Fierce Feminine

“i found god in myself
and i loved her
i loved her fiercely” 
~Ntozake Shange

“The dakini is a messenger of emptiness and also appears in dreams to guide the meditator, and she might appear in real life as a woman with certain wisdom qualities. The dakini is a force of truth: wherever we cling, she cuts; whatever we think we can hide, she reveals.” ~Sapchu Rinpoche

“Another important aspect of the dakini’s feminine energy is how they cut through notions of pure and impure, clean and unclean, what you should do and shouldn’t do. They break open the shell of those conventional structures into an embrace of life in which all experience is seen as sacred.” ~Lama Tsultrim Allione

#wild
#wisdom
#sacredfeminine
#dakini

Art: Dancing Dakini, Nepal, 14th century; LACMA

Goddess Reclaimed

I realized that in spite of the very helpful healing work I had done in the past, that as a woman, the modern Western and even ancient spiritual techniques that served me before fell short of fully addressing my physical, mental, emotional, energetic, and spiritual nature as a woman. And how could they, for they were created by (and generally made for) men?

For example, while the Vedic and Buddhist meditation techniques I learned helped me observe my pain from a place of detachment, they guided me away from delving into my pain—to feel and own it. The Goddesses, however, showed me that as a woman, it was vital for me to fully feel my pain before I could heal it. Another revelation was when I realized that instead of just talking about my feelings to process them, that unleashing them through physical movement, sound, or sacred ceremony profoundly elevated my experience of release.

And so it wasn’t until I re-discovered the buried ancient mysteries and wisdom teachings of the Goddesses that I was able to truly heal and flourish on every level as a woman. At first, embracing the Goddesses of the underworld led me to uncover the deep-seated lack of self-love, self-worth, and self-value that was mirrored back to me in my outer patterns.”

-Syma Kharal, Goddess Reclaimed:
13 Initiations to Unleash Your Sacred Feminine Power

🌙

image: Mother Goddess
by Nancy Lankston

She is the Source

Sculpture by Agnes Arellano

She is intuition,
she is far-seer,
she is deep listener,
she is loyal heart.
She encourages humans to remain multilingual;
fluent in the languages of dreams, passion, and poetry.
She whispers from night dreams,
she leaves behind on the terrain of a woman’s soul
a coarse hair and muddy footprints.
These fill women with longing to find her, free her, and love her.
She is ideas, feelings, urges, and memory.
She has been lost and half-forgotten for a long, long time.
She is the source,
the light,
the night,
the dark,
and daybreak.

~Clarissa Pinkola Estes
🌙☀️

She Has Always Been With Us

Mother Goddess, 27,000 BCE

“Originally the Goddess ruled, or co-created, the magical life cycle forces of sexuality, birth, life and death. With the coming of patriarchal religions, the power of life and death became prerogatives of the male God, while sexuality and magic were split off from procreation and motherhood.”
-Barbara Koltuv, The Book of Lilith

——-
Image: the Laussel Relief 27,000 BCE. Found in southern France. It depicts the connection between a woman’s body and the mystery of the cosmos; one hand holds a crescent moon and the other points to her pelvis. Archeologists debate about what the 13 lines on the crescent moon signify. One possibility: 29,000 years ago, humans already knew that there are 13 moon cycles in a year.

🌙 ❤️

#SacredFem
#Herstory

Growing

“The place where you feel your truth, that is Shakti.
That is her speaking… moving you.
That is where you can find her.
That’s where she is so close.
And in times of crisis or
when things are challenging in this way,
It is so easy to put that connection aside.

…In times like this, you are growing.
Think about yourself as a new sprout in you.
And you have to find ways to take care of it.
You need to finds ways to
feel your feet and feel the Earth.
Find ways to connect in small ways.”

~Chameli Ardagh
Saraswati Sadhana