What is the Divine Feminine (and 13 ways to awaken her energy)

Woman of colour, her eyes closed with words 13 Ways to Awaken Divine Feminine Energy

Divine Feminine energy is rising and she won’t go back to sleep…

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past decade, you’ll be well aware that the divine feminine is taking center stage (especially in Spiritual and New Age circles).

The truth is, she never really went away.

You could say she went into hiding. She escaped the last few centuries of oppression by laying low, staying just out of the reach of human consciousness until the perfect moment to re-emerge.

That moment is now.

What is the Divine Feminine?

 The Divine Feminine is energy.

It’s a whole spectrum of archetypal and essential energy that exists way beyond humanity: It ripples and surges across our entire planet, through the soil and sea, and beyond it too, into the infinite realms of the Universe. She is…

↠ Dark, tangled forests teeming with life.
↠ Honeycomb dripping with golden nectar.
↠ The schoolteacher with endless patience for her class of 7-year-olds.
↠ The activist rallying with his banner for eco-justice
↠ Every New Moon ritual that keeps you grounded.
↠ La Luna herself, as She spirals around our home: planet Earth, every month.

…She is SO many things!

But on the deeper, eternal, archetypal level, describing her qualities in words gives a better sense of what she feels like. And what to aim for when cultivating a connection with her.

So here’s a list of her most definable Divine Feminine principles:

  • Love
  • Softness
  • Nurturing
  • Healing
  • Intuition and Seeing
  • Inward focus and family
  • Understanding
  • Community
  • Collaboration
  • Sensuality
  • Creation
  • Attraction
  • Compassion
  • Patience
  • Unity

The Dark Feminine is also:

  • Darkness
  • Depth
  • Decay + death
  • Regeneration
  • Transformation
  • Chaos
  • The unconscious
  • The mystery
  • The unknowable
  • The void
  • The liminal

(You can read more about the Dark Feminine HERE)

These are just a handful of the divine (or sacred) feminine principles, yet each one contains a whole spectrum of expressions.

**But what about the divine masculine, I hear you ask!

Of course, the divine feminine and the divine masculine are partners: Two halves of a whole, two sides of a coin. Like our twin luminaries in the sky: The Sun and the Moon, the sacred feminine needs her sacred masculine to find wholeness (just as we also need both our feminine and masculine principles to unite within).

So here’s a list of (some of the) Divine Masculine principles:

  • Strength
  • Action
  • Power
  • Rational and logical thought
  • Strategy
  • Assertion
  • Boldness
  • Courage
  • Outward, social motivation
  • Leadership
  • Protectiveness
  • Decisiveness
  • Independence
  • Individualism

**Divine Masculine and divine feminine qualities aren’t opposing. They overlap, they complement and they blur and merge with one another. AND men and women can embody both masculine and feminine principles – this is not about gender.

Reading through the list above, you can probably sense the radical imbalance of divine masculine principles in our world today: An imbalance that’s turned these beautiful qualities away from the sacred, into a much more toxic state.

Patriarchy is an expression of this.

Capitalism, unhealthy competition, greed and possession, dominance, and oppression are all the result of the radially skewed and distorted divine masculine principles, that have slowly grown over the past 13,000 years (alongside the suppression of the sacred feminine).

But let’s get back to the Divine Feminine…

In every culture, there are Feminine Deities (yes even here in the West where God has been reigning on his heavenly throne for millennia!)

Enter: the Goddess!

✶ Aphrodite
✶ Bridget
✶ Gaia
✶ Guanyin
Hekate
✶ Ishtar
✶ Innana
✶ Juno
✶ Kali
✶ Lakshmi
✶ Oshun
✶ Qetesh
✶ Sekhmet
✶ The Morrigan
✶ Vesta

… And these are a teeny selection of names from pantheons around the world. From ancient Babylonia to modern-day Japan, there are countless myths and stories of Goddesses who demonstrate the full spectrum of all that is the feminine principle, in her highest and most exquisite forms. From the sacred rage of Kali (the Black Goddess) who is a manifestation of Shakti in Hinduism, to the gentle, mysterious presence of Rhiannon, the Celtic Goddess written into the Mabinogi. And every quality in between.

Goddesses have different characters, strengths, qualities, likes, and dislikes.

Many intermingle and overlap: In Egypt, Isis is revered as a Goddess of fertility,  alongside Cōātlīcue in Aztec mythology, and Brigid in the Irish pantheon.

Are they different Goddesses, or the same eternal archetype? The same Spirits in different forms? Or a myriad of separate deities? Does it even matter? The Divine feminine is full of mystery, and this is part of both her allure and her unquantifiable inability to be pinned down.

Histories (Herstories) change

Over the millennia stories have been re-written, and new tales spun like wool twisted from a distaff. Yet over space and time, these mythical manifestations of the divine feminine (whether written, performed, sung, painted or woven) promised to guide, protect and bless all the different aspects of life: from childbirth and marriage to war and death. And everything in between.

In the days of old, the divine feminine wasn’t separate from the people

…Unlike the modern Christian God who sits in heaven, the Goddess always lived among the people.

Our ancestors knew this and LIVED it. So, far from just being characters in stories, Gods and Goddesses lived through the people. The feminine faces of Spirit were actual forces working in the world, through man and women, land and sea. So when help was needed, when insight, guidance, or actual intervention required, the Goddess was invoked.

Through this intimate relationship, the Divine Feminine made the people powerful.. and the people gave the divine feminine power too. They kept her alive.

Why did the Divine Feminine fall?

Not such a helpful state of affairs, for patriarchy.

Powerful people (and especially powerful women) are very, very hard to control.

So bit by bit, these living Goddesses, these visible, moving faces of the Divine Feminine were removed from lived experience Through death (Let’s not forget the burning times were more horrific and destructive than can possibly be imagined) and through conceptualizing.

At first, the sacred rituals, practices, methods, and meditations that our ancient ancestors used to draw their power down were spun into stories, hidden in metaphor, and cloaked in poetry and song. But such secrecy was dangerous and extremely hard to keep up, I imagine. The potency of the living Goddess faded, as time wore on and over many generations, memories thinned to almost nothing.

Gradually, the people that did survive became removed from their Goddesses

…(and their counterpart Gods, it should be said). Likely even thoughts of them, let alone actions would spark fear and a spike in the nervous system that many still bear, the witch wound carried on from womb to womb to womb.

And instead, the people were presented with this alternate, singular “God” to put their trust in

One of my favourite authors, Barbara G Walker wrote a book called “Man Made God”, in which she suggests that rather than God making man in His image, man-made God in his. And this man-made God is what came to replace the Goddess – he stood alone. High and mighty, in his “king”dom of heaven. Separate. And unattainable, except through a ‘FATHER” of the church. Which is a very different spiritual dynamic from the open and direct revelation offered by the mysteries and rituals of the Goddess.

*It’s a mistake to think that this man-made God has anything to do with the Divine Masculine! HE is sacred and powerful and has also been radically distorted and mistreated over the centuries.

**The story of sacred feminine suppression is much longer and more involved than this… I’m sharing just a taste. An idea, to give some context.

Now, we’ve reached a turning point

Humanity is waking up, we’re breaking out of the paradigms of control and shaking the shackles of suppression from our collective wrists and ankles. Divine Feminine consciousness is returning and everyone on the planet is being asked to participate in her return. Modern life is full of HER presence – from the #metoo movement to armpit hair subculture and equal pay disputes. 

Is the Rising Divine Feminine the same as Feminism?

 

**A side note. Because this is an important point:

Ultimately, feminism can be defined as “a belief in the political, economic and cultural equality of women” (Source: History.com)

It was the 14th-century feminist philosopher Christine de Pisan who first advocated for better education for women, challenging general attitudes towards women in France. But since the end of the 19th century (catalysed by the women’s suffrage movement) waves of what more closely resembles modern feminism began to sweep the western world.

But is equality with men actually the most evolved state of the sacred feminine and her archetypes?

Is THAT what She’s (and we should be) aiming for, as she emerges once again across our planet?

I don’t think so.

Not quite.

I’m sure there are many people who’d disagree with me, but I don’t think that the Sacred Feminine is here simply to measure herself up to what men have achieved. For a few reasons:

1. The divine feminine is energy that emerges through men and women

(as well as through nature and all of her forms). She’s an essence, a force, a motivating impulse. She’s NOT the same as “femininity” as described by your usual media marketing campaigns. She’s also not the opposite of female stereotypes that feminism seeks to dismantle.

2. The divine feminine is an embodied presence

This means she’s not just an idea or concept. She lives in people – she literally comes to life through our bodies.

Especially female bodies…

The female body works differently from the male body. We know this! Hormonally, biologically and spiritually too – bodies with wombs are crucibles to literally create new life, whilst the monthly (Moon-thly) menstrual cycle is a mechanism for transmuting energy through the physical planes. The female body is also attuned to external natural cycles, in a way that’s different from the male body. This in itself is an expression of the sacred feminine so ignoring, suppressing, or vilifying menstruation is to deny the feminine.

It’s also really interesting that in the 80s a lot of fashion emulated masculine styles with oversized trouser suits, shoulder pads and hard lines. As though the curves of the female form needed to be disguised. Coinciding with the feminist equality movement, this denial of the feminine actually isn’t an activation of the sacred feminine, although, I do think it was part of a cycle of actualisation.

3. Modern “masculinity” isn’t a manifestation of the divine masculine

As described above, distorted masculinity has materialized as patriarchal systems, capitalism, dominance and oppression. In many ways, the feminist movement (whilst being a victim of these paradigms) has also worked to uphold them.

So for the divine feminine to rise and truly activate her power across the globe, entire systems, including assumptions about men, women, femininity and masculinity need to be dismantled. Unless feminism (and feminists) are willing to also do this, then nothing will change.

SO how can YOU begin awakening the Divine Feminine?

The feminine principle is alive. She won’t be silenced any longer and humanity needs her more than ever…

BUT what can YOU do to bring her back into power?

1. Connect to Mother Nature

You likely know that being in the natural world makes you feel good, right?

That when you spend time in the wilds you get grounded and your personal energy (aura) harmonises and re-calibrates? But despite knowing this, a lot of people still don’t take enough time out to BE with Mother Earth, to consciously interact with Gaia and cultivate a relationship with her.

Nature is the home of the Divine Feminine, and the further you’re willing to go and meet her where she’s at (that means being open and willing to sit in her wildest places and soak up the medicine she offers) the more you’ll fuse with her essence – her rhythms, seasons, patterns, and ultimately with her innate ability and function, which is to heal, create and transform.

2. Reconnect to the divine feminine by reconnecting to your body

Divine feminine energy lives in the body.

She moves through the female cycles and the monthly blood mysteries of women. She lives in sensation, touch and dance. She is the macro and the micro – the human body a reflection of the body of the Earth.

BUT most humans (both men and women) have been systematically disconnected from their bodies over the centuries.

Remember the Christian God who lives high in the heavens? Well, he taught us that the body is something to escape, a burden we carry around until death, with desires that are sinful and urges that are dirty.

Over time people grew to believe this, and we rejected our physical forms.

Capitalism has now taken up that mantle (see the next point) by telling us at every turn that our bodies aren’t living up to some perfect ideal. This also creates an internalised rejection of WHO we are in this moment.

Do you dislike the shape of your belly?
The growth of your body hair?
The sagging of the skin around your cheeks?
Do you push yourself through tiredness, denying your body’s needs?
Do you keep her going with sugar when she flags?
OR do you push her too hard on the treadmill?
Tell her she “should” be different?

Reconnecting to your body means connecting to her AS she is. In each moment. Without judgment, criticism, berating or denying. This is SO hard to do, but absolutely liberating if you can… Liberating for you, and for the divine feminine essence you hold within.

3. Examine your conditioning around femininity

Your body isn’t what patriarchy tells you it is. And it doesn’t have to look like patriarchy tells you it should look.

Modern marketing and our consumerist culture want you to feel forever inadequate so you’ll buy the next wrinkle cream, smoothing lotion, or push-up bra.

But the divine feminine isn’t any of these things! She is YOU at your most raw, honest and real.

**And if the most raw honest and real YOU wears a push-up-bra then that IS the divine feminine! But unless you peel back the conditioning that tells you so, and find your genuine expression, she won’t be free.

 4. Dismantle internal systems of oppression

There is SO much material out there today on this subject. It’s big work. HUGE work.

Oppression is something we do to each other AND something we do to ourselves. It’s the result of centuries of false beliefs repeated over and over again until they become the systems that hold us. And we perpetuate those systems by feeding them, through our reliance on them.

It’s the work of everyone on the planet, but especially white men and women, as so much of the internalised oppression in these groups is unconscious, which makes it even more damaging.

The divine feminine sits at the intersection of countless vital issues in today’s world, from racism to sexism to climate change to ecocide.

Approaching all of these areas (using her principles) will awaken her in the world.

5. Slow down

The pace of our modern world is SO unrelenting, isn’t it?

The speedy march onwards is a tool of patriarchy that keeps us from really being in the present. But divine feminine energy can’t be rushed. And it can’t be stopped. It exists in the here and now, which is really the infinite moment of existence.

6. Do your shadow work (and invite in the dark Feminine)

The feminine has many faces. Not all of them are bright and sunshine-y. BUT collectively, we DO need to activate all of them on this journey.

Through doing your shadow work, you’ll tend to first come across the distorted feminine (yes, it’s not only the divine masculine that has distortions!) She lies there, forgotten, in these distorted forms because she’s been in the dark for so many years. Society has spent so long rejecting and ridiculing, vilifying, and shaming her, there’s been simply nowhere for her to BE in the open.

But through shadow work, women (and men) are working to witness her, heal her, and reclaim her.

7. Embrace cyclical living (+ track the Moon!)

Capitalism, consumerism, and modern western society want you to believe that life moves in one direction only – forward. That from birth, to death, is a straight line and there is no deviation. But this is an illusion. The feminine moves in cycles and spirals of growth and evolution. Like the seasons of the year, the growth cycles of nature and the rhythms of the Moon… we too are designed to function in our fullness through cycles.

Grandmother Moon is also an ancient embodiment of the Goddess. Like a crystal, she serves as a kind of memory store for divine feminine wisdom, and holds the karmic threads reaching far back into ancestral times, that humanity is still working through today.

Her cyclic rhythms are a model and a catalyst for the spirals of growth we’re moving through on the ascension path. And this is genuine, authentic growth. Not the “growth” that patriarchy feeds us.

HEAD HERE to get my secrets for activating your innate feminine power through the lunar cycle

9. Explore and FREE your sexual energy

What IS sexual energy? It’s almost certainly not what you were taught at school! Sexual energy is:

↠ Life force.
↠Creativity.
↠ Eros.

It moves through everybody, and everyone has the right to express it too.

But sex and what sexual energy actually is has been radically distorted over the centuries, and today most people see sex through a very strange lens that’s clouded in shame, suppression, embarrassment and taboo; and at the other end of the scale, pornography, abuse and much, much worse.

It’s a mess. It’s so far from the sacred feminine energetics and creativity that sex is really all about.

You can begin to awaken the Divine Feminine by exploring your own sexuality. But doing this really requires peeling back the layers of conditioning that we have all been fed since childhood. AND resisting the societal stereotypes and assumptions that are still rampant.

Begin with your sensuality.

What feels good to you?

10. Awaken (and ACT ON) your intuition

These are transitional times.

The systems and structures we’ve relied on for centuries are crumbling – government, monetary systems, media co-operations, and religious orders.

But building another system or designing another master plan won’t fix humanities’ woes. This is because assertive, dominant, self-reliant methods are the origins of the very same structures that have failed us. We’ve run out of time, and know too much now to keep going round and round in circles… but what’s the answer?!

The “answer” appears pretty simple to me.

The Divine Feminine is calling on ALL of us to switch on our intuition and open up to receiving the immense amounts of guidance that won’t come from pushing to find answers.

The solutions all exist. The codes of knowledge that we need to heal the harm done to our Earth exist – there is a whole Universe out there of immense intelligence that is poised to pass all of this knowledge to us (just consider Gaia’s immense power to self-heal!)

But first, humanity needs to shift into a vibration of receptivity, in order to hear.

Perhaps the biggest and most difficult shift of all is to move from an attitude of self–reliance, and defense, and the feeling that we’re ‘going it alone’, to trusting in the support and protection of the Universe, Source, the Divine … whatever you call the great presence.

As more and more people wake up to the fact that reality is created through our consciousness, the importance of mastering our minds, opening our hearts, and listening to our wombs will grow too. But the shift needs to happen for each and every one of us, within.

11. Ritualise your life

Ritual is an antidote to the capitalist model.

Rituals are a way to connect back to the Earth, to ourselves and to the sacredness of life itself.

Gentle daily rituals will awaken and activate the sacred feminine because they are HER technology. They are HER methods. SO with ritual, you’ll not only reawaken her but integrate her too.

12. Free your voice and speak UP

Women have been silenced for centuries.

This goes back to the burning times (and beyond) when women were called out as witches for not only their magic, but their daily work and practices.

So women learned not to speak. They learned it was safer to keep quiet, hide in the shadows and slip out of view.

The pain and repercussions of this are still alive today, as the witch wound travels down the ancestral lines affecting modern women, even though most have NO idea why they just can’t seem to do certain things. Like”:

↠ Speaking up when it matters.
↠ Talking openly about their spirituality
↠ Voicing their hunches, intuitions, and feelings
↠ Putting a point across in front of others
↠ Defending themselves when threatened

Working with the throat chakra can help immensely. As can doing the deep ancestral healing work to uncover the root of your own witch wound stories.

13. Nurture relationships

The divine feminine is relational.

Her energy manifests through its relationships to other people and other animate beings, whether they’re rocks, trees and flowers, or man-made buildings and structures.

For the feminine, relationships are everything.

But most modern folks aren’t taught how to relate intelligently or in healthy ways – instead, we tend to pick up the “how to-s” of relationships unconsciously, though what’s modelled to us (often not the best examples!)

So learning to nurture your relationship is one of the BEST ways to activate the divine feminine.

Some of the most fundamental qualities of the feminine principle are:

  • Receptivity
  • Openness
  • inclusivity, and
  • Cooperation

But they’re often TOTALLY absent from the fundamental mechanisms our societies operate through today! And without these feminine principles, people have become deeply (even genetically) fearful of each other. It’s so, so sad.

But it’s also easy to rectify.

It does mean pushing against the fear paradigms that want us to fear and distrust each other.

It means living from the heart.

Leading with love, consideration, and understanding.

And anchoring divine feminine energies deep into our lives through acting them out, so that what we create from here, comes from this new paradigm of healing and compassion.

Divine Feminine consciousness isn’t something that is happening ‘outside’ of you

The sacred feminine principle isn’t something you have to go and find or get taught. It is in each of us, and is working through each of us. Your task is to listen to it.

…And because YOU are here, reading these words (and it is resonating with you-?) then you’re already tuning in – you are one of the Divine Feminine torchbearers! Your soul has likely chosen the assignment of manifesting this energy into the world, and to encourage and enhance its rise for others.

I don’t believe that we can honestly, confidently place our trust in our external societal structures anymore (perhaps that day will come again). But the strength of the relatonships we create WITH between ourselves, and between eachother – from the new consciousness of mutual love, care, authenticity and connectedness to Gaia – will be the literal building blocks for whatever our changing Earth requires of us. And the time for this change has come.

Want to read more about the Sacred Feminine?

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8 Comments

    • Kat

      Lucy, I can’t pretend YOUR writing hasn’t been an inspiration to me! I am so glad you have enjoyed this… Thank you for connecting!

      Reply
  1. Itiurl.nz

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    Reply
  2. Angela Burgess

    I’m so grateful to have found you, Kat. I’m bathing in the resonance your words bring into my being and revel in the knowledge that I have a sister I’ve never met in a far away land. Blessings upon you and your family.

    Reply
    • Kat

      Angela I LOVE this! “A sister I’ve never met in a far away land”. Beautiful ! xxx

      Reply
  3. Durga

    Your words and wisdom has been a beacon light in my self-discovery of truth. Thank you and keep writing for us all. Sending love and light.

    Reply
  4. Dennis Alstrand

    We men have a lot to learn, and more to look forward to as the divine feminine works it’s way back into our hearts, minds and souls and encompasses the future.
    Thank you, Kat, for encapsulating a planet of thought and knowledge into your blog.

    Reply
  5. M Woods

    Beautiful and so relevant to what is happening right NOW with all our structures being re-examined- racial,religious governmental societal and economic. All these areas need to be infused with inclusiveness openness vulnerability and the ability to give birth to a new life! Thank you for such a wonderful and Insightful piece!

    Reply

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