Seasons of Womanhood: Women’s Archetypes
The Seasons of Womanhood if a 9-month Rites of Passage program designed to bring us into the fullness of our womanhood.
If you didn’t yet read The Women’s Wheel of Life and Our Blood Rites we suggest you do that first
Last time we reached out to you we talked about the seasonal wheel of life and how this relates to the blood rites we women go though as we grow. This forms the basis for the map we are working with. The next layer holds the thirteen women’s archetypes.
What are Archetypes?
Think of archetypes as templates for human beings. They are patterns of thought, feeling, behavior and energy that hold the essential code for a certain way of being. When each individual human expresses an archetype we each do it in our own unique way but there is some essence that remains recognizable as as expression of that particular archetype.
Archetypes are the characters in the human drama. They are represented over and over in our mythology, stories, movies and lives. The Hero, the King, the Warrior, the Lover, the Fool, the Hermit are some we are likely familiar with. In cultures with polytheistic religions, the many gods and goddesses often represent core archetypes of the culture.
We each carry numerous archetypes, some are well developed in each of us, others over or under developed, some are expressed in their light side, others from their shadow side. Becoming aware of which archetypes we carry and how we express them can help us to become more conscious of who we are, how we are in relation to others, why we are here and what we have to offer the world.
The Mother Archetype
Our Lady of Guadalupe
The quintessential women’s archetype is the Mother. In the Christian tradition this archetype is often expressed as Mother Mary or Our Lady Guadalupe. In the norther European pre-Christian Celtic traditions Danu is the mother goddess. In ancient Greece Demeter was the mother goddess, called Ceres by the Romans, who was responsible for the changing of the seasons.
The Mother archetype in her highest form is the essence of nurturing and unconditional love. We all express this archetype to varying degrees through birthing and mothering children, nurturing, teaching, caring for children of others, birthing and nurturing a creative project or business endeavor. There are many ways to create something, bring it into existence and do what you can to help it grow and evolve in to it’s own unique, wounderous being. This is a healthy expression of the Mother archetype.
All archetypes have a shadow side, they may be over or under-expressed. The Mother archetype is very often over-expressed in women in our culture. This looks like us continually putting the needs of others before our own to the point of exhaustion and overwhelm. We see this frequently in our patriarchal society that has been designed to keep women busy mothering so they don’t have the time or energy to step into their true power. The mother archetype can also be under-expressed which may look like someone not caring appropriately for a child, animal, project or themselves.
Thirteen Core Women’s Archetypes
The thirteen archetypes we are working with as a map in the Seasons of Womanhood program come from the book “The Women’s Wheel of Life” written by Elizabeth Davis and Carol Leonard. The authors are midwives who, after 65 years of combined experience, interviewed over 100 women to distill the thirteen archetypes and arrange them developmentally around the seasonal wheel of life.
In working with these archetypes we can identify which ones, and their associated blood rites, have not be honored in our lives, which ones we are currently living and which we may be transitioning toward. Then we can craft rituals and practices to help honor what has not been, mark what is and smooth the passage into what is to come.
Over the course of the 9-month Seasons of Womanhood program we will dig much deeper into these thirteen archetypes, here we offer a brief overview of the thirteen archetypes in their full, healthy expression. Later in the program we will explore the shadow aspects of the archetypes.
The Maiden Season - Innocence
The Daughter: is innocence. She is delighted by life, filled with wonder at the world and full of promise.
The Maiden: begins to blossom into her sexuality with the blood rite of Menses. She is alluring, and growing in her autonomy.
The Blood Sister: begins her emergence into society and separation from the family by bonding closely with other young women. Her blood rite is First Sex.
The Mother Season - Nurturing
The Lover: seeks unity either with a lover or a passion. Her discernment and clarity growing as she searches out an authentic life for herself.
The Mother: is the Creatrix. She surrenders to the Mystery in order to bring forth the new whether it be a child, a creative project or a business. She nurtures it with all her heart. Her blood rite is childbirth and child death.
The Midwife: is a mentor, a facilitator. She helps others do what she has now mastered through her surrender to the Mystery.
The Thirteen Archetypes of the Woman’s Wheel of Life
The Matriarch Season - Power
The Amazon: with new found freedom her vitality grows. She is independent, wild, exploring sexuality and her masculine side.
The Matriarch: leads with compassion by asking others to bring the best in themselves. She is noncompetitive, secure in her harvest and has reckoned with her failures. Her blood rite is peri-menopause.
The Priestess: turns inward, towards her spirituality away from. the concerns of the material world. She descends into the inner realms to access wisdom from beyond.
The Crone Season - Wisdom
The Sorceress: wields her spiritual power wisely. She transmutes fear into love and is in service to love. Her blood rite is menopause.
The Crone: is the caretaker for society, a model of how to be through her humor, storytelling and how she lives her life.
The Dark Mother: is the gatekeeper of death, she midwives herself through this final transition. She distiles the essence of life down to the bone with grace and dignity.
The Transformer
In the center of it all is the void, the Mystery. The place we may go at any time of life when something needs to die and we are to be re-born. The place of darkness at the center of it all where we are transformed into whatever needs to be next. We go into The Transformer between death and birth and whenever our soul’s call for it.
Making it Your Own
As you read the descriptions of these archetypes take some time to reflect on how they relate to you and the journey of your life. We will be working in much more depth with these archetypes throughout the Seasons of Womanhood program and you will have the chance to share with other women who are in a similar phase of life. For now it may be helpful to reflect upon the following questions:
Which archetype resonates most strongly as a reflection of where you are in life currently?
Which archetypes have been under-expressed in your life?
Which blood rites have not been fully honored?
During the Seasons of Womanhood program we will facilitate your deeper exploration of these questions and co-create ritual together to honor blood rites that have not been marked (or have been dishonored), sink deeper into your current phase of life or step over the threshold into the next archetype on the wheel.
If you have not yet registered for the upcoming free webinar where we will explore all this together you can register below.
We look forward to being in circle with you!