THE VIA SCRIPTORIA

About The Via Scriptoria

Historically, there are several ways in which people engage the inner life and mediate their spiritual transformation. Pilgrims walk sacred paths on the Via Peregrina. Others walk private paths of sorrow on the Via Dolorosa. One path that has not yet been properly recognised, and one that historically has been a woman’s way of engaging and expressing her inner life, is the path of writing. This is the path I am calling The Via Scriptoria.

Women, historically excluded from the public sphere, were naturally called to the Via Scriptoria – writing their private lives in journals, diaries, letters, and books. During the millennia when women’s writing and voices were excluded from the culture and its institutions, writing offered a safe, private space to write about our inner lives, our spiritual experiences, and generally, to share the riches of our inner lives. In a culture did not want to acknowledge or honour women’s contributions, writing provided a safe container.

Recovery of Women’s Voices & Writing

Undoubtedly, an essential part of the great shift we are living through, is the reclamation of women’s agency and sovereignty, especially though recovery of our voices and our writing. It is a painful part of women’s experience that even when we want to speak and write truth, we stumble and falter in expressing ourselves in a still patriarchal culture.

Together, women are supporting each other to recover our voices and our sacred texts for our own healing and for the sake of healing the collective.

Whether it’s private journaling, books of healing, or channeling sacred texts to share with others, women want to write.

Being on the Via Scriptoria means we are connected to a lineage of women throughout history who also used writing as the medium for processing their inner growth and transformation and supporting others to do the same. Writing continues to be a powerful medium for women to engage our spiritual lives.

Our spiritual writing may remain private, or it might also become the medicine we offer to the wider world. Either way, you are welcome to this small but growing community.