Ordinary Women
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With much conversation, consciousness raising, books and workshops about the feminine, the feminine principle, and the Goddess, I am personally called to anchor my insights and experiences firmly in the material and embodied world.
One of the main fractures of feminist discourse lies in separating “cultural feminists”, those concerned with the political and social arenas, and “spiritual feminists”, often rejected and marginalized as “earth- mother”, or “hippy types”… never the twain. This is only one of the many splits that plays out in attempting to define what it means to be a woman in a modern, capitalist and androcentric culture.
How do we heal the fragmented feminine? How do we bring the exiled feminine back into consciousness? It begins within, not as an ideal but as a lived experience that can be placed in our cultural framework and highlighted as a crucially important matter of our time.
Working with the archetypes, feminine symbols, astrology and the lunation cycle, as well as academic research means little if it does not translate into the everyday world of the here-and- now.
Money, economics, resources, the balance of power and the things (seen and unseen) that shape our world can be brought to the forefront of feminine consciousness and applied in practical ways.
This strikes me as hugely important. While (it could be argued) the feminine is being eroded in an increasingly gender neutral society, and through biomedical intervention, the question of the feminine as a necessary equal and balancing principle of our humanity, and connection with the “more than human world”, has never been adequately addressed.
It’s wonderful to meet the feminine in her myriad abstract forms, though it could be said that this encourages manipulation and manufacturing… the new age is not above aggressive corporate tactics.
Unless the claiming and expressing of the feminine is an authentic expression of the feminine within… for women and men, the feminine is still in danger of being co-opted and appropriated.
Remarkably, some try to address issues of the planet and ecology by bypassing the question of the feminine, although eco-feminism is a branch of ecology that actively and directly addresses the feminine.
If we are to talk specifically about the feminine, let it be political as well as spiritual, archetypal as well as you and me, and above all real.
Astrology is a rich lens through which to bridge personal, cultural, and collective issues in reclaiming an authentic feminine and highlighting how the shadow patriarchy seeks to demean, control, abuse or reject feminine essence.
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