Views of the Feminine Aspect

[MoonBreath]

For those of you who believe in the Feminine aspect of Diety, how do you view her? How does she play a role in your spiritual life? Also, what does she represent to you?

[Fiamma]

For those of you who believe in the Feminine aspect of Diety, how do you view her? How does she play a role in your spiritual life? Also, what does she represent to you?


I don't believe in masculine and feminine aspects of divinity, I believe in individual gods and goddesses. Their roles vary as much as they do. They do not represent, they are.

[morganxpage]

I'm like Fiamma. The Deities are individuals. And also, I believe that they are all sexes at once, and no sex at all. I don't like the idea of aspects or of real live beings (ie, The Deities) being representations of concepts. My Gods are alive.

[RainInanna]

For those of you who believe in the Feminine aspect of Diety, how do you view her? How does she play a role in your spiritual life? Also, what does she represent to you?

She represents and is seen in everything that is feminine - receptive, intuitive, mysterious, nurturing, yin, water and earth, coolness, the moon, the earth, night, introverted, beautiful, enchanting. She is the maiden, the mother, and the crone. She is the receptiveness of the earth, and the gentle wash of the rain. She is the moonlight, she is the ocean, she is the space between lighting and where it strikes.

The feminine as a symbol and a concept is beautiful in its abstract manner and as expressed in infinite archetypes and individual deities. Personally I feel it is a beautiful, magical idea.

Similarly I am an individual but can described in terms of femininity. To say "the gods are individuals" is, I think, to disregard the idea that the Sacred is more than individuals; it's a spiritual, ethereal essence that is numinous, profound, and immanent. We are all separate people and yet we spring from the same eternal, Divine source - energy, life, magic, whatever you wish to call it. To say we are just people or they are just individuals IMHO is to devalue the magic embodied by every living thing. No need to disregard the symbolic or archetypal in order to ensure the individual is recognized - for example, you need not disregard how I am "mother", "woman", or "member of MysticWicks" in order to ensure I am seen as an individual person.

All IMHO, of course, as an animist and panentheist.

[Fiamma]

To say "the gods are individuals" is, I think, to disregard the idea that the Sacred is more than individuals; it's a spiritual, ethereal essence that is numinous, profound, and immanent. We are all separate people and yet we spring from the same eternal, Divine source - energy, life, magic, whatever you wish to call it. To say we are just people or they are just individuals IMHO is to devalue the magic embodied by every living thing. No need to disregard the symbolic or archetypal in order to ensure the individual is recognized - for example, you need not disregard how I am "mother", "woman", or "member of MysticWicks" in order to ensure I am seen as an individual person.

All IMHO, of course, as an animist and panentheist.


I think that what you said here, in regards to the gods as individuals, is oversimplifying things.

it's like water...all raindrops and snowflakes are separate, individual units of water, but they are still water. They are connected on some level, but they can be separated out- I can reach into the ocean and gather a bit of water in my hand, and it is not clumped into the ocean collective of water molecules, but it is still ocean water.

In that sense, the gods can all be of the divine, but still be individual. independent, but still connected.

I am also a panentheist.

[RainInanna]

I think that what you said here, in regards to the gods as individuals, is oversimplifying things.

Well I do like and agree completely with your analogy, it is exactly what I had in mind. As you point out, snowflakes are individuals and yet there is no need to disregard that their "water" nature. It need not be "individual snowflake" or "water", but can and is both.