The Divine Feminine
Rarely understood, the feminine energy channel represents life itself. In a world of complex energies, we can rely on the principle of Yin and Yang to build our map, navigate decisions based on personality, and formulate a hopeful future of balance. However, misunderstanding the dynamics of the sexual energy channels of masculine and feminine create havoc in our lives, and cause confusion beyond control. The solution? Education in ancient mythologies to understand what life really is made up of — known/unknown, order/chaos, unexplored/explored, life/death, and everything in between.
Rest assured, without a great deal of understanding of history, we can delve into the topic given a hard rule that everyone should obey for a healthy amount of peace and prosperity: embrace and obey the feminine energy or be burned alive in all its overwhelming grace, glory, creation and destruction.
The Uroboros Symbolism
“The uroboros symbolizes the union of known (associated with spirit) and unknown (associated with matter), explored and unexplored; symbolizes the juxtaposition of the “masculine” principles of security, tyranny and order with the “feminine” principles of darkness, dissolution, creativity and chaos.” Peterson, Maps of Meaning
Another way to explain the features of Yin and Yang is the Uroboros, a serpent-like dragon eatings it’s own tail, symbolizing the cyclical nature of life. Believing that half of the circle is masculine and of order in nature, we must sincerely explore the feminine — the half of which is chaos in nature — in order to safely exist and be content. To deny that power is to lie to oneself and belief that there is nothing potentially dangerous in the Yin/Yang dynamic.
To understand the dual nature of the feminine energy is to examine Her as life and death. In Hinduism, both of these representations are known as Shakti and acts as the expression of the masculine sustaining force considered as order. That which emanates out of the masculine, that manifestation of potential itself, is the divine feminine.
The Great Mother as Life
Women (or those who identify with the feminine energy channel) in command of this energy, hold the key to all of creation’s expressions and manifestations. When this force is not understood and becomes misdirected, the feminine energy expresses itself as isolation, depression, lust, greed and suffering. Properly channeled, She can have the very means of creativity, spontaneity, and passion reign supreme in a fulfilling existence. Similar to misdirected masculinity, anger and confusion become the norm as if the host is intoxicated by their own life-force.
It is an ancient teaching that is often lost in new culture and tradition, which attempts to attain equality of the sexes but make no mistake — no matter how much equality one may strive to attain, to deny the feminine’s overarching power of what it represents will bring much dissatisfaction in life. Equality is, in a sense, unfair to the individual powers of sexual energy, and to boast that they are one and the same is foolish at best, and at worst a grave mistake.
To examine the life-giving properties of the feminine, I quote Peterson’s Maps of Meaning:
“Woman, insofar as she is subject to natural demands, is not merely a model for nature — she is divine nature, in imagination and actuality. She literally embodies the matrix of biological being, and provides, as such, an appropriate figure for the metaphoric modeling of the ground of everything. The female body constitutes the border between normal experience and the totality from which all forms emerge.”
Feminine energy is mirrored in nature, known as Prakriti in Sanskrit. For eastern mythology the concept of prakriti is defined as “Making or placing before or at first, the original or natural form or condition of anything, original or primary substance.” Therefore, the feminine energy channel is the container of all that we experience, born into, and go away from. In regards to reincarnation that implies being born again into another feminine structure of whatever nature or world comes next.
Having life itself come from a woman implies a birth to all things regarding matters of renewal, change, expression, manifestation, and emanation. Anything which gives life and offers sustenance falls under the category of Mother much like the Earth does, offering its land to whatever creature desires to live and express itself.
The Great Mother as Death
Given the dual nature of existence, we see the feminine energy expressing itself as all things chaotic as well. Understanding the beautiful and life-giving properties of nature, prakriti, we must also cognize the ferocious side of this mysterious aspect of life. Again, Peterson’s Maps of Meaning provides a framework of examples to which we can draw our own images and representations of how the divine feminine interacts with our own life—inside and outside of us:
“The Great Mother — unexplored territory — is the dark, the chaos of the night, the insect, ophidian and reptilian worlds, the damaged body, the mask of anger or terror — the entire panoply of fear-inducing experiences, commonly encountered (and imagined) by Homo sapiens. A dynamic complex of such objects appears as the most subtle and exact representation imaginable of the unknown — something capable, simultaneously, of characterizing the active bite of the snake, the life of fire, the sting of the scorpion, the trap of the spider — the most suitable embodiment of the manifest desire of nature’s vital transformative forces, generative of death, dissolution, destruction and endless creation.”
A woman’s capacity to tap into these forces is impossible to ignore, and something to be admired and feared simultaneously. She is both love and wrath wrapped up inside a universe that allows her to be the embodiment of desire and aversion, and even with the same person and at the same time, everywhere.
“The Great Mother, in her negative guise, is the force that induces the child to cry in the absence of her parents. She is the branches that claw at the night traveler, in the depths of the forest. She is the terrible force that motivates the commission of atrocity — planned rape and painful slaughter — during the waging of war. She is aggression, without the inhibition of fear and guilt; sexuality in the absence of responsibility, dominance without compassion, greed without empathy. She is the Freudian id, unconsciousness contaminated with the unknown and mortal terror, and the flies in the corpse of a kitten. She is everything that jumps in the night, that scratches and bites, that screeches and howls; she is paralyzing dismay, horror, and the screams that accompany insanity. The Great Mother aborts children, and is the dead fetus; breeds pestilence, and is the plague; she makes of the skull something gruesomely compelling, and is all skulls herself. To unveil her is to risk madness, to gaze over the abyss, to lose the way, to remember the repressed trauma. She is the molestor of children, the golem, the bogey-man, the monster in the swamp, the rotting cadaverous zombie who threatens the living. She is progenitor of the devil, the “strange son of chaos.” She is the serpent, and Eve, the temptress; she is the femme fatale, the insect in the ointment, the hidden cancer, the chronic sickness, the plague of locusts, the cause of drought, the poisoned water. She uses erotic pleasure as bait to keep the world alive and breeding; she is a gothic monster, who feeds on the blood of the living. She is the water that washes menacingly over the ridge of the crumbling dam; the shark in the depths, the wide-eyed creature of the deep forests, the cry of the unknown animal, the claws of the grizzly and the smile of the criminally insane. The Great and Terrible Mother stars in every horror movie, every black comedy; she lies in wait for the purposefully ignorant like a crocodile waits in the bog. She is the mystery of life that can never be mastered; she grows ever more menacing with every retreat.”
The Divine Feminine in Symbol
Masculine symbols represented throughout all ancient mythologies tend to overshadow the feminine. Such symbols as the Sun (energy), light (wisdom), the Great Father (order), the sky, the Son, and structure, are somehow dominant in the mind of myopic individuals, not seeing that the balance of power lies in both energies. And, this is really where individuals breakdown in relationships. Not knowing how to become our true expression, and live with its opposite, is the cause of divorce, separation, unhappiness, confusion, anger, and hostility towards those we thought we knew and loved.
We must invoke and remember all of the symbology that represents Her in order to remind us of our greatness that lies within.
“In the incarnation depicted, the Great Mother is Venus, goddess of fertility and love. As the winged mother — bird and matter — she is “spirit” and “earth” at once; the wings might just as easily be replaced by the icon of a snake, which would tie her figure more closely to the earth (and to the idea of transformation).” J. Peterson
Earth as Mother, sustainer of life, creation, safety and home. The vessel of life that contains hope of the future, or that any future can and will exist inside nature.
Durga, Warrior and Mother, combating evils and demonic forces that threaten peace, prosperity, and the power of good over evil.
“Kali, Hindu Goddess is eight-armed, like a spider, and sits within a web of fire. Each of her arms bears a tool of creation, or weapon of destruction. She wears a tiara of skulls, has pointed, phallic breasts, and aggressive, staring eyes. A snake, symbol of ancient, impersonal power, transformation and rebirth, is coiled around her waist. She simultaneously devours, and gives birth, to a full-grown man.” Peterson
“Medusa, Greek Gorgon, with her coif of snakes, manifests a visage so terrible that a single exposure turns strong men to stone — paralyzes them, permanently, with fear.” Peterson
The Inevitable
There’s a lot of information here, and some of it is overwhelming. My hope is not to alienate, embarrass, or claim to know the genders perfectly; however I do know that history, culture, and mythology has given us something to work with. What is the goal? To learn more about ourselves, each other, harmonious cohabitation, and love.
Where do we go from here and what do we do with the knowledge of the divine feminine? We can take comfort in knowing there’s mystery in the past, present and future. Life as known explored territory is a rare opportunity, and learning from ancient stories allow us to marvel in its existence. It’s ok to know we don’t know, but foolish to not use the data collected from the past.
And what do we know? Well, we know that understanding ourselves is paramount to living a life worth something. Any opportunity to figure ourselves out on a deeper level should be taken, and it’s warranted because most people don’t understand themselves at all beyond what their favorite food and Netflix series is. In the words of Socrates, the unexamined life is not worth living.
Respect and delicacy should be our footnotes when it comes to studying about our genders, because their history is older than we know — and their powers are still being discovered. Take caution with others, don’t doubt them; inspire them. Be one with yourself before attempting to change someone else, and know that when working with the sex energy channels, their potential for life-altering shockwaves of expression are very real. The famous song and saying “I am woman, here me roar” doesn’t even come close.