Quotes about Feminine

Today, I would describe a preistess as a woman who lives in two worlds at once, who perceives life on earth against a backdrop of a vast, timeless, reality.

We are all engaged in the task of peeling off the false selves, the programmed selves, the selves created by our families, our culture, our religions. It is an enormous task because the history of women has been as incompletely told as the history of blacks.

All the way around, when we consider the absolute number of defining negative terms or the ratio of negative to positive word use for each gender, women lose out when it comes to positive, defining language. I mean, they really lose out. My search for definitions of chivalry or gallantry that apply specifically to women has so far come up with nothing. Consider the terms honor, steadfastness, and valor. Though not overtly gender-specific, they are male-tilted by broad context and long-established patterns of use. And these words, even though they can be applied to women, don't imply what gallantry and chivalry imply, which is a mixture of kindness, confidence, and power as specifically linked to one gender…

Lastly, of course, I must comment on the feminine version of the word hero, which of course is heroine. This term describes a woman's role in a story but does not specifically refer to character or nobility. Heroine is probably the most frequently used positive word for a woman in common vocabulary, but almost nobody I know would use it to describe a real, ordinary person. By our language's glaring lack of gender-specific terms for female nobility of character, and the ongoing presence of specialized male terms such as gallantry, we can infer that a bias against celebrating the feminine exists in Western culture much as it does in places like New Guinea, even if it takes a less physically brutal form. This language anomaly in no way reflects the actual nature of women as I have experienced them. Many women I know have shown chivalry equal to a man's in harrowing circumstances, including, in Patty's case, a brush with war in the jungles of New Guinea and making life-or-death decisions as a nurse midwife at the bedsides off hundreds of women in labor. The emotional heroism of women, in my opinion, far surpasses that of men, on a daily basis. By emotional heroism I mean the complex choices women often make, setting aside their own needs or supressing strong feelings, in the service of a greater good.

When the first chakra is disconnected from the feminine Earth, we can feel orphaned and motherless.  The masculine principle predominates, and we look for security from material things.  Individuality prevails over relationship, and selfish drives triumph over family, social and global responsibility.  The more separated we become from the Earth, the more hostile we become to the feminine.  We disown our passion, our creativity, and our sexuality.  Eventually the Earth itself becomes a baneful place.  I remember being told by a medicine woman in the Amazon, "Do you know why they are really cutting down the rain forest?  Because it is wet and dark and tangled and feminine.

As this era of masculine dominance comes to an end and a feminine understanding of life’s wholeness is included, we are beginning to experience a different world in which physical, mental, and spiritual well-being are interdependent. We see the signs of this in the new age movement. But the new age movement is often limited by its focus on individual well-being. Our real concern is the well-being of the planet and the whole of humanity. Central to this is the understanding that the physical world cannot be healed from a solely physical perspective, but requires a shift to an attitude that contains a multi-dimensional approach.

Christianity is merely a system for turning priestesses into handmaidens, queens into concubines and goddesses into muses.
Who can guess into what it will turn us nymphs?

The revelation of the secret of water will put an end to all manner of speculation or expediency and their excrescences, to which belong war, hatred, impatience and discord of every kind. The thorough study of water therefore signifies the end of monopolies, the end of all domination in the truest sense of the word and the start of a socialism arising from the development of individualism in its most perfect form. (1939)

If we did not have a feminine being within us, how would we rest ourselves?

“The most supreme beauty is that of the feminine; the source of all creativity. Even in my greatest despair, that realization alone restores my faith in God.”