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Women Are Magic: A Stand for a New Spiritual View

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2017 was a big year for me and my family. The first three months of 2017 were plagued with disease, sleeping only 2-3 hours a night for weeks, our nanny abruptly leaving, and Jonathan having the most intense schedule. I also went through a few painfully disappointing business launches, which put me into an extreme panic about money. My body was a mess, I wrestled with depression, and my relationship with my children was at an all-time low. My precariously constructed life completely fell apart. I was in the depths of my winter, the darkness that is an unavoidable part of our existence but so easily judged and abhorred. I had felt like I was in winter since Marshall was born, but this time period was like being in the fiery pits of hell.  

There was one moment where I had the presence to ask the Great Mother, WHY!? Why do I feel like every time I try to come up for air, I get hit in the face with another huge wave?

This is what I heard: You aren’t who you think you are.  

Well, fuck.

I started to allow my attachments to money, childcare, success, and reputation fall away. I stopped pretending I had my shit together. I started letting people down and leaning on others more than I supported them. And slowly, Winter started to lift and I felt a new part of myself start to emerge with new desires and direction.

I wanted my whole life to be sacred.

– I created ritual space with every new and full moon.  

– I sat with my altar every morning without fail. When I traveled I brought a candle and a deck with me.

– I invited in the protection and wisdom of the Goddess I communed with during my Priestess initiation training in the 13 Moon Mystery School.

– I tracked my cycle and tuned into my superpowers with each phase under the guidance of Alisa Vitti and Kate Northrup.

– I studied the history of my Western European indigenous background and the horrific and traumatic assault against women and the Divine Feminine.  

– I gathered women in ceremony monthly.

– I started to bring more magic into my children’s lives, teaching them about wisdom, energy, and the support of mother nature and the magic all around us.

Every meal, every blog post, every birthday… sacred, sacred, sacred.

Though I have been practicing different spiritual practices for years, it was this year that everything I’ve experienced and learned over the past few years was able to gel, and I gathered the courage to start talking about it – because being a voice for the Divine Feminine turns out to be really triggering for people…

Here’s a brief summary of what I believe, why I think it’s important, and how I am allowing it to guide my life.

Our culture revolves around this idea that we are supposed to be the same every day – happy, productive, and helpful. We are programmed to do everything we can for others and nothing for ourselves. We are expected to respect authority, do what we’re told, and dedicate a good portion of our waking hours worrying about what we look like. This is a product of centuries of removing our worth as women from the cultural conversation and reducing it to being pleasing to look at and an endless supply of free labor.

When I started to practice in the 13 Moon Mystery School, I started to learn about the many faces of the Goddess – the Mother, the Priestess, the Wise Woman, the Wild Woman, the Creator Destroyer (Kali), the Goddess of Love… I realized that divinity takes many different forms, that women are infinite in our expression, our talents limitless, our innate abilities vast – this felt so far from what I was feeling from society.

When I dug further into the earth-based traditions of Western Europe, I was so comforted to learn that at the birth of human existence there was a God and a Goddess, that women were worshipped for their intuition, life-giving magic, and wisdom. We were the medicine keepers, the healers, and led alongside our men. Female spirits, angels, and goddesses were part of the culture, we had role models and archetypes that taught us that each phase of our life was to be celebrated and revered. We were more than something to look at.  

This reverence for the land (which people saw as female), the moon, and women’s connection to the moon via our menstrual cycle continued until the Crusades in the 12th Century. This war deliberately wiped out the Goddess-based culture and promoted the spread of Christianity.  Most earth-based traditions and the Divine Feminine were removed from our spiritual teachings.

The divine partnership between male and female, which we all had within and around us, was replaced by an old white man in the sky. In her book, The Spiral Dance, Starhawk points out that this image of a singular God who who judges us and tells us what to do creates a dynamic where men are allowed to have all the power and women are taught to fall in line.

All female heroes from Jesus’s time were erased from the Bible or labeled as a virgin or a whore. These are weak archetypes purposely put in place to steal our power. I don’t believe this is how Jesus wanted his legacy to live on. He was a man who promoted equality and had a woman, Mary Magdalene, as his most trusted spiritual advisor. Big props to Pope Francis who recently elevated the memorial day of Mary Magdalene – the Christian saint long revered as Apostle of the Apostles – to a feast day, an honor only reserved for the most important saints. . Boom. A small step in undoing years of propaganda.  

Following the Crusades, 9 million women, children, queer, trans, and some men were burned, brutally tortured, and murdered for being healers, witches, different, or outspoken. NINE MILLION.

The Witch (the origin of this word is thought to mean “wise one”), which is just another name for a person who is tuned in to the cycles of the earth and who uses the divinity that lives within the animals, birds, water, fire, and earth to heal and create more abundance and joy (really someone who sees that women are divine and powerful), went through an intense, hugely negative, rebranding process. Again, to hide the source of our feminine power.

So here’s the important thing to note: our current patterns and expectations of looking perfect, over-giving, and constantly apologizing and feeling guilty for doing what we want or doing things for ourselves, these are the results of a thousand years of brainwashing this is not our natural state!!

For me, the main thing I have received from diving deeper into a Divine Feminine-based spiritual practice is that I am finally getting the expanse of my POWER, and finally gaining freedom from the cultural shackles that held me back from my greatness. I know that I am here to do more than keep obsessing about my weight or what my clothes look like. I am here to shake the status quo and lead with an open heart. I am here to nurture and initiate. I am here to do what I want and be who I am.  

Having a deep understanding of the Divine Feminine, female archetypes, and earth-based practices isn’t about looking cool on instagram of manifesting things here and there, it’s the key to our power and our rise to power on the world stage.  

We’ve been spending so much time fighting for equality by acting like men, when real freedom comes from fully embodying what it means to be a Woman.  

(As I’m writing this, I just watched a woman apologize for her hair being messy for 3 minutes— it’s winter and she was wearing a hat— my point exactly. If we really understood how powerful we are, we wouldn’t be apologizing for our hair).

So if you feel like your life is not your own, if you do way more for others than others do for you or you do for yourself, if you find yourself wishing you looked thinner, more beautiful or younger, if you don’t have the courage to speak up about your beliefs, if you do way more than your husband to keep the family going, if you’re exhausted, uninspired, overwhelmed and bored… and feel like there’s nothing you can do to change it… Honey, you’re in the right place, and I’m going to take you places you’ve never been in 2018. Because, you, YOU are incredible. Your natural talents are incomparable. What you are able to learn will blow you away. The amount of joy you are able to experience will shock you. The change you are able to inspire can change the world. You just need to get how powerful you are. And I believe understanding the magic of being a woman—our cycles, phases, faces, and history—is the key.  

May you grow to know the magic of who you are.

Love,
S
arah

P.S. Are you curious about how to live a more sacred life but don’t know where to start? My free Sacred Start Guide is for you! Learn how to create a morning ritual that leaves you feeling energized and ready for the day, without feeling guilty for spending the time takin care of you!


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