In the Mythos for my Gene Key 21.3, which I have in my Radiance sphere, Richard Rudd talks about “heroic mistakes”. I had to laugh when I read that. I’m not sure how many of my mistakes could be considered “heroic”, but some were certainly of monumental, and “heroic” magnitude.
I am coming to the end of my month in my Evolution sphere, within the Sage’s Golden Path Retreat with Richard Rudd and Team64. My Evolution key is 38.1, with the Shadow of Struggle. Richard talks about this Gene Key as an “energy of stubborn persistence against the flow of life”.
For those of you not familiar with the Gene Keys, they are 64 archetypes of being a human. And each of the 64 Gene Keys has 6 lines, akin to the 6 lines of the I-Ching, which give a particular flavour and nuance to the archetype in question. For the Sage’s Golden Path Retreat, Richard has expanded the teachings, and has created a word and sutra, a contemplation and a mythos for every line of every key.
In my Evolution sphere, I have Gene Key 38.1, the Shadow of Struggle, the Gift of Perseverance, and the Siddhi of Honour. This GK38 is all about Warrior energy.
My beautiful friend, Meghan, did a fabulous Wizardly Words on Wednesdays post a couple of weeks ago, about “Up Levelling”. Yes, we know that “up levelling” isn’t a Gene Keys word, and you would be right in thinking that the main point of our Wizardly Words was to give you our take on, and our personal definitions of some of the words in the Gene Keys lexicon.
In so many of the Gene Keys, as you listen to Richard Rudd’s audios, you will hear him say, in one way or another, “you do this through creativity”, or “you access this gift through creativity”.
We have now moved into our Evolution sphere in the Gene Keys Sage’s Golden Path Retreat, and once again, Richard Rudd has gifted me with the most perfect word and line to encapsulate my Gene Key 38.1 … the Shadow of Struggle, the Gift of Perseverance, the Siddhi of Honour.
And the word he has chosen for 38.1 is “sincerity”.
In the Gene Keys teachings, genius is defined as “the natural manifestation of a human life when it is allowed to expand without force.”
When you are working with your Life’s Work, this first Gene Key in your Golden Path points to how your inner genius wants to express itself.
In this essay, I explore my inner genius for Dynamism.
Ever since I first heard my guide, Hayley, talk about the concept that we all come into this life to play our piece in the great collective puzzle of life, the idea has intrigued and, frankly, terrified me!
What even is my piece? Will I ever find it? Will it be good enough?
How will I know if I’m playing my piece “right”?
The Sage’s Journey has begun. This is the beginning of a new chapter for me. This is a return to the beginning of my inner journey. But that does not mean it is a backwards step. Oh no. This is a spiral path that I am walking as I do this inner work.
It has been a tradition of mine for almost 30 years to sit with my journal at the end of the year and look back to see what I had done, or what had happened, during that year that I could celebrate.
This has always been the time where I find the nuggets of gold in the year, the moments of joy, the achievements.
Starting in January 2026, I am embarking upon a 16-month journey through my Gene Keys Golden Path … The Sage’s Journey with Richard Rudd.
The deeper I have gone into my own Gene Keys profile … then the deeper I want to go.
And the Sage’s Journey is the next step for me.
Every year, I choose one or two words for the year, words that embody the energy that I want to bring to the coming year … here I am, two weeks from the end of 2025, and in this morning’s journaling session, I realised that I actually HAVE been living in the energy of these words this year.
You may be wondering if A Cauldron of Crones is meant for you, especially if you are younger than your crone years, and indeed you may struggle to identify with the archetype of the Crone at all.
So, I thought I would tell you about why it is important for me to share this inner work with the world, and what sort of women might benefit from embarking on their own inner journeys.
Words saved my life.
Writing righted my life.
And now I don’t want to stop.
I know that I will never stop writing. My journal is where I can lay my burden down, my journal is where I can explore how I feel, where my fears are coming from.
My journal is the garden where I plant my seeds of ideas, my seeds of who I want to become.
A tiny step, like accepting the gift of a book and daring to think that maybe, possibly, hopefully, I could actually do it, I could actually write every single day for 12 weeks, led me here, to this creative cauldron, to all this transformation that has occurred in my life over the last few years (decades!).
This week’s Wizardly Word focuses on a theme which runs through my contemplations like a thread of gold through this enormous tapestry of life I am weaving … the theme of TRUST.
There are so many ways to practice The Art of Contemplation. There are probably as many different ways as there are people practicing it! Here are some of the ways Lizzie contemplates.