gone from womb to tomb and back again.

Episode Highlights

[00:01:26] Introducing Clark, Perdita, and The Way of the Rose

• Perdida Finn and Clark Strand are the founders of the Way of the Rose Fellowship and the co-authors of the book of the same name. Their work not only shares some of their own profound experiences of the Sacred Mother, it reframes where the rosary came from, what it really is, and where it might be taking us.

[00:02:46] The Land We Are Called To

• An organic, story-rich opening unfolds around sacred land, old-growth forests, ancestral memory, and the way places call us into transformation. The Sacred Mother as land and body.

[00:9:30] The Body Knows the Prayer

• Perdita and Clark introduce the rosary not as doctrine, but as an embodied practice rooted in touch, rhythm, and nervous-system memory. Drawing on ancient bead traditions and the physiology of consolation, they reframe the rosary as a tactile return to the Mother—older than Christianity itself.

[00:18:03] Ancient Origins of the Rosary

• The conversation traces the rosary back through Paleolithic goddess figurines, Mediterranean mystery cults, and pre-literate devotional practices. Clark and Perdita reveal how Marian devotion absorbed and preserved far older traditions of the Great Mother, birth, death, and rebirth—often in tension with official church theology.

[00:26:11] Opening the Portal

• Great discussion here about the rosary being a portal and a summoning practice. Clark and Perdita explore how repetitive prayer, gesture, and intention open liminal space—connecting practitioners with the living, the dead, and the Sacred Feminine across cultures (an invitation to people of any and all or no religious or spiritual background to join in the prayer).

[00:43:41] When She Shows Up (and Speaks)

• Clark and Perdita share their own direct encounters with the Sacred Mother, including visionary experiences and received messages that shaped their work and writing. This section makes clear that the rosary is not symbolic—it is relational, communicative, and alive.

[00:51:19] A Different Kind of Apocalypse

• We close by reimagining apocalypse through the rosary’s mysteries—not as punishment or final judgment, but as cyclical renewal, divine union, and rebirth.

Continue the Conversation

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