Know Thy Soul

Jennifer Maura DePascale
  • 5.0 (5)
  • Spirituality

Know Thy Soul is a podcast about the journey home to ourselves, to the divine, and to the wisdom within waiting to be remembered.   Hosted by Jennifer Maura DePascale, each episode draws from myth, fairy tale, scripture, symbolism, ancient spiritual traditions, personal reflection, and conversations to uncover the timeless patterns woven through the world's great stories and spiritual traditions, and what they reveal about our lives today.   Together, we'll explore questions of meaning, healing, consciousness, relationship, and our direct connection to the divine. Through ancient stories and modern insights, we'll discover what these enduring patterns can teach us about ourselves, our world, and the journey from exile to wholeness.   Join us as we explore the lifelong journey of knowing thy soul.  🎙️ New episodes are released every Tuesday.  Visit knowthysoul.com to listen, read episode transcripts and reflections, and join the Know Thy Soul newsletter. 

  1. 2d ago

    Episode 14: Pointing Toward the Moon: Seeing the Forest for the Trees

    What if the stories, symbols, and teachings we’ve been exploring were never meant to become answers in themselves? In this episode, I step back from The Handless Maiden, Perceval, Dame Ragnell, and the other stories we’ve explored to ask what they’ve been pointing toward all along. Through an old Zen parable of a teacher pointing at the moon, we explore the difference between studying the symbol and allowing it to reveal something within us. I also share more personally about my own silver-handed marriage, anxious attachment, learning to trust my inner knowing, and what it has meant to grow my hands back. We look at feminine knowing, masculine protection, wounded relationship patterns, sovereignty, and the possibility of a love built on mutuality rather than self-abandonment. Sometimes the story helps us see everyone else first. Eventually, though, the finger turns back toward us. And asks: Where is this in me? Did something in this episode speak to you? Send me a note. About Know Thy Soul Know Thy Soul explores myth, fairy tales, scripture, symbolism, psychology, and spiritual traditions as maps of the soul, revealing the timeless patterns that illuminate the journey home to ourselves.   🎙️ New episodes every Tuesday. Visit knowthysoul.com for episode transcripts, reflections, and more.  📬 Join the Know Thy Soul newsletter

  2. Oct 6

    Episode 13: The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell: A Story of Sovereignty and True Chivalry

    In Episode 13, we return to Camelot for The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell: A Story of Sovereignty and True Chivalry. When King Arthur’s life depends upon discovering what women most desire, Sir Gawain is drawn into a mysterious bargain that will test the meaning of honor, love, and choice. In the second half of the episode, we confront what happens when women’s sovereignty is not honored. Against the backdrop of recent sexual assault allegations involving a Cornell fraternity, we explore rape as the most brutal denial of sovereignty and the devastating consequences of a culture that teaches men to equate masculinity with conquest. Drawing together The Handless Maiden, Perceval, and Dame Ragnell, we look beneath the violence to the original wound. Patriarchy offers men a devil’s bargain: power in the outer world at the cost of their emotional and spiritual lives. What they are taught to dominate within themselves, they may learn to dominate around them. These stories show us another path. They ask what it would mean to heal men who do not need to dominate in order to feel powerful, to restore the feminine within us, and to return the choice to the hands where it has always belonged. Content note: This episode includes a discussion of rape and sexual violence. Did something in this episode speak to you? Send me a note. About Know Thy Soul Know Thy Soul explores myth, fairy tales, scripture, symbolism, psychology, and spiritual traditions as maps of the soul, revealing the timeless patterns that illuminate the journey home to ourselves.   🎙️ New episodes every Tuesday. Visit knowthysoul.com for episode transcripts, reflections, and more.  📬 Join the Know Thy Soul newsletter

  3. Sep 29

    Episode 12: Why You Get Triggered and What Your Reactions Are Trying to Tell You

    Why do some moments hit us so much harder than they seem like they should? A criticism. A tone of voice. Someone pulling away. Suddenly, the reaction inside us feels much bigger than what is happening in front of us. In this episode of Know Thy Soul, Jennifer explores what triggers are actually trying to show us through the unlikely story of a four-pound puppy and a bee stinger. Sometimes the wound is not only what happened to us, but the meaning that became lodged inside because of it: I’m not safe. I’m not good enough. People leave. My feelings don’t matter. Years later, something touches that old wound and suddenly we react. Through The Handless Maiden, Perceval and the Fisher King, scripture, psychology, and Jennifer’s work with the subconscious, we explore why we protect the places that hurt, how those protections can become armor, and why a heart that seems “hard” may actually be a heart that has felt too much. We also look at the difference between the wound itself and the meaning we carry from it, and how becoming conscious of those meanings can help us stop organizing our lives around the past. This episode is an invitation to pause in the space between feeling and reacting, to turn toward the wound with curiosity instead of shame, and to ask the question Perceval once failed to ask: What ails you? Because healing does not mean we will never be wounded again. It means learning how to meet what hurts without abandoning ourselves, so the wound no longer gets to decide what happens next.. Did something in this episode speak to you? Send me a note. About Know Thy Soul Know Thy Soul explores myth, fairy tales, scripture, symbolism, psychology, and spiritual traditions as maps of the soul, revealing the timeless patterns that illuminate the journey home to ourselves.   🎙️ New episodes every Tuesday. Visit knowthysoul.com for episode transcripts, reflections, and more.  📬 Join the Know Thy Soul newsletter

  4. Sep 22

    Episode 11: Perceval, Part 2: The Masculine Wound and the Courage to Feel

    What if the Grail Quest was never about finding a sacred object, but becoming a person capable of compassion? When Perceval fails to ask the question that could heal the Fisher King, he responds in the only way he knows how: he rides away, fights more battles, and tries to prove that he has what it takes. But no amount of achievement can heal the wound he refuses to face. In Part Two of Perceval’s story, we follow him through shame, wandering, and finally into the forest, where he removes his armor, allows himself to weep, and begins the transformation from knight into a mature masculine king. Along the way, we explore why so many people have learned to fix pain rather than feel it, how our unhealed wounds spill into our relationships, and what the Handless Maiden must do when the king is not yet willing to heal. Perhaps the Grail was never a prize to be won. Perhaps it is a heart capable of seeing suffering, remaining present before it, and asking the question love requires: What ails you? Did something in this episode speak to you? Send me a note. About Know Thy Soul Know Thy Soul explores myth, fairy tales, scripture, symbolism, psychology, and spiritual traditions as maps of the soul, revealing the timeless patterns that illuminate the journey home to ourselves.   🎙️ New episodes every Tuesday. Visit knowthysoul.com for episode transcripts, reflections, and more.  📬 Join the Know Thy Soul newsletter

  5. Sep 15

    Episode 10: Perceval and the Holy Grail: The Masculine Wound Beneath the Armor (Part 1)

    In Part One of Perceval and the Holy Grail, we follow a nameless boy raised in isolation by a mother terrified of losing him. When he encounters a group of knights in the forest, he becomes determined to join them. He puts on the Red Knight’s armor and begins moving through the world guided by borrowed rules and an identity he has not yet earned. He rescues the beautiful Blanchefleur but rides away when she asks him to remain. Then a prayer leads him to a mysterious castle, where he encounters the wounded Fisher King, a bleeding spear, and the radiant Holy Grail. He senses that something is wrong, but because he has been taught not to ask too many questions, he remains silent. Through the medieval story of Perceval, we explore the armor we wear, the identities we inherit, the difference between rescuing someone and truly relating to them, what happens when we fight, flee, or freeze rather than listen to our inner world and how one compassionate question can begin to heal an entire kingdom. Did something in this episode speak to you? Send me a note. About Know Thy Soul Know Thy Soul explores myth, fairy tales, scripture, symbolism, psychology, and spiritual traditions as maps of the soul, revealing the timeless patterns that illuminate the journey home to ourselves.   🎙️ New episodes every Tuesday. Visit knowthysoul.com for episode transcripts, reflections, and more.  📬 Join the Know Thy Soul newsletter

  6. Sep 8

    Episode 9: When Your Soul Has Other Plans: How to Trust Your Inner Knowing

    What happens when the life you planned is not the life your soul is asking you to live? In this episode, Jennifer explores what it means to live with our hands grown back. Drawing on Carl Jung’s four psychological functions, The Handless Maiden, Perceval, and the parable of the farmer and his horse, she considers what becomes possible when reason, feeling, sensation, and intuition begin working together—and the inner king learns to serve rather than silence the inner queen. Then she shares the winding and improbable story of how Know Thy Soul came to be. What began as a plan to start a podcast led instead to a writing retreat, an unexpected encounter with Anne Lamott, a workshop she didn’t win, and the sudden clarity that revealed the book she was meant to write. This is a story about gnosis, synchronicity, the kingdom within, and learning to follow the next right step—even when your soul has other plans. Did something in this episode speak to you? Send me a note. About Know Thy Soul Know Thy Soul explores myth, fairy tales, scripture, symbolism, psychology, and spiritual traditions as maps of the soul, revealing the timeless patterns that illuminate the journey home to ourselves.   🎙️ New episodes every Tuesday. Visit knowthysoul.com for episode transcripts, reflections, and more.  📬 Join the Know Thy Soul newsletter

  7. Sep 1

    Episode 8: The Handless Maiden in Real Life: The Quiet Ways We Abandon Ourselves

    What happens when you’ve spent so long minimizing your own experience that you can no longer recognize how much pain you’re carrying?  In this episode, I step outside the fairy tale to explore what The Handless Maiden can look like in real life. I share the story of my first childbirth—how often I silenced what I felt, handed my authority to others, and insisted I was fine when my body was telling me otherwise. This is an exploration of what happens when we believe trusting someone else requires us to stop trusting ourselves. Along the way, an octopus shows us how something lost can grow back, and a turtle becomes an unexpected teacher in listening to the wisdom within us and trusting the next step without knowing where the entire path will lead. Together, we explore the quiet ways self-abandonment happens, the healing that often takes place where no one else can see it, and the first small act of sovereignty: telling ourselves the truth about where we are. And I’ll leave you with one question: Where in your life might you be calling a nine a three? Did something in this episode speak to you? Send me a note. About Know Thy Soul Know Thy Soul explores myth, fairy tales, scripture, symbolism, psychology, and spiritual traditions as maps of the soul, revealing the timeless patterns that illuminate the journey home to ourselves.   🎙️ New episodes every Tuesday. Visit knowthysoul.com for episode transcripts, reflections, and more.  📬 Join the Know Thy Soul newsletter

  8. Aug 25

    Episode 7: Growing Hands: Healing, Wholeness, and Spiritual Sovereignty

    In the final chapter of The Handless Maiden, the maiden has spent seven years healing in the sanctuary of Here All Dwell Free. Her living hands have grown back. Meanwhile, the king has spent seven years wandering through the forest, learning to lay down his armor and soften the heart that could once offer her only silver hands—beautiful on the outside, but cold, rigid, and unable to feel. When they meet again, neither is the person the other once knew. She has become a whole and spiritually sovereign woman. He must learn to recognize her, hear what his absence has cost, and love her without trying to rescue, possess, or change her. In this episode, we explore: Why healing requires rest, safety, and the freedom to belong to ourselvesHow living hands symbolize inner authority, creativity, and spiritual sovereigntyWhy healing does not erase memory—and forgiveness does not automatically restore trustThe king’s transformation from a hardened heart to a heart soft enough to feelKintsugi and the possibility of allowing our wounds to become catalysts for rebirthMaslow’s idea of Being-love: loving another person without needing them to complete or rescue usThe sacred marriage and the reunion of the healed feminine and masculineWhat it means to reclaim the authority of the soulDrawing from fairy-tale symbolism, the Bible, the Tao Te Ching, psychology, and personal reflection, this episode asks us to consider where we may have surrendered our own hands—and whether something within us is now ready to return. What is true within you may be forgotten, buried, or silenced, but it cannot be destroyed. Did something in this episode speak to you? Send me a note. About Know Thy Soul Know Thy Soul explores myth, fairy tales, scripture, symbolism, psychology, and spiritual traditions as maps of the soul, revealing the timeless patterns that illuminate the journey home to ourselves.   🎙️ New episodes every Tuesday. Visit knowthysoul.com for episode transcripts, reflections, and more.  📬 Join the Know Thy Soul newsletter

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About

Know Thy Soul is a podcast about the journey home to ourselves, to the divine, and to the wisdom within waiting to be remembered.   Hosted by Jennifer Maura DePascale, each episode draws from myth, fairy tale, scripture, symbolism, ancient spiritual traditions, personal reflection, and conversations to uncover the timeless patterns woven through the world's great stories and spiritual traditions, and what they reveal about our lives today.   Together, we'll explore questions of meaning, healing, consciousness, relationship, and our direct connection to the divine. Through ancient stories and modern insights, we'll discover what these enduring patterns can teach us about ourselves, our world, and the journey from exile to wholeness.   Join us as we explore the lifelong journey of knowing thy soul.  🎙️ New episodes are released every Tuesday.  Visit knowthysoul.com to listen, read episode transcripts and reflections, and join the Know Thy Soul newsletter. 

Information

  • Creator
    Jennifer Maura DePascale
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    15
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Know Thy Soul
  • Show Website
    Know Thy Soul

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