Goddess Archetypes and a Woman's Soul Journey

“Lilith is particularly important because her story tells us of the essential role that the suppression of female sexuality plays in the transition between egalitarian and hierarchical culture.  She cannot remain in the patriarchal order if she is to maintain her sexual freedom and equality, and the patriarchy must demonize her for her assertiveness.  In spite of adversity and exile, Lilith remains independent and wild.”  - Hallie Iglehart Austen in her book The Heart of the Goddess: Art, Myth and Meditations of the World’s Sacred Feminine. All images on  www.heartgoddess.net

How might our lives and our sense of purpose in this realm be different if every day we passed through a doorway that was carved in the shape of a Yoni?  If we were visually reminded, as part of our daily routine, of where we came from, how we arrived here, and that the preciousness of the source of life is embodied within us?  Imagine engaging in community rituals in which dance, story and adornment were regular reminders of the sacredness of relationship, self-love, and earned wisdom; or what it would be like to give birth on a lion throne, on a platform over the place where your ancestors were buried. 

Thousands of years ago Goddess-revering civilizations flourished all over our beautiful planet.  This fact has been well-documented, studied and written about by historians, archeologists, and authors.  Goddess images, principles and values have been and continue to be celebrated in art, ceremony, and women’s gatherings around the world.  Why, however, do images and stories of ancient Goddesses seem to exist so far outside of modern-day mainstream consciousness?  Is it possible that this exclusion is a root cause of ever-increasing global destruction, turmoil, dis-ease, and crisis? 

According to archeological data, Goddesses and Priestesses were held in high esteem in ancient cultures whose ruins turned up little-to-no evidence of weaponry and war culture, but instead revealed evidence of reverence for nature, beautiful and sophisticated art, refined architectural design, and egalitarian social structures.  Goddesses are associated with values that hold the source of life as sacred, and that honor Nature as the ultimate Mother.  Revering the story of a  Goddess was (and is) practiced in order to encourage life-giving human behaviors such as creativity, nurturance, sensuality, growth and transformation, healing, courage, earth stewardship, access to higher states of consciousness, and the earning of wisdom through experience.  Some Goddesses symbolized and celebrated the natural cycles of life, while others powerfully invoked the act of birthing and the mystery and wonderment of the creative force.  

Is it possible that a return to these stories and values could be the balm and guidance that we need to not only nurture and inform our own lives, but to restore a sense of priority and integrity in our decisions around business, commerce, politics, ecology, health care, and relationships? 

A relationship with the Goddess is a practice of remembering and embodying our lineage, the source of life, the sacredness of all beings, and our innate capability and responsibility to nurture, protect, and engage in life with well-informed courage and conviction.

Join us in the Red Tent this month as we explore how invoking the stories and lessons of ancient Goddesses and their civilizations can fortify us to take action in alignment with principles of ecology, diversity, and shared lineage.  Inspired by the wisdom of our ancestors, we will create a more vibrant and harmonious world with confidence and conviction.  

References:

The Heart of the Goddess: Art, Myth and Meditations of the World’s Sacred Feminine, by Hallie Iglehart Austen.  All images on  www.heartgoddess.net

The Chalice and The Blade; Our History, Our future, by Riane Eisler

Uncoiling the Snake; Ancient Patterns in Contemporary Women’s Lives, edited by Vicki Noble

As a primer for our conversation in the Red Tent, you may enjoy viewing this interview with author Hallie Iglehart Austen regarding her book The Heart of the Goddess on Starr Goode’s series The Goddess in Art, a cable series that originally aired in the 1980’s:    https://youtu.be/kpU3obqUrhw

Logistics:

Date: Friday, June 11, 2021

Time: 7-10 p.m., CET

Location: Eindhoven City Center

Cost: Free/donations accepted

RSVP/Register: Email Jennifer

What to Bring: A photo, special piece of jewelry, poem, or figurine that represents your relationship to the Goddess

Update, and another opportunity:

Our in-person gathering Friday evening was divine! As our extended community has grown significantly over the past year, and as this topic was an incredibly deep, divine, and potent one - I am offering a second gathering this week via zoom to accommodate our friends from afar, as well as anyone in the local community that wasn't able to join us on Friday.

Date: Thursday, June 17, 2021

Time: 7-9:30 p.m., CET

Location: Eindhoven City Center

Cost: Free/donations accepted

RSVP/Register: Email Jennifer

What to Bring: A photo, special piece of jewelry, poem, or figurine that represents your relationship to the Goddess

I look forward to gathering with you under the New Moon this week,

Jennifer

The Minoan Snake Goddess

I loved our gathering last night.  Menstruation and all of the tenderness, vulnerability and watery emotion of womanhood is so fascinating to me - most essentially I think, for its value as our infinite source of holistic, benevolent, healing power.  

I've been studying a bit about ancient Minoan culture and it's deity, who graced our altar last night;  The Minoan Snake Goddess.  Minoan culture (the ruins of which are still present on the Greek Island of Crete) is known for being an ancient society of true partnership with nature and among men and women.  In Rhian Eisler's book, The Chalice and The Blade, Minoan Crete is identified as a civilization characterized by robust health and vitality, sophisticated art and social life, and overall conditions of peacefulness and ease for all of its citizens - which, from the archeological evidence, seems not to have had a hierarchical ruler or ruling class, or weapons of war.  I find it profoundly interesting that such a culture would be represented with an image of a bare-breasted Goddess and snakes (belly to the earth!).  Soft belly to the earth.....

Gratitude and appreciation to all who attended and shared!  

Women's Day and Ecofeminism

“You’ve got to be small and different.”

— Dr. Vandana Shiva

In honor of Women’s Day, I signed up for a three-day advocacy course with Dr. Vandana Shiva on Ecofeminism, through her organization, Navdanya.  Women from around the world dialed in to hear about Dr. Shiva’s most recent work, and to be encouraged and inspired to be confident protectors of land, soil, seeds, food, and human rights.  

Read more about Navdanya here https://www.navdanya.org/site/ and here https://navdanyainternational.org/. 

I have followed and admired Dr. Shiva’s work for decades.  Her voice is a persistent, lucid, and fierce international presence in the realms of organic farming, world-wide agriculture policies and widespread corruption, colonization and technocratic interference with indigenous sovereignty and natural systems of resilience. 

“The future will be what we seed.”  

- Dr. Vandana Shiva

I am an inexhaustible activist by nature in the areas of women’s health, food as medicine, bodily sovereignty, medical freedom, and in my inconsolable desire to activate human potential.  As an Ayurvedic and Chinese Medicine practitioner I have been trained to seek, understand and address root causes of imbalance and dysfunction.  This leads me to be keenly interested in ecological disruptions, women’s health (and therefore human health and well-being), the up-rooting of humanity through mass displacement and perpetual crisis (trauma), food and housing insecurity, and thus, necessarily, political and economic corruption and grassroots activism.  Currently I am delving into issues of soil health and seed security by aligning with gardening experts and activists around the world, and by getting my hands into the soil to tend and discern the lessons held at the roots of life on this planet.  All of these issues, of course, are one and the same in their implications for human and planetary health and vitality.   

In a conversation about how to be effective in methods of stewardship and activism in the face of massive, extractive and manipulative global powers, Dr. Shiva tells us that “You’ve got to be small and different.”  Top-down mechanistic power structures seek to impose uniformity, conformity, and monocultures of the mind – in exactly the same way that mechanistic, market-driven agriculture debases the soil by planting low-nutrient, genetically modified single-species crops for volume and profit.  Dr. Shiva guides us instead to cultivate relationships in our local communities and with our natural environment, and to learn and practice indigenous regenerative agriculture methods that favor crop diversity, rich nutrition, and a reciprocal relationship between the land and all who inhabit it.

Through patents and intellectual property rights that now aggressively claim ownership of seeds – laying claim to life itself – corporate agribusinesses are increasingly seeking to bully, conquer, manipulate and master land, food, and the right to farm the land in India and around the world.  Dr. Shiva teaches, writes and implores individuals - especially women - to disrupt this pattern by taking responsibility to study and engage directly with the living systems in our local environments in order to create ecosystems and communities based on co-evolution, partnership and relationship; driven by what women bring naturally – an appreciation and deep connection with the aliveness and vulnerability of our world, nurturing care, sensitivity, awareness, compassion and love.   

How do we come together to effectively dismantle/disempower power structures that extract, manipulate, and seek to colonize and capitalize on every aspect of Nature’s bounty – seed to harvest, birth to death, from cellular structure to spirit and soul?  After years of advocacy on various issues myself, I suspect the way to do this will have to do less with opposing or fighting anything or anyone, as this is exhausting and leads to more and more physical, emotional and psychic violence.  I imagine that getting in the trenches; hands in dirt – heart-to-heart and shoulder-to-shoulder with our neighbors – will be the way to steward the Earth in a way that will make our ancestors smile and ensure abundant landscapes for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren to inherit. 

In conversation about the lessons she’s learned as an activist and food and soil protector, Dr. Shiva had this advice for us:  (some comments are paraphrased) 

·      “Hold your ground.” 

·      “(Cultivate) resilience.”

·      “Keep doing the right thing.” 

·      Don’t wait for external funding to start or motivate your actions.  External funding means that you will be indebted to the wishes of those who financed your projects. 

·      Take action with commitment, conscience and courage. 

·      Walk lightly; be extremely sensitive.  Let the universe take care of you.  Give your bit; do your best, but do not expect an outcome. 

·      Life does not thrive with the imposition of top-down orders.  Mechanical systems dissipate energy.  Life thrives when it is tended with the love, compassion and nurturance of women. 

Read Dr. Shiva’s book Oneness Versus The One Percent. 

Watch the trailer for the soon-to-be-released documentary about her life, Seeds of Vandana Shiva:

“Monsanto’s worst nightmare...”

https://vimeo.com/518756378

Read about the farmer’s protest happening in India now, and the history of agricultural policies and corporate take-overs that have harmed India’s small farmers for decades. 

https://navdanyainternational.org/30-40-years-indian-farmers-protest/

Read recent reports published by Navdanya:

http://navdanya.org/site/eco-feminism/women-feed-the-world 


https://www.navdanya.org/site/eco-feminism/the-earth-rising,-women-rising