Defining the Divine Feminine
Today I participated in the Tribute to Terrence McKenna event happening digitally this month via crowdcast and the McKenna Academy. When the Breakout Sessions came around I noticed a great topic “Mushrooms and the Divine Feminine.” I didn’t read the rest of the room titles, I knew I wanted to be here and to hear what others said.
One of the participants was struggling with the distinction between the divine feminine and the attributions to the female gender. In all my attempts to delineate between human gender and the divine, they did not seem to understand that there is a difference. Much respect to my conversational counterpart they proposed an idea of creating new words to help facilitate understanding which I feel would be an incredible feat, and an invaluable one.
Moments before we were transported back to the main presentation session I was only able to read half of their newest comment in which they said “you keep saying things like chaos” and I realized, that in my depictions of the indescribable element that is the divine feminine, I had still not achieved the original attempt to establish the difference between a woman, the experience of being a woman, femininity, feminism, and the divine feminine, which is none of those things.
When the divine feminine is discussed, it is not the female gender, nor the attributes of women that define it. The divine feminine and the divine masculine exist in all things and are the energies of the creation, of existence, I attempted to express this, but I do not think it came across. Perhaps they had another point they were trying to make which mine was too divergent from, or they were awaiting agreement, and when it comes to the improper attributing of character traits on humans, they were spot on. Yet I wanted so deeply to help them understand that the divine feminine is a force of nature, and the attributes it embodies are sacred and should be honored and respected, not torn down in the name of human identity and ego. A lot of people are on a mission to dissolve the gender stereotypes out there, but we cannot desecrate the ancient and esoteric knowledge that will allow us to embrace the divinity that lies beyond our material form.
This entire situation has me asking myself, how can I enable others to understand what the divine feminine really is? What is an appropriate approach to dissolve the erroneous perspectives of what it even is, before we can discuss it’s role in gender, identity, or society? Some concepts are hard to grasp, such as how there are three halves that make a whole, because the third is the perspective from above. Often when discussing the duality of our existence the analogy of two sides to one coin comes into play, those familiar with eastern philosophies may have some concept of yin and yang as well. Attributing these concepts of universal energy as masculine and feminine seems to be the problematic phrasing. Some people just cannot let go of the idea that the attributes of these energies must also define a human gender.
For me, the word divine is enough, because I perceive divine as beyond human and beyond the material world. For others it may cause a correlation to religion, which could also be problematic. It is here we must start. The divine feminine is not female, it is not womanhood, it is not tangible. The divine feminine is an energy, an aspect of creation, it is one end of the spectrum of existence which is balanced by it’s counterpart.
Long ago, when cosmologies were being passed down in oral traditions, the energies of the universe were personified. These deities represented the forces of nature and were given names, genders and attributes in order to tell the tale of how they created and affect the world we occupy. For that reason there are gods and goddesses in these mythologies rather than gravity and chemistry. In the Audio Visual world, we have long called the connectors of cables “male” and “female” to identify which has a receptacle and which has pins that fit into the other. In these days where gender is being redefined by the masses, those terms are being overturned for neutral descriptors. I am not sure trying to redefine the divine energies of the cosmos in order to remove the stigma of the current terms is going to be effective. The divine receptive and the divine active aren’t really effective, especially since those descriptors are one of many attributes of those energies. Completely new words would likely be needed, or the use of a completely different language.
The clarity really needs to come from awareness that every human being out there has both divine energies within their bodies, minds and lives. If we really want to know the divine feminine, we need to dig deeper than words, look beyond ourselves, our bodies and our lives, and embrace the great mysteries where it resides.
