Men define intelligence, men define usefulness, men tell us what is beautiful, men even tell us what is womanly.

He embodies patriarchy’s inability to see the primal divinity of the feminine. She leaves because she knows that if the dignity of the feminine is not recognized, true union of the masculine and the feminine is not possible.

In the external world, she is the force of evolution, the erotic thrust at the heart of life. She is the intrinsic creative drive that fueled the big bang and continues to unfold as stars, galaxies, planets, life-forms, species, and also human societies, cultures and individual consciousness itself.

At every level of consciousness, the masculine and the feminine, Shiva and Shakti, steadiness and dynamism, awareness and bliss, stability and transformation, being and becoming, complete and complement each other.

Let the beauty of what you love be what you do. There are many ways to kneel and kiss the ground. RUMI.

For women especially, tuning into the goddesses is a way of homing in on aspects of our own life-energy that we may never have understood or owned. Celebrating the goddesses has the potential not only to tune us to our own sacred capacities, but also to help us work with the hidden and secret forces at play in our lives. When we can do that, we can literally harness these forces for our own transformation.

The word shakti means “power.” Shakti, the innate power in reality, has five “faces.” It manifests as the power to be conscious, the power to feel ecstasy, the power of will or desire, the power to know, and the power to act.

From a Tantric perspective, the inner masculine – Shiva – is the source of consciousness, awareness. But in order to act, to stir, he must take energy from the inner feminine.

O Kali, my mother full of Bliss! Enchantress of the almighty Shiva! In your delirious joy you dance, clapping your hands together! You are the mover of all that moves, and we are your helpless toys! RAM PRASAD.

The divine feminine knows that a birth sometimes demands a death, and that the personal self sometimes has to die if the world is to be made sacred.