Series Begins on Thursday, December 11
For 35,000 years—millennia before Yahweh, Christ, Buddha or Mohammed appeared on the scene—the Goddess was worshipped as the primary divinity. She was everywhere: in the seasons, the tides, the sun and the moon, and the birth and death cycles of all living things. During the time of the Goddess, scripture was Nature and Nature was feminine. As we move into the dark time of the year and the promise of rebirth offered by the Winter Solstice and the holidays of hope and light, the Divine Feminine, our most ancient divinity is calling us to remember and return.
It was sometime between 3500 and 2000 BCE when the warrior tribes with their masculine gods and patriarchal societies descended on the rich lands of the Fertile Crescent where Inanna was the reigning Goddess. These patriarchal tribes first challenged, then attacked and finally crushed the Goddess, her beliefs and the ways of those who worshipped her. At best, women were stripped of their influence at spiritual and cultural levels; at worst, they were enslaved and demonized.
Today more and more women, and men, are questioning traditional biblical teaching about deity. Although many people assert that God is beyond gender, long centuries of referring to "Him" as masculine and addressing Him as Lord, King, Father, etc have been a strong conditioning factor in our lives, whether we are "religious" or not. Sacred duties and religious rituals have been largely in the hands of men, and a priestly hierarchy.
Because history is written by the victors—the patriarchy—this image of a masculine God and his earthly spokesmen is presented as one prevailing since time immemorial; it is "natural" and enshrined in both Holy Writ and religious tradition. Nothing could be further from the truth!
Without the Divine Feminine as an integral part of our psyches, our hearts and minds, we are a world out of dangerously out of balance. For without the feminine to balance the masculine, the patriarchy has become a twisted task master who sees itself as the center of all life instead of living in partnership with the others, the earth and the cosmos. This world view, as we now know, has created disastrous affects on the earth itself and has led to almost constant warfare. Without the feminine, the masculine has no womb. Without the womb, there is little hope for compassion and creativity to take their place as two of the great triumphs of human history.
Over the next six months, I will be running a series of TeleSeminars on the Divine Feminine. Join me in this first in the series.
- How has the loss of a Divine Feminine affected your life?
- How would you be different if you had been brought up knowing that the divine has a feminine face whose loving arms protect you?
- How might your life have been different if you were taught that the Divine Feminine promises joy, passion as well as compassion.
- How might your life have been different if you knew that the constant changing rhythms of life and the flow of one form into another is what gives life its challenge, its fierceness and its beauty. And that this flow is divinely feminine.
"The Goddess in all her manifestations was a symbol of the unity of all life in Nature. Her power was in water and stone, in tomb and cave, in animals and birds, snakes and fish, hill, trees, and flowers. Hence a holistic and mythopoetic perception of the sacredness and mystery of all there is on earth."
~ Marija Gimbutas, archeologist
Read about Marija Gimbutas
Registration: All sessions are recorded. If you can't attend in person, you will receive the download.
Sign up for all six session and receive a 30% discount.
6 sessions: $84. CDs are $10 extra per session.
Each session: $20 with audio download,$30 with a CD
Read about Emily Hanlon
www.creativesoulworks.com
emily@emilyhanlon.com
Tags: Womens Spirituality
Why Do We Impoverish Our Lives With Wanting?
“Your heart will give you greater council than all the world’s scholars.”
~ The Talmud
The creative flow is an organic process that embraces and defines us when we open to it from the heart and not the mind. Its success cannot be defined by fame and fortune. Its success is a deepening of soul, a greater awareness of the expansiveness and truth of our being and our purpose in life as well as our connection to others. For as we serve our own deeper truth, we are serving as a guide into the deeper truth of the greater society. Creative spirits have been historically and mythically the light bearers for human kind. We are the risk takers, those who journey beyond the boundaries of human consciousness into the Mystery where knowings that serve as keys to destiny can be found.
When we become skilled practitioners of creativity, we journey with a kind of unattached consciousness. By this I mean, we are mindful that we are on the journey without needing to control the journey itself or its outcome. We are present without needing to control. Lack of control is vital. Lack of mind/ego control, that is. For creativity rises up the great seething chaos of the unmanifested and moves towards the manifesting of that which has not been before. Creativity embraces the unmanifested and brings it to the light. This is the ongoing journey of transfiguration of the human soul and creativity is its midwife.
To be “successful” in creativity we cannot lust after outcomes. This does not mean that we do not desire to have our book published, our play produced, our song heard, our garden flower, our path known. It does mean that we have to, as Emerson said, "Adopt the pace of nature, her secret is patience."
Does nature want her flowers to bloom, her grass to green and her sun to shine? Does nature want day more than night or summer more than winter? Does nature, the most creative force in life, want anything?
Tags: Creativity Inspiration Spirituality
Favorites
Digg
Del.icio.us
Facebook
Furl
Magnolia
StumbleUpon
Google
Yahoo MyWeb
