Luck brought me a new deck, one, that like tarot or blackjack, has you choose your card and then deals your fate. This deck, rather than being full of fortunes, instead gives a prompt. A writing prompt. One that asks you as a goddess, (the rebranded word for someone who's felt powerless and now knows their worth,) to reflect on your life and the society we live in.
This first prompt of mine was embarrassingly difficult. I fight the patriarchy in my sleep and enjoy complaining about those who want us to teach them to be better, rather than doing their own research, and yet here I am not having done enough myself: I didn't know this phrase "the rise of the Feminine," so I turned to Google.
The first listing was this HuffPo article, explaining that the feminine energy lives in the second chakra, and is the source of emotions. It details that living in this society, men and women are made to feel ashamed of feelings, resulting in suppression and even acting out. It cites the #MeToo movement as part of the uproar bringing The Feminine to the forefront. "Where vulnerability and honesty were once feared," the article says, "these feminine qualities are now seen as raw, honest, relatable, respected, and they give permission for people to be real with themselves about what’s actually there." The rest of the article encourages the reader to share their truth without fear or shame, and to love themselves as they are.
This to me sounds like a pep-talk based on an uprising, but not the uprising itself. So I did more digging.
Next, I found this passage on a goddess-y website called Purse for the People. This article describes the phenomenon in question as "the Divine Feminine," something that I recognized turned me off just a little. I've chosen to surround myself with skeptics of all kinds, enjoying their intellect, but struggling then to hold onto the spirituality I've discovered for the things that can be felt but not seen. I have a scientific retort for everything I do, and reading the word "divine" made me uneasy. How will I explain this? I thought to myself, delighted to find the answer within the article itself.
It bases this feminine movement as being rooted in ecology, utilizing Mother Earth as an archetype to create "a world view based in ecology, deep justice for all and an expanded global identity beyond national boundaries." It cites technology as bringing society within a click of a button, making it easier than ever for us to choose between two oppositions: to conquer or to collaborate. The author recalls instances where history conquered, quoting Eckhart Tolle in A New Earth. He outlines the witch hunt by the Roman Catholic Church as "a dark chapter in human history," where the feminine was declared demonic, reducing women to child bearers and men's property. He describes the impact as leaving our society imbalanced.
Now this I know. I've discussed with friends recently that the best way to describe being looked at by strange man is to feel like prey. We've connected over moments where we didn't know that saying "no" was an option. Of course looking back, we knew it could result in further aggression, but in that moment it hadn't even occurred to us as a word that we could say.
I do hate being a woman in this society, which all things considered is a freer culture for women than many, many others. And yet each day, I take into consideration what make up to wear when I am "unescorted," what sweater to bring to cover up my cleavage, which color hair makes me gain more respect or be met with more unwanted attention. As a woman I am afraid, I am afraid always. I can't sleep in anything but complete silence, because each nightly sound makes me wake up gasping for shelter.
So going back to the prompt, knowing now that the "the rise of the Feminine" is about bringing back power to women and "feminine" emotions after centuries of being seen as lesser, I ask myself how can I harness this fear into something powerful. Like fearing an arrow, so crafting a bow to wield it.
Words, I know. Words I can craft, maneuver, chisel, and slice. I looked up how to make a sword, hoping to further the metaphor, but stopped when I read "first you have to figure out what you want your sword to look like."
That, I do not know yet. So to answer the original prompt: I'm working on it. I want to change this world, I want to make the lives of those I love and those I do not know easier, safer, more appealing. I protect "the Feminine" by embracing it and sharing how it impacts my life, and soon I'll know how to I know how to make my sword, my stance; first, I just need to figure out what I want it to look like.
Here's the card from The Journal Deck by the wonderful Alyssa Kuzins.
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