The Divine Feminine Shows Us the Way

The vernal equinox arrived this week, pulling us from winter into spring, as the earth follows its long elliptical path around the sun. Now our days and nights are of equal length, but soon this will shift again as our planet spins along throughout the year on its path that takes us nearer and further from the sun, generating more daylight and warmth in spring and summer compared to fall and winter.

These elegant cosmic movements delight me. But there is much more. Current cooling and warming and light and dark cycles suggest that Mother Earth is busy. The grass is tall and green, and the azaleas, lavender, birds of paradise, ceanothus, and daffodils bloom with fuchsia, violet, yellow and orange flowers. Bees hover on a rosemary bush, and wisteria, grapevine, and pomegranate trees sprout small yellow-green leaves, as sunlight breaks through the clouds. The oak trees around the corner stretch their still naked branches up to greet the sky, asking for a blessing for the new growth pushing out from within after the abundant winter rains.

Does all this happen circumstantially? Or does the earth around us know or have some script or conscious design that pulls it toward survival, new growth, and renewal – every year, every cycle? And why do I always think of nature as feminine? Belief in the sanctity of life on this planet and that its plants and creatures and territories, plains, mountains, deserts, polar ice caps, and seas are evolving in a positive direction and that we’ve learned to flourish along with it has always been a basic assumption. But if life and the cosmos are more than matter and energy and light and darkness, and are inherently the manifestation of Spirit and Consciousness, then this world we live in is not simply random. There is some design, some plan, some reason for us being here. To make it accessible we of course anthropomorphize and call this power and presence we resonate with and sense about the world that spins on around us Mother Nature, Mother Earth, or the Great Mother.

But maybe it’s also an aspect of our own collective consciousness. Jungian psychologist Erich Newman, in his book The Great Mother, believes the idea of a feminine aspect we attribute to life represents our deeper intuition, that has guided us through countless experiences, through lifetimes from unconscious reaction to conscious awareness and proactive engagement, and to the co-creation of the world we now live in. The archetype of the Divine Feminine is found among the Goddesses and icons called Isis, Demeter-Kore, Sophia, Tara, Oya, Skywoman, Hochma, Shakti, and Mary. They embody the energy that scatters the seeds of life for all of us, gives birth to Gods and heroes, and provides the wisdom and wherewithal to let these seeds and people thrive, allowing us to build and create and nurture that which lives and that which must die.

We feel and think and philosophize and believe we have developed vast systems of practical and arcane knowledge about the world, but there is still so much that slips away from us. When it seems just out of sight or out of reach or not completely clear despite what we think, we let go and a stillness comes over us and we experience an intuitive flash of transformative inspiration. And then the Great Mother, the personification of the Divine Feminine, flows within us filling us with the energy that nurtures, nourishes, protects, and transforms all living things including ourselves.

The script is changing now. The conditions around us that have nurtured nature and our planet and ourselves are in flux. The Divine Feminine is intuiting that the transformation now needed is not just personal but collective. Our planet needs our attention and our care. We are moving quickly now into this globalized culture, this new ecological future, this shared consciousness. As we learn more and more about our world, the plants, the trees, the seas, the birds that fly over us, and the fish in the sea are expanding our consciousness, and are showing us the way.

This time around the transformation is not only within but outside ourselves. As we turn within and tune into our better natures now it’s our turn to adjust, shift our direction, align and attune and reimagine how we can live harmoniously in the world. In this New Age of Aquarius, we are reveling in different energy and awareness and joyous we are here. Our divine nature and our earthly intuition guide us to be open and willing to do what must be done to heal our planet. The Divine Feminine, still with us, once again, shows us the way.