Reconnecting with the Divine Feminine

Words and imagery by Brigid Banrion.

What is the divine feminine?

This is first the sacred nature of our feminine self. It is the aspect of the human which is creative, sensual, emotional and psychic. It’s the energy presented in the human through their loving, flowing, resonant spirit… a state of being, not doing.

We each have a divine feminine aspect, both men and women, and in this life we are somewhat misaligned or disconnected from it, because of the society we live in. We have unwittingly become more active in the masculine - linear, ordered, timetabled, less emotive, less connected and goal-oriented. This leads to anxiety, pressure, a loss of our natural identities (as loving, altruistic energies) and suffering under the weight of ‘chronic urban overwhelm’ due to having lost this part of ourselves.

How has religion and the media undermined our understanding of the divine feminine and our power as women? 

The divine feminine is the awakener of higher consciousness - the state of receiving without grabbing. The state of knowing without logical source. It relates to the Goddess aspect of every faith system, except the Christian. The feminine deity was removed and denigrated by Christian church doctrine and historical account, which led us to living and surviving under very patriarchal, masculine and undermining systems of belief. Man first, woman second. Man revered, woman feared.

This idea, that the female sacred nature was wrong or bad, bled into everything - media, politics, friendships, literature, sexual relationships, self-image, marriage, family, advertising… Female suppression has become an accepted, almost missed fact in every part of life. Women compete against each other rather than gather in circles. Men decide, control, conquer and undermine the woman, depending on her obedience to certain restrictive and forced ideals. Her body, an object. Her voice, a threat. 

There has been a rising awareness of the divine feminine in the last ten years. Women are breaking out of the boxes they’ve been forced to sit in. Their paradoxical, unique, complex nature is becoming more powerfully prominent in how we dress, look, act, express and – crucially - how we connect with each other as women. Lots of change is happening in how women spend their time, money and energy now. We are more interested in healing modalities outside of western medicine. There is more independent discovery of the self, rather than relying on exterior validation. Women are getting closer to each other, rather than further away. 

I have witnessed and facilitated the awakening of the divine feminine consciousness in women, through intuitive work, and meditative healing. It’s a return to the old ways - when women were counterpoints between realms, and valued highly for their wisdom, impulsive insight and creative/sensual power. People in communities went to the women for healing, understanding and divinely inspired insight. They went to, and gathered with, each other - to bless, celebrate and honour the cycles of the moon, of their emotional states, of themselves as people. Their identities not fixed, but harmonising with the seasons, and the growth of their connection with fellow sisters. This is a strengthening of the world’s core need - love. Love in the feminine, borne of newness, change and ever-present shifts and wanes.

Goddess-led teachings instigate this shift - in both giving birth to man, and also fuelling his desire to shift the planet into a state of grace, presence, being and intimacy, the Goddess inside all of us is active muse and true creator of our inner world. God is the exterior - the physical. The law. Goddess is its antithesis.

The sacred drama between the masculine and feminine is a story playing out in all our relationships, in our careers, in our psyches… It’s a wild ride once recognised. Things we haven’t been allowed before have suddenly become essential. Aspects of our natures we kept hidden - demanding front and centre stage.

It’s a paradigm shift inspired by the waking female. And it’s felt everywhere.  

How can we unlearn what we’ve been taught with intuitive work?

By working with tarot, I discovered a resource inside that is accessed in a ‘no thinking’ state. It’s through removal of judgement, external triggers and preconceived conditioning that we begin to see other humans in their wholeness. We begin to see everyone as an ageless, powerful being. Even ourselves. And information arrives for us when we learn how to de-programme the judging, persecuting masculine mindset we’ve grown up using - often against our own selves - in this incredibly new and empowering way.

I lifted the cards ten years ago and started receiving visuals, sound bytes and emotional information almost instantly. Practising for eight years in secret - no payment or business exchange - I observed how connecting with others this way increased a sense of love for the world, and it’s benevolence, in my clients. 

I discovered I was receiving information in rapid and new ways, about the people that came to me. The transmissions, channelled and inspired by the cards, rather than led by them, opened up doors of potential in every woman. They also grew incredibly fond of me, and I of them, because we were reaching an intimate state of connection super quick. I haven’t seen an effect like that except between friends and a bottle of wine. Except this is strangers, and no alcohol involved! 

Do you believe that the dialogue around mothers is changing in a positive way?

Hugely. A mother isn’t any longer beholden to a specific ideal. Perfectionism, idolatry of pure white, obedient and white-washed avatars, is falling away. There is new motherhood, sacred motherhood, which is forming through women who honour their own emotional and sensitive natures as SACRED, as a SUPERPOWER, for guiding and informing their style of motherhood and relational behaviour. We are birthing unique beings. The mothers, then, are now unique beings. Their learning happens instinctually, rather than from books or hand-me-down ideas passed through ancestries which suppressed and limited the female. We are not supposed to give up our lives, our identities or our own crucial healing needs for our families. We are supposed to complement the tapestry of family life with our breathing, real, honest and many layered life experiences.

We are not servants or slaves to a false idea about motherhood anymore. We not only birth new life, we write books. We run businesses. We raise open, questioning and energetically exciting children. We honour our partners as equals and best friends, and see our responsibilities as mothers not just as duties or chains on the ankles, but initiations into wiser, stronger, more sensual and expressive selves.

How do you personally work with women to help guide them through this un-layering and lead them back to their truest self? 

I was growing frustrated with the separation I felt between myself and the women I was reading for. They saw me as this unique thing, and not as an equal. This is so not true, and fostered all those masculinised ideas about fear, and competition, and being ‘less than’. It wound me up. So I started sharing my humanity deeply. And then it struck me. 

I noticed the separations between my clients and their female friends/family/acquaintances too. The automatic sense of a hierarchy. The mistrust. The difficult mother/daughter relationships. The jealousy and intense, dysfunctional attachments to their partners. I wanted allies. I wanted to create a space which was non-hierarchical, and get them right where I was. I knew I was onto something, which wasn’t beyond the perfectly human, perfectly flawed and modest female. Because that’s what I am. I came at this spiritual growth thing backwards. I discovered a gift in me to see beyond the obvious, and I was absolutely not special, and it wasn’t a special thing at all. It was natural as anything. My spiritual growth happened alongside it. And I let them in on it. 

Intuition, between people, is a powerful healing tool. It is a human state of play, totally natural and real. It’s a love energy. It’s been missing in our lives for ages. Women thrive off expression and intimacy and where do we find it these days? NOWHERE. The internet however is somewhere we can give ourselves a voice. Where we can start gathering and let ourselves be ‘seen’ by another - by many others. It instigated The Secret Circle - my divine feminine healing Facebook group, where clients (who are now friends), all sensitive, struggling and frustrated women, could come together and empower each other’s growth.

It worked. It started off as a tarot academy but within a month that totally shifted. Tarot is a tool for self development in that space, but the unique relationships forming in there created something utterly different. No woo is left off the table. No real human experience either.

I have ninety women there now, all working in the world as sisters with a deeper understanding of how to create real fulfilment and power in their lives. Doctors, bankers, healers, hairdressers, make-up artists, mothers, entrepreneurs, teachers… It’s a heady mix and its beautiful. I began diarising and teaching my experiences from an entirely accessible, ordinary and real place. Not as an authority, but as someone alongside. Being real about the work and the growth in me. And they responded in kind!! The circle BUZZES, all day long, with the secret beauty of the waking woman. And I use a light code for communication, so there’s dark and light honoured and appreciated for exactly what it is, no attaching it to a woman, making it part of who she is. No bashing, competing or patronising. No judging. No law except love. 

I run Divine Feminine Healing workshops where I show women how to reach their inner goddess aspect. They resurface and start sharing themselves. All the parts. We discuss the difficulties of being sensitive, we let go of shame, blame and guilt, and learn from each other all through. I was recently activated in Light Language, a healing soul language which is unrecognisable to the human ear, but makes sense on a soul level. It’s a powerful transmutation tool for lifting lower vibrational energy matter from our bodies. It got deep, at the last event. The responses were incredible. I equip women with the tools to move forward awake, conscious and present with the expansive state they were supposed to be living within, all along. But again, it’s not me doing it. I’m following my heart, and my heart is the same as yours, as everyone else’s. I gave them what my life lacked until I started working like this. We all need that time to rediscover the true magic of who we are.
 

Can you explain why it’s so important for women to put aside competition and work with each other?
 

There is no such thing as ‘only me’ and ‘only you’. Fulfilment comes from connecting deeply, and safely, with other people. Especially women. I hear more from my fellow women and believe it more, than I do from any other source. We are each other’s medicine because we are living the same dramas, forming the same wisdom from our lives. We each bring something to the life we lead which is utterly unique, and we don’t have to ‘do’ anything except give up judging, and slating each other, to find it. I open every circle with that affirmation - ‘I may not be your medicine. But someone else here, will be.’ And that’s truth.