Preface
Every woman wants to feel like
a goddess. Strong. Wise. Brave. Loving. Who better than powerful
goddesses to be role models? Everyday Goddesses assembles
a collection of 366 goddesses, diverse examples of the Divine Feminine,
through time and across cultures. This book of days holds up a mirror
so you can try on a new goddess every day, seeing your own nature
reflected through timeless examples of women’s wisdom and feminine
power. These goddesses are meant to act as daily guides, way showers
through the passages of life, engaging the Sacred Feminine within
you.
Everyday Goddesses is
arranged as a circle, a meditative journey through the year. The
goddesses are organized within the zodiac signs. Marking time by
tracking the motions of the moon and the path of the planets against
the background of the stars has been part of every culture on earth.
The Babylonians and Egyptians used the zodiac thousands of years
ago. This circle of stars, which has been called the Girdle of the
Goddess, seemed an appropriate way to frame the year. The goddesses
are likewise linked with seasonal cycles. Goddesses of dawn and
new beginnings are aligned with spring, goddesses of the harvest
with autumn, and goddesses who preside over death are matched to
the dark time of year in the northern hemisphere.
Sacred Feminine symbols, such
as birds, trees, serpents and spirals, are found almost universally
in cultures around the world, and I perceived an alignment with
these icons and the familiar twelve zodiac signs. Because this book
chronicles feminine power, I chose one of these symbols to represent
each zodiac sign. For example, Libra is symbolized by the Dove,
and Taurus is represented by the Tree of Life. I call these the
Goddess Signs. A short explanation precedes each chapter, briefly
describing the characteristics of the sign, why I chose the Goddess
Sign symbol, and why the goddesses were selected for that section.
The many facets and myriad personalities of the Great Goddess embody
seeming contradictions. Like life itself, she can be alternately
gentle or fierce, loving and nurturing, creative or destructive.
These goddesses are often complex, even contradictory, so they did
not always conveniently fit into one zodiac sign. I placed them
where they resonated most, based on what I perceived to be their
dominant quality.
Women understand cycles because
our lives are framed by them, and there is an intrinsic ebb and
flow to the feminine experience. The stages of a woman’s life are
demarcations of menstruation: pre-puberty, childbearing years, and
the cessation of menstrual flow. Each month of an adult woman’s
life is a complete cycle of birth and death; a microcosm of life
itself. As women age these cycles change and life takes on a different
character. The wheel of the year symbolically relates to the stages
of women’s lives, commonly expressed as: Maiden, Mother and Crone,
or Elder. Most ancient cultures honored the elder Crone as a woman
who had come fully into her power. In Western culture we seem to
revere youth and fear age, losing the wise voice of experience.
Everyday Goddesses relates
the myths of 366 goddesses. The word myth comes from the root word
for “mouth,” as story telling was originally an oral tradition.
Myths are sacred stories, and have been the way people transmitted
their holiest truths, their understanding of our relationship to
the Divine, for thousands of years. The well-known Swiss psychoanalyst,
Carl Jung, observed that archetypes, the intrinsic patterns of human
consciousness such as Maiden, Mother and Crone, Queen and Princess,
do not cease to exist if we ignore or devalue them. Rather, they
become submerged in what Jung termed the Collective Unconscious,
hiding underground and becoming strong forces which emerge in dreams,
complexes or even psychoses. Archetypes are fundamental building
blocks of human nature. Myths, legends and fairy tales, which contain
principles and morals, are structured in the symbolic language of
archetypes.
In Western culture we have devalued,
even demonized, aspects of the feminine for nearly 4,000 years,
effectively pushing these archetypes beneath our conscious awareness.
Serious scholars of myth have noticed that the tenor of the stories
began to change nearly four thousand years ago. Symptoms of this
shift in Greek myths included an increasing glorification of war,
accompanied by a deteriorating value of agriculture and cyclical
time. The importance of the Great Goddess diminished and has been
essentially buried for four millennia. The loss of half of the Divine
has resulted in a rupture of mind and heart, reverberating through
centuries in violence, alienation and growing environmental devastation.
Western culture no longer moves in harmony with natural cycles,
and I believe our lack of balance with the natural seasons of earth
and sky has brought us to a precarious place.
Humanity has a deep need to revere
the Feminine Side of the Divine, and this unmet need is resurfacing
in our time in phenomena such as The Da Vinci Code. Apparitions
of Mary, mother of Jesus, are on the rise around the world. One
of the most documented and widely experienced in recent times was
in Zeitoun, Egypt where millions of people of diverse beliefs stood
side by side for twenty-three years, watching as Mary appeared over
a small church in a suburb of Cairo. Millions make annual pilgrimages
to Fatima, Lourdes, and the site of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico
each year, making this the most-visited Catholic site, second only
to the Vatican. Worldwide response to the death of beloved Princess
Diana of Wales also spoke to our need to revere a feminine archetype.
This has been a profound journey
for me, a personal reunion with the Divine Feminine. The process
has been a labor of love which taught me a great deal about the
nature of guidance. Hundreds of goddesses revealed their deep wisdom
about the quality of feminine power, speaking through the timeless
language of symbols, myths and archetypes. I have been amazed by
the depth and breadth of wisdom I discovered, and continually awed
by a creative process that drew me along as a willing, if sometimes
dazzled, participant. Researching and writing the book often spontaneously
transported me into an altered state, causing me to experience a
different realm of awareness.
Sometimes a goddess declared
her intention to be included in the circle by drawing me to a book.
As if by magic, or the mysterious mechanism of synchronicity, my
eyes were drawn to a previously unknown goddess who aligned perfectly
with the place in the calendar where I worked. At other times, guidance
came through a provocative dream. Sometimes the goddesses seemed
to come to life and move around the wheel, revealing something deeper
about their natures than I had originally perceived. In this spirit,
Everyday Goddesses can be used as an oracle by setting an intention,
or asking a specific question, and letting the pages fall open in
a seemingly random way, allowing a goddess to speak to you.
It is my hope and prayer that
Everyday Goddesses will serve in some way to restore the Divine
Feminine to her rightful place as Queen of Heaven. I invite you
to enter this sacred circle and embrace this ancient wisdom, taking
these truths into your heart and soul. I hope you will get to know
many of the powerful feminine beings represented here. Ancient Egyptians
said every woman was a nutrit, a “little goddess,” after the nature
of the great goddess Nut. And, as you embark on your own journey
around the sacred wheel, I hope you will be empowered to become
the goddess you are, consciously embodying love, strength, courage,
compassion, inner beauty and receptivity. That’s the way we’ll save
the world; one empowered woman at a time.
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