Womb Restitution: Transformation of the Feminine Spirit.

The Aquarius full Moon occurred when the Moon’s orbit was closest to the Earth (a supermoon) thus intensifying lunar energy. It was not only lunar energy that was intensified this full Moon, Venus was at the apex of a Yod aspect pattern with Pluto (transformation) and Neptune (spirituality)- transformation of the feminine spirit. Being that Moon and Venus are both feminine- allegedly the only two feminine essences among the planets- it is fair to say there was a strong feminine signature.

Venus journeys ever closer to the Sun in her retrograde motion and on 13^th August will join the Sun in Her Inferior- or as I like to call it- Interior conjunction. This is also known poetically as the “Venus Star Point” which occurs approximately every 18 months. The last Venus Star Point was 8^th January 2022- my birthday!

Sometime later I wrote-

“Since the Venus Star point on 8^th January, I have been aware of a strong feminine energy guiding us into 2022.”

This has only intensified.

On 1^st January this year Venus was conjunct Pluto at 27° Capricorn, and as Venus went retrograde on July 22, Pluto was in the last degree of Capricorn. The 29th° known as the anaretic degree has special significance in astrology. Pluto at 29° degrees of Capricorn could be described as “Judgement Day”.

The last time Pluto was at 29° Capricorn 06′- the degree of Venus’ retrograde- was July 1777. That year in America a law was passed to take away all women’s rights to vote in a regressive move to adopt the British system decreeing women cannot own property in their own name or keep their own earnings.

As the American War of Independence raged on and France was on the brink of revolution, the planet of enlightenment- Uranus was about to be discovered in 1781. Meanwhile closer to home, Joseph Johnson, an influential London bookseller and publisher, published “The Laws Respecting Women” …  although it would be a long, painful journey to realising any rights for women.

Not long before this time, in 1727, the last witch to be legally executed in Britain, Janet Horne, was burned alive. In Europe the last witch to be executed (beheaded) was Anna Göldi in 1782.

These things are ghosts of the past and yet if we agree that things move in cycles, the past is never past, it comes around again and again. The outer garments may look different, but the essence remains. As Carl Jung says, “the primordial images [the archetypes themselves] undergo ceaseless transformation and yet remain ever the same, but only in new form can they be understood anew” (1946, C.W. 16, para. 396).

As the wheel turns and the centuries pass, we become increasingly conscious of what is occurring and what has passed. Partly this is enabled by the evolution of technology allowing us to research and document the past en mass, but it has also to do with what surfaces in the collective consciousness at any given time. The fact that we share these observations and experiences feeds into the collective pool.

The recent death of Sinead O’Conner was one such event which tapped into the deeper strata of the collective touching many individuals and opening significant issues related to her life. It is not too radical to contest the widespread assumption that the persecution of women vanished in 1782 with Anna Göldi… the last “witch” to be prosecuted under the Witchcraft Act of 1735, was Scottish born Helen Duncan in 1944.

For Penelope Shuttle and Peter Redgrove “the persecutions of the “witch trials” of early modern Europe, was “one enormous menstrual taboo” (Shuttle and Redgrove, 1978, p.204).

Only in a new form can they ( the archetypes) be understood anew…

I am haunted by the words of Sinead when after a radical hysterectomy in 2015 she said, “they took my ovaries for no reason”. This led to serious mental decline as she was forced into surgical menopause. The reason this haunts me is because I have long since known that the level of medical and surgical interference with women’s reproductive systems, from even before puberty, has implications far beyond the physical body, affecting the emotional, mental, and spiritual bodies.

In theosophy and esoteric cosmology, the womb operates as an antenna which connects with the layers of creation…it is sacred. Although interesting to explore these writings, as women we do not need theories to experience our womb, it is our innate birth right. Sadly, most of us have lost connection with our wombs as we are increasingly persuaded that our wombs need to be “managed”. For Philosopher and Theologian Mary Daly-

The rise of Western gynaecology was built on the massacre of women healers, replaced by male medical practitioners […] the purpose and intent of gynecology was/is not healing in a deep sense but violent enforcement of the sexual caste system (Daly, quoted in Noble, 1991, p.35).

As Pluto finishes up in Capricorn the issue that is strongly highlighted is the female body and feminine power specifically in relation to the womb and breast in terms of how they are evaluated, or more accurately devalued, in our current medical paradigm.

We must bear in mind that the evidence in anatomy, as in all fields of science, is gathered mainly by men and is part of their philosophy. We know next to nothing about how feminine consciousness or a consciousness that has an integrated feminine regards the same data (Hillman, 1972, p.249).

We talk a lot of female empowerment; social media channels are full of it and every day it seems a new book is written about it. Menopause, once barely a conversation at all, now has high exposure not least due to books such as Divina McCall’s – Sunday Times Best Seller Self Help book “Menopausing”. To be fair I have not read this book and so I cannot comment, however, I have a hunch that alongside other books and teachings on the subject of menopause the sacred and bio-spiritual implications are over-looked or watered down.

Menopause is nothing short of a wild initiation on the deepest level into the ways of the wise woman. It saddens me that at this time of true feminine power in a woman’s life, when women are often unable to tolerate any more bullshit, often finding their voice and speaking out- Sinead was writing her memoirs just before she underwent a radical hysterectomy- they are silenced through surgical, medical, and pharmaceutical intervention.

The womb and female sexual energy are connected to so many spheres from physical manifestation- the literal act of creation- right through to the processes of death- birth- rebirth and renewal. This, THIS, I feel is a restitution of the womb and authentic feminine experience that is ready to unfold.