Earthy Archetypal Embodiment for Reclaiming Divine Feminine & Sacred Masculine
Come walk with me through the forest,
Across dirt and rock and gnarled root.
Come walk with me
among these trees,
Taking each step,
each tender step,
As you will.
Dear reader: Every once in a while, I take what I am spending years writing in a full book, and I try to say it succinctly in a blog post. It never works the way my mind would like it to, but still, my heart begs me to hit publish: because there is something that needs to be shared, even in its raw and messy form.
This is such a piece, one in where I aim to take my whole Earthy mythology and summarize it in what could fall upon a mere page or two. Ideas are not explained to the full extent I would like, but you catch what I am getting at, and if you want to learn more, much more writing is to follow.
The Mountain and The Forest
As a formally trained Earth Priestess, I have come to understand the world in the interwoven forms of masculine and feminine energies:
- Masculine: structure, hierarchy, intelligence, action
- Feminine: flow, feeling, sensing, being
This is just a small list of qualities captured by each end of an interwoven and overlapping spectrum, but I hope you get just enough of the idea so that we can dive into that which I really wish to speak to.
What is that, you ask?
Well, as I was recently sharing with my new husband in a post-wedding ritual we performed in our sacred circle at home, I hold within me a fierce desire: that is, to know the ancient gods and goddesses in a newer, higher form. This includes knowing them free from the wounded, egoic, petty traits of humanity that have been propagated across the years, and held within a higher light.
I say this, but it probably isn’t at all what you think. So let me explain, and let me do so by taking our ancient gods, and our relatively new God, and grounding them all into the matter that is our very Earth, herself.
To re-know a god, you have to take him back to his roots – back before he was lifted high above us all, and back when he was able to reflect mankind, in all our messy glory
To begin, I need you to understand how much I honor the ancient gods and goddesses in their diversity, and in their humanness. This is unlike the way Christianity suppressed godly diversity and proclaimed one almighty God free from any sin: diversity dissolved, and any potential for fault blissed away!
No, it’s not like that. Because I need gods and goddesses who show up with their unique characteristics, and I need to know these characteristics in both positive and negative polarity. This is what helps me to be a better human.
It is like this: I want to worship Zeus. But I want to know him in his evolved form. I want to know him as the divine form that shows up atop the mountain: high above, bringing powerful reason and initiative. I do not want to meet him in his angry retaliation, and I certainly do not want to know him the way old myths paint him in relation to women (ew, gross).
Still, I can know the shadow side of reason and will. I can know what arises in tandem with anyone (man or god) who reaches too far towards those “high” masculine qualities. In fact, I ought to know this, because it is a fundamental mechanism of the universe. We live in polarity. One half does not come into existence without the other.
If we bring in light, we also bring in shadow. Therefore, if we praise reason and will, and if we bow down to the high powers of the mind, then we must also honor the shadow that comes with it. If we don’t, then we risk that shadow festering, firing off toxicities in the form of domination: Let me take my will, and use it to overpower you. Let me take my ability to rationalize, and use it to overpower you.
Sound familiar?
It is the masculine, held high above all, uprooted and dis-embodied as a powerful mind & will. It is a toxicity that we know too well on this Earth, and it is absolutely something that needs to be remedied so that we can begin to heal from the hell that patriarchy has created.
How to make a problem even worse
Now, listen clearly, because this is the part where things get tricky. Because the remedy to both humanity and our gods healing and awakening from toxic existence – it is not to raise our gods up even higher! It is certainly not to erase the humanity out of our gods!
But this is what monotheism did, isn’t it? Patriarchy, seeing Zeus in all his messiness, and instead of doing the honest work that is required to heal and awaken, lifted the god-man even higher.
Raise up even higher! Above the mountains! Above the clouds! Let me lift you even higher, so that all your humanness falls away, and all that is left is abstract light. No longer existing with a body. No longer existing with even a face! Just endless, abstract light. Let us ALL now bow down to you.
But we cannot work with abstract light, can we? We cannot work with that which only lives that high above us all! Don’t believe me? Just cast your gaze upon this Earth, and notice for yourself what exists when endless thought of light falls upon us all.
Dis-embodied, endlessly conceptual, lifeless light.
The Divine Masculine needs The Divine Feminine. She keeps him rooted, and in this rooting she keeps him embodied in his highest form.
There is a nice idea alive in this world. It is so nice, in fact, that it buzzes around in the realm of thoughtful light, keeping the minds of humanity peaceful. As it is shared among minds that crave that peace, it spreads that mental peace such that peace continues to be held up high in the minds of many.
The problem is that – this oh-so-nice idea – as it manifests in the embodied realm of reality, its action turns toxic.
Real problems are avoided. Destructive patterns are allowed to propagate. That which is asking to be seen is ignored. Earth turns dark.
This is the realm of bowing down, solely, to the heights. It is monotheism and the worshipping of a singular God.
This is not a problem of divine masculine. It is a problem of The Masculine without his divine consort, The Feminine.
To re-know a god, you must re-know the goddess
If there is one spiritual teaching I wish for the world to understand, it is this: the reason that religion and modern culture are as f***ed up as they are has almost everything to do with the fact that, at some point, the rising wave of monotheistic Abrahamic religion (including Christianity) started to suppress the feminine. It took one half of the picture (the heights), put all eggs in that basket, and started to shame and demonize what is supposed to be the other divine half.
I get why they did this. That half can be uncomfortable. It can be uncomfortable to witness women (and men in their feminine form) caught up in emotion, whether that is raging wildly, grieving deeply, or dancing ecstatically in joy! It is so much easier and pleasant to dance in the divine light of peace, bliss, and stillness than to take the journey down into to depths.
There is pain in those depths, and through that pain we may even experience suffering.
There is fear there, and in that fear we may have to grapple with mortality and loss.
There is crunchiness. There is messiness.
How much easier it is to dance forever in everlasting peace and bliss of masculine light!
But we understand, now, that this idea of light is bullshit – at least, it is without its embodied other half. If you do not believe me, just look out on the world that man created when we tried to do so. For all that we talk of infinite light and bliss, humanity has created hell on Earth.
The ironic remedy? We cannot float our way above this mess humanity created. We cannot continue to cling to more high light and more high love.
To bring sacredness back to our world, including the richness of life (and yes, that includes joy and bliss), we must dive down into it.
We have to be in it. We have to live it. And this is where the Divine Feminine helps us.
Living Divinity
If you want to know God, lift yourself up out of existence. Let your heart guide you as you float above it all, receiving the instant joy and light that is up there.
If you want to know Goddess, then be right here. Feel fully into life. Exist, as you are.
If you want to know life in its full divinity, then learn to do both. Reach up to those heights, just as you ground down into this Life! Feel God. Experience God. And, go share God with the world.
If you are doing this solely through thinking and talking, you are not doing it right. If you are doing it by being, and by living, then you might just be on the path.
Spiritual Beginnings – a detour into my own story
I entered into spirituality in a wild way. That is, through the wilderness. Through nature, herself: most notably, making my way through the forests, and up & down mountains.
As a trail runner, I spent much time in these spaces. I did so for what we would qualify as “masculine” reasons: goal achievement as I prepared for and completed races of increasing distances. I did so for what we would qualify as “feminine” reasons: because I wanted to be in nature. No, I needed to be in nature, for it is here that my heart, my nervous system, my mind, and so many other parts of me flourished in ways that I just could never do while boxed up in the overly structured systems and structures of society.
The day I began to give myself the freedom to spend hour after hour, and day after day in these spaces, I started to become someone new. This version of me – no longer fully intent on climbing career ladders and living the capitalistic American Dream; instead, becoming an Earth Priestess (even though I had no thought of that title at first).
At some point, my love for and learning within nature wove its way together with my formal training through ReWilding as a Priestess. Those 18 months – wow, they put me through the gauntlet. I lost so much in that time. Not woefully, but because my corporate career, misaligned relationship – it needed to go.
The gift? Through all the shedding, I would become so much more of my true, authentic self, and at the end of it, I would meet the man who would become my husband (a meeting which originally came together largely courtesy of one powerful, dark God of the underworld). Not because I was becoming the woman a man was ready to save, but because I was becoming the woman who would meet someone who could see the world as truly, and as uniquely, as I did.
My story is but one of many that shows what it means to give into the shedding of all of the stories of who we are supposed to be. I needed to give up life in the city pursuing a career in biotech to become who I am: a wild mountain runner and also Earth Priestess following all those true paths that call to me!
My story is also one of dissolving the narrative of patriarchy that I was born into. And, while mine had been free of gods and God, it was just as riddled with ascension narratives: How do I keep my gaze lifted upwards? How do I live life separate from feeling, placing the realm of thought – of reason and will – above all?
Modern Gods & Goddesses for Modern, Wild Times
I am a white woman. To be more specific, I am a white millennial raised from the colonial grounds of America. I was raised far from any religion, and my spiritual connection to anything looked like a deep embedding in the world of materialism, and what I like to call the Church of Science and Engineering.
I am also a New Mexican, through and through. Born on the lands I live on today, this enchanted land is what holds my roots, and what is largely responsible for the being I am today. I do not exaggerate when I say this land is magical. I mean it. Step outside. Experience the wide open New Mexican sky. Take a walk through the forest. Then drive 10 minutes and go walk through the desert. All the while, feel free to look up. Receive the medicine of the high peaks reaching above the trees.
I was not born into spirituality, but throughout my adulthood, courtesy of our interwoven global cultures, I have had the honor to work with gods and goddesses from cultures across space and time here on this planet. Sometimes, I have done this through a formal temple space, or from the help of a teacher. Other times, I do this on my own accord, or in tandem with my Circle or (now) husband. I do so with as much honor and respect as I can. And, sometimes I have even crossed boundaries I probably shouldn’t have, and gotten bitten because of it.
The point is, being in the position that I am, I hold delicately the way I best ought to work with archetypes, including Gods & Goddesses. They, including the cultures they are embedded in, deserve the deepest respect.
With this, when it comes to openly teaching what I want to bring to the world, I often hesitate to dive too deep into teaching from any particular culture. Even working with a god that I believe I know and respect deeply (such as Zeus), I still hesitate, because my roots are not Greek (at least, not in this lifetime).
Which leaves with a problem: Where do I go instead? How to I bring to light the wisdom, the medicine, and the magic that I know this world needs?
How about, to my own backyard?
Come gaze with me upon a Mountain!
I see you there, standing:
your gaze, captured,
and your heart, enraptured,
as you stare up at them!
The gods,
The masters,
The ascendant beings in the sky!
The Mountain is often viewed as a highly masculine archetype. Consider the hard-working, high level of efforting it takes to climb up to a peak. Consider the effort that is given for a singularity that is goal-accomplishment: standing there, at that singular point, taking in a specific view that is higher, more special than any other.
Consider Mount Olympus – the way our ancient gods were placed high above all. Consider heaven in our patriarchal, god-centric Abrahamic religions: that which stands above all.
Consider The Mountain in this way. Then, let us turn our attention to The Forest.
If The Mountain is a masculine archetype, then The Forest is his feminine consort. The Forest is wilderness. The forest is untamed. The forest is free from human-made construct. No boxed-in shapes, just life growing in all patterns, wild and intermingling.
As an Earth Priestess, these are the two Earthly archetypes I work with often.
Okay, but are you ready for the catch?
Humanity has a set of tendencies that do not serve us, nor do they serve the world. The first is to overly polarize, and to do so in a way such that life is cut up and placed in clear-set boxes, doing so in a way that strips away the very essence and gifts of life, itself.
The second has to do with how western humanity has a tendency to name mountains after accomplished white guys, many of which probably never even stepped foot on those mountains. This, my friends, is colonialism at its finest. It is the way we take the wild feminine in her Earthly form and plaster whiteness atop them. It breaks my heart, just as it has shattered whole lives and cultures for far too long.
Somewhere along my path, one embedded in whiteness, patriarchy, and colonialism, I started to wake up. In this waking up, I would learn, doing so both from experience and the words of others. In this waking up, I did not free myself entirely from these roots, but instead devoted myself to a path that looks like continuous growth out of one culture and into another.
This new culture? The one I am working on co-creating with other beings doing our best to work our way out of the toxicity of end-stage capitalism based on colonialism?
It could not look like the days of old, back before white man began conquering lands, killing off land-based gods and goddesses as they killed off the very human beings that worked with them. It has to meet the world where it is today, and to move this world into one that is far more aligned, balanced, in harmony.
I could paint more of a vision of what this world looks like for you, but since we are needing to start to close this piece, allow me to try another way!
First, let me ask you another question: When do we ever call mountains “He”?
We don’t. We look to Her, and we gaze at Her, and sometimes we humble ourselves enough to begin a journey that is going up to Her.
The Mountain is not masculine anymore than I am. The Mountain is Earth, rising up in her mightiest, most majestic form! She, embodying many masculine qualities.
In this way, I invoke The Mountain: Mother Earth, herself, rising up, creating the very grounds for life to flow as it will.
And, yes, in her rising, she embodies many of those masculine qualities the we know and love. She sets the stage for a journey that will require efforting and will. It is a journey that may even lead to a singularity: a high point that holds the fullness of the journey, itself!
But do not, for a second, mistake The Mountain as wholly masculine. No. She holds it all: all of life, in all its being, and in all its willful doing.
The Mountain and Her consort, The Forest
Now, I cannot invoke The Mountain without also invoking The Forest. Once again, Her, in her wild, wondrous form! Interconnected from root to crown, teeming with life in its full diversity.
Now, imagine for me, if you will, The Forest and The Mountain. Both forms, Earth, herself. Both forms, holding both masculine and feminine qualities.
When I go to The Mountain, I am preparing for a climb. There is efforting. I probably have a specific goal in mind. When I go to The Forest, I am ready.
Do you see this? Polarity as ends of a masculine and feminine spectrum, yet not wholly different and polarized and otherly. Rather, interwoven, teeming with qualities that flow together as they flow apart.
This is the polarity that I dream of holding our culture. Yes, we have our differences, and those differences help us learn, grow, and understand just as they make us uniquely able to be who we are in each moment. These difference need to be honored as they are embodied and expressed!
Grounding back into Greek narrative
To finish today’s invocation of The Forest and The Mountain, allow me to take us back to the bigger picture of the tale. You see, Zeus, for all his power and worth, is but a child among parents, and but a sibling, and a cousin among many gods and goddesses.
Given the full family, it is Earth, herself – Gaia – that births it all.
We forget this, and we especially forget this given the Greek-turned Christian narrative that rules the West, today. Earth, herself, birthed our gods, then mankind took one of those gods and attempted to place him high atop all others. In doing so, he created divisions unlike this world had ever known.
Christianity is not the only example of this, but since it is the ruling religion in my part of the world, I find it worth the point of discussion. But the root is, really, patriarchal monotheism, especially the way it wipes away all humanness, all diversity, and sets that which is divine as high above humanity; high above even Earth, herself.
The darkness that stems from this has existed since its inception. The irony is that Jesus (Yeshua), the man himself, worked to fight against this. But patriarchy took his name, raised him above this Earth, and demanded that the whole world drop their diversity and raise their heads to worship this one divine figure.
Again, the darkness that stems from forcing us into one side of an interwoven polarity has been going on for 2000 years (and, really, before even the time of Jesus). But now we are at a time on Planet Earth where the destruction has turned towards a certain level a darkness. Human-caused climate change is manifesting as daily climate disaster. War and genocide continues, no longer hidden from us, but in plain view.
We have to remedy the challenges we face, and we have to do so by facing the mythologies that hold our world.
A certain section of humanity tried to do this with one “unifying” God that would place all of humanity under a singular umbrella of love and light. But this failed us.
So, let us now do it in another way: by returning to ground. By returning to the very grounds of Earth, herself:
Those that hold us.
Those that rise as life around and within us.
And, those that give us reason to lift our gaze, casting our hearts up towards something even higher, and something that may even be worth the efforting that is a wild, strenuous journey towards somewhere even more beautiful.
We do this by returning to The Goddess. We also do this by knows God, in all his godlike forms, in divine connection to the whole family.
How to root our gods
I have written countless pieces on the feminine and her manifestation in nature. I have written countless pieces on how you can connect consciously with your body, and how you can connect consciously with nature, to know the goddess on your path of healing and awakening.
With this piece, I feel the need to honor the masculine, because he needs to be seen in his rightful, honorable, and skillful place:
Zeus is god of the heights, rooted upon The Mountain.
When man uprooted Zeus, lifting him up above even the mountains and so high into the heavens, they took away his Earthliness, and his humanity. In doing so, they did all of humanity, and all of Earth, a disservice.
Our gods must be rooted in their humanity. They must be rooted in their diversity, characterized by personalities. With this, they must even be rooted alongside their shadows, so that we, as humans, can work with polarity as it exists in truth.
We can do this in a way that is free from their deepest toxicities, and I plea that we do so! Because we have to move beyond the times that are:
- Bypassing the way that humans are toxic
- Worshipping the ways that humans are toxic
This should be self-evident, but patriarchy has taken us down such a wildly toxic rabbit hole, that it must be spoken to plainly.
We can know light. We can know darkness. And we can do this without bowing down to the worst of human toxicity.
Knowing Zeus, and knowing Jesus, in their man-god forms, have helped me to see this.
Let Earth, herself, mother us all
How do you teach a god to stand once more is his fully divinity, doing so free from toxicity even as he is rooted in humanity? You do not. Instead, you call in the only force who could ever see him, and ask that he rise up.
His mother.
In this case, we call in Earth, herself. Grandmother to Zeus. The Greeks called her Gaia. You can call her whatever name resonates most fully for you.
Let our gods be gods atop a mountain. Let them live there, so that we may cast our gaze up to them! And, if we are so inclined, let us do the work to meet them there, and in doing so move ourselves through the journey that is becoming the more divine versions of who we already are.
A note:
Much of this writing comes from the draft of my Book, currently named: A Trip Up A Mountain. I share them with you with the hope that you will honor them, perhaps even doing so much as to reflect back to me through a comment! Please know that these ideas and words exist for you here in their unpublished form. They continue to be a work in progress until they will live as their published form in my full length book.
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