Christmas is coming and at this time of year I sometimes think of the Holy Mother about to give birth. Nowadays, the Holy Mother for me is an archetype of the Divine Feminine. I have heard this term, The Divine Feminine in passing for the last ten years or so. What does it mean? Several definitions I found can all be paraphrased as follows:
The Divine Feminine is the ultimate level of feminine manifestation and expression in the universe……the Divine Feminine is the “matrix of creation”, the best of all that is feminine in all its measure, the representation of all the greatest sacred mysteries, the divine light..
Do we need to know about the Divine Feminine now? Most definitely and absolutely! For more than 2000 years we have lived under a patriarchal, masculine dominated cultural system. Only recently, within the last 100 years here in the west, have women begun to achieve any kind of equality and it is still doubtful that we women have full equality. However, I think it is important to understand that patriarchy and masculine values are not necessarily bad, it is just that at present the energies of masculine and feminine are out of balance.
The Divine Masculine energy is one of strength and gentleness. It should be an expression of the highest, most inspiring and truest manifestations of the masculine. Some of its qualities are logic, adventure, action, reason and loyalty and both men and women carry these qualities. It is the same with the Divine Feminine energy; the qualities such as creativity, compassion, intuition and wisdom are inherent to both men and women. What has happened over the last 2000 years is that the feminine aspects have been degraded and denied, forgotten and repressed and the masculine aspects have been, in some individuals, corrupted. Consequently our society, our culture has become out of balance and the planet and her people have suffered grossly. Strength in a person is a good thing. When that strength extends to bullying, becoming overpowering or overbearing it is not a good thing, it has become corrupted…… and dangerous to all.
Some women of our time have intuited the energy of the Divine Feminine but have misunderstood how to express it and have (hopefully) unwittingly expressed their feminine power in an imbalanced, patriarchal way. Margaret Thatcher and Hilary Clinton for example, have enjoyed great power but only by playing the game as if they were men.
The Divine Feminine expresses conception, creation and birth and allows us all to participate in the greatest of sacred mysteries – bringing a soul to life in a physical body. Due to centuries of denying this divine mystery of the feminine, denigrating it, calling it unclean, we are also denying our connection to Life and Love.
This denial of the divine mystery of the feminine means we are also denying Life itself. If we denigrate women for being the bearers of life, of our own children, then it becomes easy to denigrate Life on the planet. Plants, animals and minerals are seen at best as commodities and at worse as something to destroy and get out of our way. If we view feminine power as something to fear, we fear Nature – Mother Nature. If we fear something we try to destroy it. Women through the centuries have endured torture, abuse, exploitation, rape and destruction,
and so has our planet.
I believe that it is imperative that women come together in groups and in Circles as friends and sisters; recharge our intuition, our compassion and our wisdom and all the qualities that we hold that are of the Divine Feminine. It is time to acknowledge that what is done to us is done to the planet, to Mother Earth, to the Goddess; and what is done to the planet, to Mother Earth and to the Goddess is done to us. It is time for us to use our feminine power to demonstrate that we can have a successful society that reveres women (and men) and all Life on this planet. For the Christians amongst us it is time to extend peace and goodwill to all beings, not just to Christian men, but to all women, all men and all beings. To mothers of sons, I implore you to educate your sons to be the best of men, to be strong but gentle, kind and wise, adventurous but stable, rational but creative and for them to know that the Divine Feminine is within them too.
Peace and blessings to all.