Reconnecting to
the Divine Feminine
Sing and celebrate joyfully, daughters of Zion, for I have arrived!
My Shechina, the Divine Feminine Presence, dwells inside you,
announces the Holy One, Blessed be He.2
As the long night of December 21, 2012, approached, the “end” of the Mayan calendar loomed, and many people were uneasy, interpreting that date as the end of the world. Special rituals and meditations were created for the so-called event. December 21 came and went without catastrophe, but created in its wake the mass awareness of a global shift that New Agers had long acknowledged.
Six years later, the shift continues to progress and the struggle is palpable. The world feels unbalanced, and in this climate of rapid change, individuals are finding it difficult to maintain balance as well. We have caused much of this unbalance ourselves. Technology revamps itself constantly. The specter of global warming hovers over us. Bizarre natural phenomena such as devastating earthquakes, tsunamis, and excesses in rain and drought have become commonplace. We are rapidly depleting resources such as oil, coal, and the ocean fish that much of the world relies on for food. Even water is becoming a target of conflict. Man-made threats of nuclear annihilation still exist. Terrorism and extremism dominate the news, and wars continue to rage around the globe. Slavery, sex trafficking, and other abominable abuses run rampant. Fear is exploited.
Yet amid this darkness, turmoil, and crisis, a light is shining and growing brighter. A new world order is upon us, and we are witnessing its difficult birthing process. People are becoming aware that the choices we make as individuals and societies have a far-reaching impact, and not just in the negative consequences listed above. Positive ideas and intentions also create energy fields and the power of these fields is just beginning to be studied and appreciated.3 We are becoming more conscious of the fragility of existence, and how the choices we make now will determine our collective future, for better or for worse.
We each have a mission to fulfill: to help illuminate the darkness of our times in our own unique ways. Illumination, a higher level of consciousness, will bring us to the realization that we are all connected, that we are citizens of one world. We are at a crossroads in history. If we do connect to higher consciousness we will enable a shift to Oneness, a world of partnership, cooperation, and mutual empowerment.
The ultimate realization of Oneness consciousness is central to kabbalistic meditation, prayer, and study. Kabbalah shares the belief, with many other spiritual practices, that the restoration and rehabilitation of the value of the feminine is necessary for the shift to Oneness to be successful.
The divine feminine archetype had prevailed for thousands of years until civilizations throughout the world changed radically to a culture of male dominance. Some cultural historians, such as Dr. Leonard Shlain, mark the stages of civilization as occurring in two-thousand-year cycles.4 By this calculation, we have reached the end of the Piscean Age which began about two thousand years ago. Symbolized by Pisces, the two-fish zodiac sign of duality, this age has been marked by masculine consciousness, hierarchy, power struggles, and the mistaken belief in survival of the fittest as irrefutable dogma.5 Other historians like Riane Eisler place the transition to a male-dominant society at about three thousand years ago with the fall of the advanced civilization of Crete.6
This last epoch of history has been one of intense conflict, which in the end benefits no one and hurts us all by taking lives and depleting precious resources. The upheavals and uncertainties we are experiencing now are the labor pains of the birth of a new way of living. If we can rise to the challenges that face us we will usher in the age of Oneness, which some call the Aquarian Age, and kabbalists call Olam Ha Ba, the World to Come. In this new paradigm, the feminine is equal partner to the masculine. This partnership of masculine and feminine ranges from healing unbalanced parts of ourselves and our relationships, to changing what society values at its core.
Whether we are genetically male or female, we all have masculine and feminine aspects. According to the Torah, the original human was created in the image of God as a united male/female being.
In Kabbalah, masculine and feminine are relative terms. Simply put, masculine connotes bestowing or giving, and feminine, receiving. We are all feminine in relation to the generations that have come before us; we received from our parents. We are all masculine in relation to our children, giving to, nurturing, and providing for them. In relation to God, however, we are all collectively considered feminine because we are the Creation, the vessels, the receivers of God’s light.
Because the Creation in Kabbalah is symbolized by the Divine Feminine, the highest manifestation of the partnership of masculine and feminine is symbolized by a divine marriage of the Infinite Creator with us, the Creation. The marriage is a symbolic union of the Divine Masculine and Divine Feminine.
The shift into Oneness consciousness is challenged by the necessity of holding opposites in harmony both within ourselves and in relationship. As opposites, masculine and feminine desires are often in conflict and can be the source of many imbalances at the personal level. In simplest terms, receiving is often much more difficult than giving. How can we feel safe to open ourselves to love at every level from love of self, to our fellow beings, and to the Divine?
We must develop the strength as individuals and societies to hold opposites, paradoxes, and conflicting purposes in a balance that respects and serves both sides.
The Shechina
Kabbalists refer to God’s presence in creation as the Shechina, 
,7 from the root meaning “to dwell.” In Hebrew, nouns are either masculine or feminine. Shechina, a feminine noun, is considered the feminine expression of God. Shechina is also called the Indwelling Presence, the GodPresence inside each of us.
The transcendent GodPresence in the rest of the universe has many names in Judaism. These include the Creator, the Infinite Light, the Holy One, Blessed be He (Kadosh Baruch Hu abbreviated K”BH), the Upper Waters, the Name, YHVH, Master of the Universe, Elohim, Father, King, God.
Shechina is also a complex concept. The metaphoric, poetic language of the most studied and revered kabbalistic text, the Zohar (discussed in the next chapter) refers to Her in many ways. These include:
Divine presence, divine feminine, indwelling presence; the Partzuf (face) of Nukva (NOK), the archetype of woman, the Daughter, the sefira of Malchut, the Vessel, the Earth; Water, the lower waters, feminine waters; prayer (tefilla); the people Israel; Shabbat (the seventh day), Seven, the Hebrew letter Zayin/
; the Creation, the Moon, the Mother, the Bride, Queen of the world, Sukkat Shalom (shelter of peace), and in certain contexts the names of God: Adonai, Elohim, and YHVH Elohim.
Like positive and negative ions and the north and south poles of a magnet, the opposites of masculine and feminine attract each other. Their attraction is the basis for the tension of all opposites, the flow of life, and underscores every chemical reaction in our bodies. The concepts of Divine Masculine/K”BH and Feminine/Shechina are spiritual reflections of this longing. When trying to decipher the abstract symbolism, poetry, and imagery of kabbalistic writings on the nature of masculine and feminine, it may be helpful to recall the basic underlying concept of masculine as giving and feminine as receiving.
Summary of Symbols for
Divine Masculine and Feminine
|
masculine |
feminine |
|
Creator |
Creation |
|
Bestower |
Receiver/vessel |
|
Kadosh Baruch Hu |
Shechina |
|
Heaven |
Earth |
|
Sun |
Moon |
|
Soul |
Body |
Although we refer to the K”BH as the divine masculine and to the Shechina as the divine feminine, no human form or any other physical form is ever attributed to either. These terms simply help us understand, to some degree, ideas that are totally beyond our scope of comprehension.8
In ancient cultures, the concept of divine feminine was not abstract. Throughout the ancient world, this archetype was worshipped as the goddess, often a fertility goddess related to the renewal of the earth and agricultural abundance. Statues and temples for honoring and praying to different goddesses were widespread, even in ancient Israel. When civilization shifted from the chalice to the blade thousands of years ago, the belief in and honoring of the goddess and the earth she represented was replaced by belief in a transcendent male god in heaven: a king, judge, father, and often vengeful warrior. The divine feminine and the qualities she embodied were no longer valued. Many cultures including Judaism outlawed goddess worship, and as a consequence, feminine attributes ceased to be honored and cherished.9
The ancient kabbalists were a very small group, certainly not in the mainstream, for they believed that in order to bring about the the Olam Ha Ba, the age of Oneness, equality of masculine and feminine was essential. The Zohar, in its symbolic and poetic language, attributes all the evils in the world to the lowered status of the feminine.10 Kabbalists sought to restore the balance by looking to heaven through prayer and meditation. They continued to value the divine feminine as the Shechina and sought to elevate her by bringing down the light of the spiritual into her physical world. They believed that eventually, this process of repairing the world would culminate at the highest levels as the ultimate Oneness, the marriage of the divine beloveds, the K”BH and Shechina. Because Oneness was their ultimate goal and ours, the use of kabbalistic symbolism is ideal for the mind/body practices that follow.
It is time to resolve the long history of hierarchy, the ranking of masculine as superior and feminine as inferior. Such hierarchy is no longer sustainable. Embracing and integrating our feminine attributes, no matter our gender, is crucial for personal healing and for manifesting our unique gifts. The feminine embodies presence, strength of the heart, the nurturing of the earth and all its creatures, gratitude, creativity, depth, intuitive, inner wisdom, mutual empowerment, and peaceful cooperation. If we can learn to value these qualities in ourselves and others to the same degree we value such masculine qualities as competition, doing and achieving, activity and productivity, we will bring balance and healing to ourselves. As the energy field of our personal wholeness connects with that of others, it spreads and grows. Many believe that through this process a new world order of interconnected Oneness will eventually be born. Non-kabbalists also share this view.
The Sufi author Llewellyn Vaughn-Lee writes that it is time to give birth to our own wholeness and “awaken the soul of the world.” He continues: “What is being born within the soul of the world is a quality of consciousness that comes from a union of masculine and feminine. We need to reclaim the feminine so that it can unite with the masculine in a new way, through which a new consciousness can be born.”11
Riane Eisler writes, “The new view is of both men and women using our unique human facilities to support and enhance life … and rather than being just a utopian dream, a more peaceful and egalitarian world is a real possibility for our future”.12
We are at a crossroads in history. The outcome is uncertain and our choices are critical in determining the future. The end of the Mayan calendar and the dawning of the Age of Aquarius also correspond to a major transition in kabbalistic time. The Hebrew calendar, which counts from the “birth of Adam,” is now in the year 5778, approaching the end of the sixth millennium. According to the Zohar, each day of the symbolic seven days of the Genesis creation story corresponds to a thousand years. The six weekdays of the story symbolize the six thousand years we have had to prepare for the seventh millennium. Ideally, the seventh millennium will usher in the cosmic Sabbath, a time of actualized perfection, when masculine and feminine and all opposites will coexist in mutual respect, peace, and love.
Each of us can help facilitate the birthing of this new way of being by healing ourselves. We can begin by strengthening ourselves both spiritually and physically to receive, hold, and transmit more of the powerful light of higher consciousness necessary to elevate the soul of the world.13 The Kabbalah/energy practices presented in Part 2 approach body/energy and Kabbalah/soul as co-creators of this paradigm.
2 Zecharia 2:14, special reading from the prophets for Chanukah, which I recited at my Bat Mitzvah.
3 A discussion of this research can be found in The Field by Lynn McTaggart.
4 In The Alphabet and the Goddess Dr. Leonard Shlain postulates that the rise of alphabetic literacy and writing shifted the principally right-brain, intuition-dominated, preliterate agricultural societies that venerated the goddess and feminine values to a left-brained, analytic, patriarchal, and mysoginistic world.
5 A thought-provoking discussion of Darwin’s error in thinking can be found in The Biology of Belief by Dr. Bruce Lipton.
6 Riane Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade, 56. Eisler postulates that it was repeated invasions by war-loving tribes such as the Indo-European Kurgans that drove those invaded to create weapons to defend themselves and shift their allegiance to virile warrior gods.
7 Hebrew is read from right to left.
8 At some deep level, we probably all do have an understanding of this concept, maybe even a remembering of our original Oneness, for our cells reflect divine marriage in the double-standard helix of our DNA.
9 An excellent discussion of this shift is found in The Alphabet and the Goddess by Leonard Shlain.
10 The "diminishment of the moon" and its repurcussions is discussed in Kabbalistic Writings on the Nature of Masculine and Feminine by Sarah Yehudit Schneider.
11 Llewellyn Vaughn-Lee, Signs of God, 97.
12 Riane Esler, The Chalice and the Blade, 73.
13 A fun way to strengthen the masculine/feminine balance in yourself is by enjoying your Hebrew lunar birthday in addition to your usually-celebrated solar-year birthday. Because the Hebrew calendar is based on the moon, Hebrew birthdays vary from year to year in relation to solar birthdays. Find your Hebrew birthday at chabad.org. This lunar birthday may occur before or after your solar birthday. If the birthdays are six days apart, for example, celebrate the entire span as your personal union of sun and moon, masculine and feminine. On the date exactly halfway between the two birthdays, you will be in perfect balance.