The Goddess Who Doesn’t Exist

Full Moon Gate ~ Sun in Gate 6.5 at 26+ Virgo, Earth and Moon in Gate 36.5 at 26+ Pisces on Thursday 11.12 UT, 20.12 Aust EST, 3.12 PDT and 6.12 EDT.

How do we learn to trust something we’ve been taught doesn’t exist?

How do we open up and allow it to change our lives, when we’ve been taught that it is evil and will destroy us?  These are questions for this week’s Full Moon.

We are evoking the Goddess in our lives right now, but we are so unaccustomed to the power of the Creatrix that it is a chaotic and frightening affair. All we know is how to bleat MOTHER!!  and hope for the best.    

At the same moment we fear the worst, because that is what our culture has taught us. In a culture that splits our sensual and joyful nature from our spirit, we live in constant anxiety.

This week’s Full Moon occurs in the Gate of Wounded Brilliance.  It describes what to do when our light is trapped, when our natural relationship with light and dark has become polluted by the insanity of politics and culture. If we continue to define ourselves in these terms we will miss what is really happening here.  There is a powerful force rising up in our lives, threatening to change us forever.  And when we maintain our inner clarity we have everything we need to work with it to create a completely new world.

If you google for images of ‘goddess’ you’ll find a whole lot of skinny sexy young things.  They are, in effect, brides and whores of the patriarchy trading on their sexuality to bring them safety and security.  This is what we were left with when the true Goddess cultures were overpowered in the ancient world.  

Erotic sexual pleasure and our sensual enjoyment of all earthly things, the very sacred nature of humanity, was suppressed in favour of the new Greek rationality.  The wild and powerful Creatrix became a wife, and all life came forth with no mess or drama, solely from the Father.

It’s so important for us to realise how invisible this ‘feminine’ energy has become in our lives.  

We can see it clearly in the way archeologists interpreted neolithic cave art.  They assumed everything was based around the hunting rituals and ignored anything relating to women as unimportant.  

In this way they completely missed the sacred nature of the Great Mother.  All those pregnant women, all those drawings and sculptures of  vulvas, were ‘junk’ just like dark matter and most of our DNA.

In the Bible we have been taught that we are to be punished, the men by working incessantly and the women by giving birth in pain.  And Lilith, the last remaining free woman, became a terrifying night time harridan who killed young children.

Such was the centuries long war against our early relationship with all that is earthly.  And it has created a war within us, a war between our true nature and our need for belonging, for love and care and protection and earthly sensual delight.  

Our lives have become full of empty promises of redemption and even as we strive incessantly for something good, it seems to recede more and more from our grasp.

As Saturn and Venus conjunct the North Node in a Gate that relates to the return of the powerful feminine (44), this is a central theme.  Add to this the importance of the mothering dwarf planet Ceres, as she makes many important connections with other planets just now.  

Our opportunity is to go within to reclaim our connection with a force that is, at it’s core, a link between our earthly existence and the great beyond through the cycles of life. This so called Goddess energy is not some fluffy young female version of what we now think of as God.

In her book Sacred Pleasure, Riane Eisler says “..the prehistoric sacred female imagery ..  clearly does not fit into the still prevailing view of deity as a King, Lord, or Ruler of the World who must be obeyed on pain of terrible punishments. Nor does it represent a disembodied entity residing in some remote celestial realm.”

As our spirit moves more deeply into our bodies, we inevitably meet her – the sacred feminine nature of the body that has been so long demonised. She is us, and she resides in us, in our cycles, in our emotions, in our very relationship with the material realm.

So what do the Human Design transits tell us about how to welcome this new powerful force into our lives.

Brilliance Wounded

The Full Moon is in Gate 36 line 5, which the Rave I Ching describes as Perfected survival regardless of conditions.  A nervousness that can lead to self-betrayal, especially in times of crisis.  Master Huang describes it via the ancient Chinese maxim of hiding your light and biding your time.  If we push forward too quickly our brilliance can be wounded, and then we need to withdraw, to nurse our wounds before we are ready to proceed forward again.

We are beginning to feel safe enough, seen enough, to stay loyal to our own brilliance regardless of external circumstances.  We can let go of creating crisis and conflict as a way of trying to bring attention to our inner light, disturbing our own spirit in the process.  When we overextend ourselves trying to get others to notice what we can’t see, or flog ourselves in an attempt to manifest something creative and valuable in the world, we can become disconnected from the natural rhythms of creation.  When we withdraw out of a mistaken surety that we are alone, unloved and unsupported we can turn inwards and wait for our own inner clarity.

This process of shift is part of a massive cycle that is as old as life itself.  Literally, we have entered consciously into the process of the evolution of life.  We are engaging in an alchemy so profound it is beyond description – the resolution of duality.  The melding of this incredible thing called humanity with both the material plane – the 3D world – and with the all that is, even beyond the concept of life and out to the vast void of existence.  So, hey, it’s okay to feel a bit anxious!

The Sun in Gate 6 speaks to us of getting past our tendency to see everything in terms of conflict.  The victim and the saviour, the good and the bad, the masculine and the feminine.  We are learning to connect with a bigger more inclusive picture where conflict doesn’t define us.  Trust yourself to recognise the truths you are seeking and the aspirations you want to follow.  The feeling of obstructions and opposition to your goals is a vestige of past conflict and will eventually work it’s way out of the system.

Saturn and the return of the Earth Mother

The Greeks saw Saturn as an old man, as old as time.  He brought limitation and discipline to our lives.  However there are astrologers who see Saturn as the ancient crone, older than time.  As the crone, Saturn shifts this energy from punishment to one of joyful co-creation with the cycles of life.  Rather than rail against the limitations to endless growth, she brings an ecstatic ritual of pleasure.  Beltane and the Green Man, Samhain and the Underworld, these rituals sustained humanity for many thousands of years.

Venus, Saturn and the North Node are in Gate 44 – Coming To Meet.  Saturn conjuncts the North Node approximately every 9 to 10 years. The last time they met was in June 2002, when they were both in 45.1  This represented the beginning of an unravelling of the dominator model of relationship.   From Hilary Barrett:

You have emotional presence, openness and trust between people.  What you are missing is a settled relationship you can depend on to safeguard the connection, and a sense of where this is going.  This intense confusion of free floating emotions opens the way for gathering.  All the confusion will be resolved and tension released when people simply call out to one another and clasp hands.  No formality is required, nor even words, and you do not need to know how it will work out.  Only follow that spontaneous human impulse to reach out and connect and everything flows from there.

On 17th September, when Saturn and the Node Node meet  in 44.2:

You set your wickerwork trap in the river and it has caught fish.  This is a sign of something promising, a beginning and a chance of future growth.  It’s worth holding onto while you discover where it’s value lies for you.  What you do not have is a guarantee of results.  It’s far too early to introduce your hope to a wider context and expect it to bear fruit.  For now, it should have your inner space to itself, free from premature expectations.  you can best care for any long term possibilities by not presuming on them. 

There is something with a profound and mysterious power to attract you.  It is taking you over, re-energising you, changing everything, giving birth to new life.You can’t control this energy, or even assimilate it into the life you have now.  Let it have some space inside you, free from premature expectations.  Feel the sweetness that sits alongside the power.  Let it enliven your body.  Reconnect with a sense of embodied bliss.  Right now, everything revolves around a clear and central objective and all of your resources are being called to it.  You can find your greatest strengths in the flow of your whole self.  Your purpose begins to emerge from your strength.    This is a gradual process.  Enjoy the moments of preparation, take pleasure in having enough, feel what ‘home’ is becoming to you.  We can grow into this new world, even though our progress may be almost imperceptible.

We are reconnecting with our own brilliance, and in doing so, to use the words of Charles Eisenstein, we are disrupting the psychic substructure of our current reality.  And these things take time.