The Sacred Feminine + Why it Isn’t That Weird

I grew up Christian, going to church almost every week. My church was very open-minded and focused on all the great lessons of Christianity, from kindness, to service, to loving thy neighbor, blah blah blah. We barely talked about sin or fire and brimstone or any of that. To me, the whole experience was very positive.

But as I grew into adulthood and started exploring different spiritual practices from Buddhist meditation to a Course of Miracles, I realized that many of these religions and practices (especially Christianity) were missing a huge piece…

Women.

Where are the women!?

Sure Mother Mary was mentioned for a few weeks before Christmas, but I really just heard about God – the Father, and Jesus – the Son, over, and over, and over again. Although my Church never said anything about women being less than men, and I know that my minister didn’t feel that way, the absence of my gender in the sacred stories I grew up with had an effect on me. It has an effect on all of us, even if it is subconscious.

When we don’t have examples of independent, strong, outspoken, sacred women, we can’t rise to our own potential. And when the only stories we’re told about women in church are about a Virgin and a Whore, we can’t help but embody the beliefs that our sensuality and wildness are evil.

These stories didn’t always dominate our culture. In indigenous cultures all over the world that pre-dated Christianity, the stories were about the Sacred Mother and the Sacred Father.

Humans worshipped the Goddess for birthing the world and creating plants, animals, and humans. The Goddess took many forms and faces in different cultures from Isis in Egyptian culture to the many Hindu Goddesses like Parvati, Laksmi, and Saraswati, and the Goddesses in African Tribal culture like Ala, Oshun, and Minona to name a few. My Celtic ancestors worshipped the changing faces of the Goddess as the seasons turned like the Maiden in Spring, the Mother in Summer, the Crone in Fall, and the Death Crone in Winter.

With the respect people have for the Goddess as the creator, this translated to respect of women as creators. We were honored as life givers, herbalists, healers, wisdom keepers, and the doorway to other realms. Our wildness and sensuality were encouraged and we were taught that our bodies were sacred vessels meant to be treated with the utmost respect.

In my Holy Woman Membership we spend a lot of time understanding how we went from that culture to our current one, and how our current culture is the cause of every insecurity and limiting beliefs we have.

In short, from my perspective, when the Bible was compiled under the tyrannical rule of Emperor Constantine in the 4th century he deliberately left out everything that was written about the Sacred Feminine or how Jesus taught that God is only found within, of which there was a lot. Instead, he created a religion that taught that the Priest had a unique connection with God, everyone was born with original sin, women were innately dirty and not to be trusted, Mother Mary was a Virgin instead of a Sovereign Priestess (which is the actual translation of the word Virgin) and Mary Magdalene was a whore (instead of the Female Christ which we now know to be true from original texts that have surfaced in the past 40 years).

Before we go on, I want to be clear that I am a HUGE fan of Christianity, but Christianity in its original teachings, not the Christianity we know today.

Constantine and his successors used his version of Christianity to colonize and conquer indigenous cultures all over the world. Over centuries, rulers all over Europe and Mesopotamia used this male power-focused version of Christianity as a tool to brainwash whole societies and convert them to Christianity, and to wipe out Sacred Feminine Culture.

Then in the 13th century, any sacred feminine practices like herbalism, midwifery, seasonal living, owning one’s sensuality, or holding a certain level of wisdom and magic, were seen as heresy and being in cahoots with the devil.

This period known as the “Burning Times” lasted about 300 years and some historians are now saying that almost 9 million people (mostly women) were brutally tortured and murdered for not being Christian.

This way of thinking was what drove colonization all over the world, resulting in the eraser of many indigenous cultures, the genocide of Native Americans, and the enslavement of Africans.

It is so important to understand that the Sacred Feminine didn’t just naturally fall out of favor. It was deliberately and violently removed on purpose to control the masses and make people (especially women) fear and reject their innate power. We were taught to no longer think for ourselves, to become who our father wanted us to be, to give everything we have to our children, to say yes to everything, to never make anyone uncomfortable, and to prioritize fitting in over self-expression.

So, to me, the reinstitution of the Sacred Feminine isn’t a weird woo-woo thing that witchy women do, it’s a necessity in re-establishing women and BIPOC people as equals. It’s part of women finding their voice, owning their power, understanding their purpose, and having the ovaries to get out there and make it happen.

To me, the structure and lessons that are embedded in the Sacred Feminine are the tools that guide women from being closed down and beholden to everyone else’s expectations, to being a fully expressed, authentic, successful, and happy woman.

I identify these structures as:

1. The Creation Cycle that we see in the Moon phases, the seasons, and the menstrual cycle
2. The 13 Sacred Feminine Archetypes
3. The structure of creating sacred space
4. Gathering in groups of women
5. Owning our sensuality and bodies

I’ve now led thousands of women from being scared or weirded out by the Sacred Feminine, to using these structures in their daily life and marrying them with practical strategy. You should see what these women are up to now. Whoa. Complete transformation from growing successful companies, to getting out of dead-end relationships, to completely changing their relationship with their bodies.

Want in? Join us in Holy Woman where I teach all of this in great detail and guide you through the process.

Today, I’d love for you to journal about how you currently feel about the Sacred Feminine, where you think those beliefs came from, and how you may want to dip your toe in.

Love,

Sarah