The Extinction of Voice

Hidden dangers of modern creation & what this has to do with Mary Magdalene, believe it or not...

When I taught English 101 and 201 to university students way back in the day, I used a rubric to grade papers.

It was a pretty standard rubric that asked me to score student essays based on things like organization and grammar. 

But you what the key piece of this rubric was? Voice.

Yup – voice was always an essential part of every rubric for me and every other teacher in the English department. And we would get a stern talking to if we didn’t use rubrics with “voice” as an area to score.

But what is voice? 

Of all the things to grade, voice is the trickiest. It’s that thing you can’t really put into words, that’s more subjective and open to interpretation.

If a paper had perfect grammar but was absolutely awful and boring, or had some language issues but was fascinating and original, it was the voice score that would make or break the final grade.

Your voice is what makes your writing uniquely yours — kind of a literary equivalent of the “it” factor for performers, or “style” for artists.

You know how some actors have stunning looks and seem to be doing everything right…but their performances just kind of fall flat? Or how there are other actors that you just want to keep watching and can’t pinpoint why?

It’s that it factor. That aura that is uniquely them, what speaks beyond the surface though an energetic exchange. It’s a presence that reaches beyond the intellect and into a frequency that holds your attention.

This is role of a writer’s voice.

Or let’s look at the voice in art — what we might call an artist’s signature style.

At a certain point, an artist’s work becomes recognizable as their own — and this is true even if they switch mediums or subject matters. There is something there that just reminds you of who they are — perhaps their use of light, color palette, the way they fill a blank space. 

This signature expresses the human behind the paintings: Perfectly executed color, composition, and lighting can please the eye, but if we can’t feel the person who created that artwork, it again falls flat. 

Perhaps voice is how we find a soul-to-soul connection between the maker and the recipient of any creative work.

As a lifelong artist, writer, and reader — and someone who has analyzed wayyyy too many papers with the voice-based rubric — I’m pretty sensitive to the presence of voice in a piece of writing. 

Right now, voice is in danger of extinction.

I bet you can see where I’m going with this…

That’s right. The glut of AI slop spilling into every corner of the internet is not eradicating voice…but a symptom of self-eradication. 

Every time you turn to AI to write that email or blog post for you, you lose a bit more of your own voice.

And your readers can tell.

AI has gotten good enough that many people are fooled into thinking that you can train your AI assistant/bot to sound like you. 

Nope. 

I mean, sure, it will sound a little like you…but something is most definitely missing. 

The grammar is there, there are even some poetics (though they often seem way overused and artificial), and the content will likely be well-organized and pretty accurate. There might even be some higher-level reflections or thoughts if you’ve fed your AI really good prompts. 

But the voice isn’t there. On some, foundational level, there’s a lack of natural rhythm. Your actual perspectives have been replaced by artificial ones and we can tell. (And since most people don’t use good prompts, the writing comes across like a bad informative essay vs. one with any real insight to share.)

We see this in the email lists we subscribe to, blog posts on every website from the smallest solopreneur to the biggest multinational companies, even — gulp — Substack! 

And I know of at least a few publishers who are encouraging authors to use AI to get their books out faster. Not even books are safe anymore :(

There’s a reason I’m writing about this now though — and it’s not the recent MIT studies, though I’m not surprised at all by their findings.  

It’s because I’m teaching a workshop on Mary Magdalene and the myrrhaphore tradition later this month. 

Yeah. I’m writing about AI because of Mary Magdalene. 

It’s relevant. I promise. 

Several years ago, long before AI filled the internet with repetitive slop, I published an article on the art and practice of anointing. 

And you know what? Writing that article was really, really hard. 

It was next to impossible to find any information on anointing outside the modern Christian church. The sacred priestess path of the myrrhophore was already on my radar thanks to authors such as Felicity Warner* and Elizabeth Ashley, but I had to dig deep to find anything beyond a superficial “Mary Magdalene was the original myrrhophore” type statement. 

*As a note: Scan blog posts on being a myrrhophore and Felicity’s name is rarely credited, even though as far as I can tell she was the first to use this term in modern contexts back in the early 2000s. We MUST cite our sources and credit our inspirations! This is how we unweave the competitive, capitalist culture that is killing us. It does not detract from your own work to honor those who have informed you along the way. Please.

But I did dig, and I did dig deep.

I meditated and channeled the essence of Mary Magdalene who taught me how anointing was connected to embodiment and unconditional love. I drew on my own decades of experience with sacred oils to piece together how anointing practices can heal. I received guidance from the goddess Isis, who pointed me in the direction of the resurrection of Osiris as as the forbearing story to Christ’s journey. 

A lot of this came through direct revelation, channeling, and intellectual synthesis of historical records. 

None of it came from asking AI or blog articles, because at the time, those didn’t exist. 

Jump to today… 

In preparing for my upcoming myrrhophore workshop, I kept seeing the dreaded red squiggly line telling me that my spelling of this word was wrong. So I did a search to make sure I was spelling it correctly.

Do you what popped up in my search results? 

Dozens of articles on Mary Magdelene as myrrhophore. 

Whoa! The info I’ve been looking for is actually out there now? Great! I thought.

So I clicked on a few articles. Oh dear god what I found…

I could almost copy-and-paste each article into the next. Define myrrhophore, a few Bible quotes, a blurb on the Isis-Egypt connection…and then a CTA for a divine feminine retreat or priestess training of some sort. 

I get a little sick to my stomach just thinking about it. 

This path I’ve devoted myself to learning, embodying, and discovering, in partnership with spirit, synthesized with historical texts…had been reduced to copy and paste info-essays, clearly written by AI.

They had no voice. 

I get the impulse. If you run your own multifaceted business like I do, it can feel like too much to be writing articles, selling courses, running ads, answering emails, helping another person reset their password…

It’s very tempting to think: Hey, I want to share my heart’s medicine by running this group program, so I’m going to outsource my marketing. I’m going to ask ChatGPT:

What are women looking for? 

Answer: Myrrhophore stuff. 

Great! Please write an article called “What is a myrrhophore.” The goal is to get people interested in my priestess program.

Answer: What a beautiful idea! You are the smartest woman ever with this deeply heart-centered and meaningful offering…

Again, I get the temptation. 

But it literally hurts to see so much AI-generated, voiceless content taking up space around a path that my soul has been on for a long time. 

And, it hurts to read so much slop! Seriously — if I want a basic history, I’ll ask ChatGPT myself, thank you very much. If I’m going to spend my precious time reading your words, I want them to be yours. I want your voice because that is what I can’t find anywhere else.

So what are we to do about all of this? 

A few steps to protect your voice

First, be aware of the effects of ChatGPT and other AI interfaces on your mind.

Read that MIT study. Reclaim your brain. 

I’m not saying that we should resist or avoid AI completely. That’s like telling people they don’t need the internet when literally all of life depends on the internet. (Even if you somehow don’t even have an email address, the food you buy at the store moves via internet connections, as recent hacks have reminded us.) 

AI is a powerful tool and I actually have a lot of hope for its potential, and there are definitely certain things I use it for that are sooo helpful (which is why I know what it sounds like, too).

Rather, we need to guard against the temptation to let the ease of using AI remove us from what makes us human. No small task. Which brings me two the next item…

Second, remind yourself again and again that your voice matters.

You came to Earth to experience the wild ride of life and share your unique medicine with us all. Don’t outsource your gifts to a robot. 

Third, cite your sources.

This undoes the survival-of-the-fittest mentality that can pervade modern entrepreneurship, feeding into a more collaborative and celebratory model of running a business. It acknowledges the ecosystems you live within, the relational nature of all of life. 

And, it lets us know that ChatGPT wasn’t your primary source. Or, at least prompts you to acknowledge the sources AI draws from.

Fourth, write.

Paint. Sing. Cook. Play. And do these things yourself. Bring your full self, your radiant, creative nature into everything you do. 

An Invitation

Back to that myrrhophore bit…

I will be sharing my personal relationship with the path of the myrrhophore and celebrating Mary Magdalene’s influence with that live workshop I mentioned. If this interests you, here are the details:

The Path of the Myrrhophore: A Magdalene Feast Day Ritual & Teaching

Date: Tuesday, July 22nd, 2025​
Time: 4pm PT | 7pm ET (90m)​
Location: Live on Zoom (replay available)
Includes: A downloadable PDF devotional + guided ritual + community circle

P.S. If you are a paid subscriber to this Substack, you can find a discount here.

Or, if this link isn’t working, just go to The Mythoanimist Path hompage and look for “Becoming a Myrrhophore.”

I welcome your tips and tricks and thoughts in general on how we create right relationship with AI in this changing world…and I’d love to hear more from those drawn to the myrrhophore path.