One thread in our contemporary women’s cultural tapestry that is being woven alongside the more general thread of the women’s empowerment movement is the “Goddess” movement.
What’s with that?
It resonates deeply with some of us women. Others of us think of the goddess thing as an entertaining sideshow at best and an opiate of the feminist spirit at worst. Sure, dancing in the moonlight is nice, but not if you do this in place of dealing with “real world” issues such as activism for equal pay, ending trafficking, protecting the Earth, and doing what we can in the context of our day-to-day lives to disentangle the powerful nets that have kept women devalued, endangered, and disempowered for so long!
What’s YOUR feeling about attempts to infuse an appreciation of ancient goddess awareness and values into our modern Western culture, since our religious cultural roots have been almost entirely patriarchal for thousands of years?
Here’s my feeling about it:
The realm of image, myth, and story is a very powerful level in the overall structure of the human being. This level, associated with the 6th (third eye) chakra, translates Abstract Reality down into the level of image—the beginning of its stepping all the way down into the level of physical reality. The anthropomorphizing of abstract principles of Creation helps human beings capture a vision of how they might LIVE these principles in their daily lives—how we humans as individuals might participate in Cosmic Life.
This is the power of:
- Images of Divine beings in quasi-human form, with their Divine attributes and qualities;
- Myths about the adventures of gods, goddesses, and heroes and heroines;
- Stories of how other human beings have lived Divine values in their own lives and influenced human history in an evolutionary direction; and even
- Sharing our own stories about our own challenges and the transformations that have come about for us through the personal epic of our life experiences.
So I DO seek to harness the power of this level of our psyche to HEAL this level of our psyche for the women I work with and for our culture! IT HAS BEEN A VERY DAMAGING TRAVESTY to women in our religious and cultural history to have had the Divine referred to solely in masculine terms. God “He.” God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit (a somewhat gender-free force of inspiration). Spiritual authority and true agency have been envisioned solely in male form. Women need to heal spiritually as well as on other levels from this violation and from the omission of the Feminine in images of the Divine. Hence, I include this in my work with women.
Because images of the Divine Feminine have been missing in our culture for so long, to benefit from their power, we must look (1) to ancient times in Western culture; (2) to other cultures where the feminine aspect of the Divine is honored along with the masculine; and/or (3) to the more esoteric side-streams of our religious and spiritual traditions in which the Feminine has sometimes been more explicitly honored. [More on this later!]
If Goddess energies resonate with us, we can learn from them and draw inspiration from them. However, I do not want us to allow these Divine Feminine values to be experienced only on the “higher” levels of upper chakra enlivenment! We invoke them for inspiration and feminine spiritual power so we can bring these values into LIVED REALITY in our daily lives and so that we can infuse them into our contemporary culture!
