When the Women in the Cathedral Whispered Back Palma, Past Lives and Finding a Different Kind of Vocation

There are places I visit because they are beautiful, and there are places that seem to have been waiting for me.

The Cathedral of Santa Maria in Palma de Mallorca was the latter.

I walked towards La Seu already aware of its extraordinary presence: Gothic stone rising above the Mediterranean, almost impossibly grand against the Mallorcan light. But the moment I stepped inside, my experience became less about architecture and more about memory.

I have learned over many years of working with the Akashic Records that memory does not always arrive as a neat historical narrative. Sometimes it comes as an emotion. Sometimes an image. Sometimes an inexplicable recognition.

And sometimes your entire body seems to say: I know this.

That was what happened in Palma.

As I walked through the cathedral, I began remembering what I experience as another lifetime connected to the Templar tradition. I saw myself not simply standing alongside the men, but as a woman with a spiritual and protective vocation—a woman I can only describe through today’s language my language as a Templar knightress.

Historically, that terminology is complicated. The Knights Templar were overwhelmingly male, and I would never suggest that a spiritual memory constitutes historical proof. Yet women did exist around the Templar world, and history is often far more nuanced than the simplified versions we inherit.

For me, however, this was not an academic argument.

It was recognition.

And behind that memory seemed to be something older still.

The Valkyrie.

The image of the ancient feminine warrior—not fighting simply for conquest, but riding between worlds, discerning, protecting and escorting souls across thresholds.

Suddenly I could see a thread.

Valkyrie. Knightess. Mystic. Priestess. Teacher.

Different clothing. Different centuries. Perhaps the same vocation.

Then I began noticing the women.

Mother Mary.

Mary Magdalene.

The female saints and mystics whose images inhabit these sacred spaces. Women whose spiritual authority survived centuries, even when the institutions surrounding them were predominantly controlled by men.

And then I encountered the story of Elisabet Cifre.

Born in Palma in 1467, Elisabet was a beguine—a woman who pursued an independent spiritual life without simply disappearing behind conventional monastic walls. She became known as a mystic, healer, prophet and teacher.

I found myself fascinated by her. Here was another model of the spiritual woman.

Not necessarily the woman removed from life, but the woman bringing her spirituality into life.

I knelt before the saints in the cathedral and prayed.

Not elaborate prayers. Quiet ones.

There is something about kneeling that temporarily removes the identity we spend so much energy constructing. Author disappears. Teacher disappears. Traveller disappears. Amanda Romania disappears.

For a few moments there is simply the soul asking:

What am I here to do?

As I knelt before these women, I imagined their whispers moving through the cathedral.

Mary.

Magdalene.

Elisabet.

Women who had followed spiritual callings within worlds that placed enormous restrictions upon what women could become.

And unexpectedly, I found myself thinking about Ascension.

I have taught Ascension for years, but sitting in that cathedral I understood it differently.

Perhaps Ascension is not something we achieve. Perhaps it is a vocation.

A decision to keep refining ourselves while remaining fully engaged with being human.

For centuries spirituality has often been associated with sacrifice. Poverty. Celibacy. Obedience. Withdrawal. Suffering. The saint who proves devotion through deprivation.

I respect those paths. But they are not mine.

I do not believe I came into this lifetime to prove my spirituality by having less life.

I want beauty.

I want meaningful work.

I want to travel.

I want good food, laughter, beautiful hotels, temples, conversations, abundance and mornings when sunlight pours through the window.

And I want God there too.

Perhaps that was the real message Palma gave me.

I do not have to suffer to be spiritual.

Ascension does not require me to abandon the Earth. It asks me to become more conscious while living upon it.

The old vows may have belonged to other lifetimes: poverty, sacrifice, obedience, perhaps even martyrdom.

But what if the modern spiritual woman is being asked to make different vows?

To wisdom without withdrawal.

To service without self-erasure.

To abundance without greed.

To beauty without vanity.

To power without domination.

To spirituality without suffering.

Walking back into the brilliant Mallorcan sunlight, I felt strangely peaceful.

Perhaps those women had not asked me to become like them at all.

Perhaps they were reminding me that every generation of women must discover what spiritual vocation means in her own time.

The Valkyrie did it one way.

The knightress another.

The mystics and beguines another.

And I must do it mine.

I walked away from Palma Cathedral understanding something I had perhaps spent lifetimes trying to learn:

My vocation may be Ascension—but my vow is to live.