Goddess: Blessed Reunions with the Feminine Face of the Divine

By Anodea Judith

Return Home to the Goddess

The Goddess is essential to the heart of all existence. To meet her is to love her and to be embraced by her love in return. Feel her essence and dance her into the wild and free expression of the life force she is. Through the Goddess, you will connect to magic and mystery, engage with

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sacred Stories Publishing
• Release date: Mar 20, 2024
• ISBN: 9781958921579

Anodea Judith

Anodea Judith, Ph.D. is a globally recognized teacher and the author of several bestselling books on chakras, psychology, yoga, social change, and women's leadership, which have been translated into 28 languages. She holds a master's degree in Clinical Psychology and a doctorate in Mind-Body Health, with advanced yoga certifications and other somatic therapy training. As a globally recognized teacher, her workshops have reached at least 163 countries with a live and online presence. She is the founder and director of the teaching organization Sacred Centers, a member of the Evolutionary Leadership Council, and has been called a "prophet for our time."

Book preview

A religion without a Goddess is halfway to atheism.

—DION FORTUNE

OPENING THE WAY

Since the beginning of language, humans have told stories to explain the mysteries that surround us. When our lives were deeply embedded in nature, those stories were about the sun and the moon, the cycles of birth, life, and death, and the balance in all of life. They gave meaning to people’s lives and provided a moral guide for their behavior. Through stories, humans found connection to each other and to something greater than themselves, as part of a deeply interconnected web of life.

As time progressed, science and technology eroded our connection to the natural world, and most of those stories drifted into the past. Rational explanations replaced the more intuitive and imaginal realms in which stories live. While humanity took a giant step forward with the advance of science and rationality, we lost something precious in the process. Myth represents the other leg upon which we stand. We cannot take the next step forward without guiding myths to give us meaning and direction. Nor can we move forward without a feminine face of the Divine to balance and partner with the masculine paradigm.

Science tells us what and how, but not why. It allows us to manipulate the world around us, bending life to our will. It reveals the tiniest of particles and reaches to the far edges of the universe. But science does not tell us what makes these parts into a whole. It does not tell us what it means to be alive or why we are here. It’s as if we were trying to understand our economic system by analyzing the ink on the dollar. Without myths to guide us, humanity is losing its way. An essential element of the sacred is lost.

Myths are not true stories, in the rational sense, yet they explore larger and deeper truths. They explain things on an archetypal level. Archetypes—from the Greek root arkhe, meaning first, and typos, to strike a blow (as in a blacksmith fashioning iron)—are the primary imprints of consciousness, in turn shaping culture and its values. Invisible, yet powerful forces behind our beliefs and behaviors, archetypes define who we are, both individually and collectively. But even more, they define who we can be.

The Goddess is an essential archetype at the heart of all existence. To learn about her is to explore, at an archetypal level, a necessary part of ourselves and a missing part of our world. Embracing the Goddess allows us to reclaim magic and mystery; to re-engage with enchantment, love, and beauty; to delight in imagination and creativity; and to ground ourselves once again in the sacred wholeness of nature. Through the Goddess, we can return from whence we came. Each of us goes home, not as a helpless child suckling on the mother’s breast, but as a maturing adult, co-creating with the feminine face of the Divine. To return home is to come back down to Earth and reclaim our roots, at last integrating heaven and earth in a seamless, intelligent cosmology of a living universe.

To heal is to become whole, as these two words are from the same root. Our fractured civilization will never find its wholeness in a purely masculine paradigm, in a singular male godhead, or in the denial of what brings us joy, meaning, and connection. It is not that the masculine is evil or bad, for it has created many of the wonders we have today. It’s given us our highways and railroads, hospitals and airports, computers, stereos, and cell phones. The problem with the masculine paradigm is that it lacks balance when it has no feminine to dance with.

To conceive a new life requires both masculine and feminine energies. But it takes a woman to give birth to that life, and preferably two parents to raise a child. Without a Goddess alongside a God, we cannot create the Divine partnership necessary to conceive, give birth, and successfully parent a new world.

This book is a resource for finding the Goddess once again. In its pages you will find her feminine face peeking out at you through history and myth, in contemporary stories and personal experiences of women and men who have encountered her. You will get an overview of what the Goddess is all about—who she is in her diverse aspects as the Maiden, Mother, Crone, and Queen—and what she can do for your life and for our world. Simple practices will help you connect once again to the Goddess that has always been there—in her varied expressions from cultures around the world. As you find her within, you will also strengthen her presence in the world.

This book is about reclaiming the Goddess so she can return to our world. But it’s not so much that she needs to return to us, but that we need to come back home to her. She has always been here. It is we who have strayed.

The masculine paradigm has taken us on a hero’s journey, a pattern outlined by Joseph Campbell and reflected in myths and stories all over the world. In this journey, we leave the ordinary world for the call of adventure. We meet mentors, face challenges, go through ordeals, and seek the reward of transformation. But the final step in the hero’s journey is the return home, bringing back the elixir of healing to an ailing community.

It is time, at last, to return home to the Goddess and drink deep of her elixir of healing, love, beauty, and compassion.

Are you ready to lift the veil to see a world that has been forgotten, yet has been under your nose all along? Are you ready to embrace the passion of your life force, regain the full spectrum of possibilities, and help bring not only balance, but beauty and magic back to our world?

Then there’s someone I can’t wait to introduce you to!

WHO IS THE GODDESS?

Who is this Goddess whose name has long been stripped from our lips? Who is this feminine face of creation, this lady with laughing eyes, swishing her colorful skirts as she dances in the breeze? Is she one or many? Human or Divine? Is she eternal or is she constantly changing? Is she within or without? And why is her soft touch and deep wisdom so missing in our world?

The Goddess may be long forgotten, yet you already know her. She is the mother who bore you, the smile on your sister’s face, the grandmother who winks at you from behind her wrinkles. She is the beauty of the green earth and the silvery light of the moon. She is the flowers blossoming in spring and the ripe fruits of the fall harvest. She is the mystery of birth and death and the lover who embraces all that lies between. She is you and me and all living things—the animals, the plants, the mountains, and the forests. She is the incessant manifestation of nature in all its myriad expressions.

To meet her is not only to love her, but to be embraced by her love in return. She does not judge or punish, but like a mother to a child, offers compassion when we stumble. She eschews sameness and conformity, expressing herself through wide diversity where all are worthy within her vast creation. Her flowers and fruits express her abundance, for she always creates more than enough and never requires proof of our worthiness to partake of her creation. She is both immanent and transcendent, simultaneously within you and all around you. Her song is the song of creation, transformation, and completion, all within a cyclic spiral of time.

The Goddess is the expression of the Divine Feminine, present in all life, and reflected in the beauty of the natural world, the cycle of the seasons, and the stages of one’s life. She is Mother Earth and Sister Moon. She is the Queen of Heaven as well as the Queen of the Underworld. She is the temple of the body and the ground of being, which we are all privileged to experience and to hold as sacred. She is unconditional love. Hers is a gentle but all-pervasive power, ruled by an eternal wisdom. As the ultimate mystery of the feminine face of the Divine, she beckons us to probe deeper into the mystery, never to be fully revealed.

FROM THE ONE TO THE MANY

All myths and religions describe some kind of initial division of the ultimate source as it breaks down into expression in the manifested world. Inanna’s descent to the underworld, the oldest written myth we know of, begins with the division of heaven and earth. Zoroastrianism describes the division of good and evil as the realm of two competing brothers. The Bible tells us that light emerged from darkness.

It’s no wonder, then, that the ultimate source of everything divides itself into the masculine and feminine expressions that run through all biological life. In this division, the Goddess represents half of all creation. She is both the originator and the underlying field of manifestation upon which all of creation plays. From her feminine field, she manifests in many forms, worshipped in cultures around the world.

Just as we were all conceived by a mother and a father, then birthed from the womb of a mother, the Goddess can be seen as the one who breathes spirit into material existence. She takes the pattern from the DNA of the father (same root as pater or father), and brings it into matter, creating the flesh of a living child (same root as mater, mother). Rather than abstract and conceptual, she is tangible and real. One need not believe in her any more than we believe in rocks and trees. We know them as reality. Her glory is in the phenomenal world we live in, not in the abstract hereafter.

As the Goddess was devalued in patriarchal religions, matter was deemed spiritually inferior, along with the earth and our physical bodies, leading to serious consequences for our biosphere. In Goddess religion, the beauty of nature is not regarded as illusion or base materialism, but as a living expression of supreme intelligence. The Goddess did not fall from grace, for the earth is her temple. Instead, she rises from the earth, year after year, to sustain us and bring us her countless blessings.

In a similar vein, the physical body is seen as a sacred vessel for her Divine essence, for she dwells within everything. Her way is not one of denial, asceticism, or self-inflicted suffering, but of celebration and joy. In Goddess worship, it is said that all acts of love and pleasure are her rituals, and sacred sexuality is viewed as a sacrament, not a sin.

The Goddess is the basic field upon which all life is played. She is a:

creatrix by virtue of her ability to give birth

nurturer by her ability to sustain life

destroyer by her natural limits that bring us all, eventually, to death

The Goddess is the miracle of the life force in all creation, as well as creation itself. She is found in the vastness of all existence and the unknown depths of our psyche.

As the Divine Feminine, the Goddess is present in all women. She is the Divine spark within you and she is within me as I write, love, and live. She lives in your sister, your mother, and your daughter, as well as existing within your lovers and sons, fathers, and brothers.

As the force of nature, she is cyclic, rather than linear. She spirals in the endless pattern of birth, growth, death, and rebirth, each verse of the song a little more complex than the last, ever evolving toward a crescendo in her symphony of life. As generatrix of cycles, her worship is always in the round—in living room circles, in groves of trees, and the organic shapes of the natural world. Her circle is inclusive rather than exclusive, egalitarian rather than hierarchical, collaborative rather than controlling.

Unlike the patriarchal religions that teach us transcendence, the Goddess is seen as immanent, meaning that she is found right here, within everything around us, rather than out there. She is the force within the tree, the mountain, the animals, and plants.

Let’s return to the idea of archetypes. An archetype is a basic pattern of expression of Divine energy, such as the archetype of the Hero, the Wisewoman, or the Great Mother. Within an archetype are subtle variations of individuality. Just as we are all familiar with the archetype of a Mother as a generality, an individual mother might be kind or cruel, loving or withholding.

I like to think of the archetypes as dresses in the Goddess’ closet. Some days, she puts on her dress of the Healer, and other days she wears a sexy dress to become the Maiden or Lover. On other occasions, she wears the dress of spring flowers or the starry night sky. And for special occasions, she wears no dress at all and dances in naked splendor for all to enjoy! Then we experience her raw power that is beyond any manifestation.

As an archetype, she is a symbol for various aspects of feminine existence. Like any religious symbol, Goddess is only a representation. The archetype is not the Goddess herself, but something that allows us to conceptualize her. Archetypes like the Great Mother, the Wild Woman, or the Queen give us a form to relate to within ourselves. By understanding them, we find these dresses hanging in the closets of our own psyches, where we have direct access to them. When we put on those dresses, enacting the archetype through a living being, the Goddess comes to life. Knowing the archetypes gives us permission to fill out our own being in her many diverse expressions.

In living these archetypes, we give the Goddess expression. Reflecting stages of a woman’s life, she represents the holy trinity of Maiden, Mother, and Crone, commonly referred to as the Triple Goddess. A fourth category, that of the Queen, is relevant to women who choose to pursue a career. It is to these distinctions that we turn our attention next.

TRIPLE GODDESS PLUS ONE!

The Maiden reflects the innocence of the young girl. She is the virgin; however, in times past, this did not imply a woman who had never had sex, but one who belonged to herself, having not yet given herself in marriage or to children. This phase of the Goddess correlates to springtime, to beginnings, and to the new and crescent moon.

The next archetypal phase of the Goddess is the Mother, for once a woman gives birth, she never again belongs to herself alone, even when her children are grown. This phase represents the fecundity of Mother Earth, the season of summer’s ripeness and the fall harvest, the full moon, and the time of a woman’s life when she creates, nurtures, and sustains.

The third archetypal phase is the Crone or Wisewoman. She represents the ending of the cycle and the finality of death. The Crone brings a deep wisdom born of living; She rules over winter, nighttime, and the dark of the moon.

A fourth archetype that we will explore is the Queen. In today’s world, many women choose a career over childbearing. Others live long, healthy lives after raising children, creating a potent period of midlife relating to the Queen—not as a dignitary sitting on a throne next to her husband, but as a woman in the maturity of her power, presiding over complexity and making a notable contribution.

As we explore the Goddess in these pages, we will delve deeply into each phase, giving examples of goddesses, along with their stories and the beliefs connected to them. We will begin with the Mother, since all things begin with birth. We will then explore the Crone, as we look at the demise of the Goddess, the death of her reign, and the incredible loss and suffering that followed. We will then turn to the Maiden as we explore the resurgence of the Goddess in modern times and the necessary balance and hope that she brings. And finally, we will visit the Queen and explore this powerful aspect of the Goddess as a benign ruler.

As we explore these archetypes, we discover the Goddess is far more than just an idea. She cannot be reduced to an abstraction, a theological construct, or a set of beliefs, for to do so would take away her power and substance, qualities that are inherent to her being. She is a substantial reality, as real as the baby crying with her first breath, as real as the miracle of springtime, as real as the rocks and trees outside. I don’t believe in the Goddess, I know her.