The feminine principle is primary.

With the gradual return of the light, and the hope carried forward by the spring Equinox in the northern hemisphere today, we celebrate the equilibrium between light and dark, gathering together at the tender feet of spring. It is also the second night of Navaratri, the Hindu festival of the manifestations of the Goddess Durga in her nine forms. A time to attune deeply to the fierce protectress energy of the feminine principle.

Many of us have been spellbound under the great fog of illusion that the feminine principle is secondary to the masculine. Our religious and cultural mythologies enshrine this belief, and from Eve, born of Adam’s rib, to the female Greek deities born from Zeus’s flesh, and the way most medical research is still carried out on and for male bodies, offer a subtle taste of this distortion.

So what are the feminine and masculine principles? Well these are non-tangible but very much alive, archetypal energies or frequencies that permeate throughout our universe, consciousness, physical bodies, and experience. Almost all ancient spiritual and earth-based cultures and traditions identify and work with these two primal tones of reality that are two aspects of the same whole. One simply cannot exist without the other, and when both energies are balanced, they amplify and enhance one another, radiating creative harmony. These principles are not associated with gender as is commonly misunderstood. At the microcosm of the human body, every individual irrelevant of their biological sex is made up of and infused with these energies, and at the macro level of the cosmos these energies play out within planetary interactions and aspects, channeled to us through the ancient science of astrology and the diverse mythologies of each planet.

So when I say the feminine principle is primary, it is not because I believe it predates the masculine or is superior. These are BOTH primary and primordial energies. Combined and harmonised, they are life force at its fullest and most divine expression. The containing aspect of the masculine has nothing to contain without the stirring ebb and flow of the feminine. The spiraling feminine has no direction without the linear stability of the masculine. And so they dance together, embraced for eternity, self-actualising and self sustaining.

And yet from this great divine mystery of wholeness, we have birthed a culture and consciousness that celebrates, dignifies, credits and affirms just one aspect of this current of life. The masculine is seen as primary and normative, and the feminine ridiculed, subjugated and secondary. And for me this is really where the meat is in the conversation around colonial patriarchy. For colonial patriarchy hurts and oppresses ALL bodies. Biological men may receive certain benefits within this anti-life system comparatively to females, in the same way those with white presenting features receive benefits over BIPOC communities. And these oppressive reward and restriction based inequalities are real and create a lot of harm and unrest. And yet this is why I prefer to use the term dominance culture to describe this recent epoch of our human history (as coined by the cranial sacral therapist and writer Mia Kalef).

For as our collective nervous system hums with agitation, dissociation, burnout, and fear, all bodies and creative life force perish under this dominance culture. The white male CEO might have more access to financial and material resources than most, and yet the continual self-abandonment and pain inflicted upon his subtle body as he oppresses and exploits those feeding his empire takes its toll individually, and is then fed back to the web of our collective consciousness. The illusion of safety built from the hoarding of money and resources is fragile. It is a house of cards, and is most often the proposed antidote within this dominance culture to a being experiencing a great sense of separateness and internal fragility. We are not free until we are all free, and the perceived separation and boundary of country, class, race, gender, and orientation perpetuate the spell of our own dissolution. These divisions dissolve as soon as we step back into our humanness, and our hearts. And that means a willingness or an opening to the uniting back of these two primary principles once more. Both externally in our political, social and organising systems, and internally, within our own being. So above, so below.

When we exile the feminine from the outer world, as she has been for so many thousands of years, we know what to expect. Boardrooms of white men, systems of hierarchy, experts telling you how to feel and what you need to buy to feel better. Extraction from the earth with no care how these imminent decisions will affect the seven generations of the unborn to come. Less dance, less music, less being, less play. More doing, more order, more inequality, more addictive tendencies. Countless mythologies speak to the exiling of the feminine and the wasteland that follows, derived of real abundance, magic and fertile creativity. We are definitely experiencing the inner and outer wasteland. And yet attuning and attending to the exiled feminine within each one of us is much more subtle and perhaps more difficult.

We can begin by asking ourselves where and in which areas of our lives this pure, radiant life force flows. The honey-drenched, erotic, raw power that can manifest as flow-state, as it is sometimes called. A state when we are creating from a sense of over-spilling joy, flooded with internal harmony and peace, without grasping from the ego to be seen or to gain something external. Present and clear, nervous system responding with flexibility and ease to what is spontaneously unfolding around us. The state that manifests when our inner feminine and masculine energies are in unity. How many decisions do we make from this place? Or how many decisions do we make in service to carving out more of this space in our lives? Have we even felt it before? Is the memory so faint, tainted by time, responsibility and duty that it feels foreign to us? This indicates an imbalance of masculine and feminine energies within.

We can so easily slump into blame for all that we are experiencing. Blame for the systems out there that are oppressing us. And yet as a materially privileged white presenting woman living in Europe, the strictest oppressor of this system of dominance I experience daily exists within my own mind. The oppressor who tells me I am not good enough, or shouldn’t be feeling the way I am feeling. Who scorns me for resting when I am tired, and says I should and could always be doing more. Who believes indulging in pleasure is time wasting. And tempting back this exiled feminine principle takes time. She’s been banished for so long. But we are all invited to really welcome her back together, at both collective and individual levels. Now is her return.

We are invited to carve out more moments of pleasure, creativity and rest in our lives, amidst the chaos of what is unfolding around us. To honour the cycles of the body, its rhythms and nuances. And as the deity Durga reminds us, the feminine is fierce. She is not just softness, calm and rest. She radiates an embodied power so strong that it lights up the entire world. And yet this feminine power is tapered, expresses vulnerability within her strength, and is self-imbuing. It does not need feeding through the hungry eyes of others, or thrive off the dominance of other beings. This power does not depend on the dimming of other’s own power, there are plenty of seats at this table. It is in service and protection of what is sacred, pure, and true.

May we all remember and return to the feminine principle as primary. As the unification of life force within our own hearts.

Your liberation is my liberation.

N I N A