Power is our sacred birthright, yet many of us have disowned it due to the destructive ways we have felt and witnessed its misuse on the planet. As women, we often view “power over” or warrior~achiever mentality as good enough reason to stay away from power. However, we walk very differently on an empowerment path when we are fully encouraged to be with our soul as the source of our power.

The soul itself is described as feminine by many. She is wild, willful, chaotic, earthy, sensual, sweet, empathic, merging, deeply emotional, passionate and compassionate. The soul could also be described as shamanic. She dives deep into the earth on her human journey, gathering jewels to take back to Spirit, which can be seen as masculine. The soul does not care about rules, dogma, or right and wrong, as she seeks pure experience through all the realms and layers of life in a body. The cycles of life and death, joy and sorrow, change and stability are the natural shamanic realms of the soul, and of the Feminine, once she is reconnected to her inner wisdom.

The priestess archetype is found in all religions throughout time, yet has been lost somewhere in our psyches for the past few thousand years. She is the vehicle through which the Divine Feminine, or the exiled Goddess, is returning to earth. Women everywhere are awakening to their Divine and Sacred selves, no matter what she is called. The priestess path is one vehicle for this return, while the shamanic path is another. Priestess consciousness teaches us to live our lives in a sacred way in service to the world, while shamanic consciousness teaches us about the natural cycles of death and rebirth, shadow and light, human and divine. Both show us how to embody both human and the divine through spiritual inititation and embracing transformation for the greater purpose of living our deepest and most powerful sacred purpose.

Now at the Turning of the Ages, when all wisdom is being resurrected, and we are re-integrating what was exiled in patriarchy, it all seems to fall into the same domain. Women’s mysteries, earth-based spirituality, sexuality, and the mysteries of death and rebirth all fell into a shadow or taboo realm in patriarchal times. The power of women is equal to the power of sexuality is equal to the power of the ancient mysteries schools that understood the ways of sacred power and life-force energy.
With some courage, we are finally able to take these mysteries out of the dark. We can reawaken to our natural wisdom inherited but disowned, due to atrocities such as the Holy (? ) Inquisition, massacres of women, Templars, Cathars, and more recent genocides and crusades against indigineous peoples everywhere. We can also reclaim our loss of soul connection to our bodies, resulting in centering ourselves from our neck up, denying the life-force energy that enlivens us and makes life worth living.

The shamanic priestess seeks to embody the deep feminine and the human earthwalk with so much compassion, passion and full-chakra aliveness that she magnetizes heaven on earth, once again calling in the spiritual forces of transformation with grace, dignity and beauty. As conscious women, we are calling back our right to be spiritual beings. We are calling back the power to call on the Divine, to do ritual and ceremony and magic, to journey as shamans and bring back the visions to our communities for manifestation of our dreams of a new earth. We call back the best of the ancient, into the present to build a new future. Like Inanna, Shamanic Queen Goddess of Ancient Sumeria, we to return to our inner knowing, as she too was called to do in her own time. Inanna made the descent and learned to consciously walk between the worlds. This journey gave her the humility and compassion to embody spirit in human form and thus unite heaven and earth, known to some as the Sacred Marriage.

At this time when our world is threatened by severe destruction and political upheaval, many of us find ourselves feeling powerless about what possible difference we could make to support the evolutionary changes called for on our beloved Gaia. The concept of the Shamanic Priestess offers each of us a way to find the inner peace, wisdom and guidance so needed for the next part of our individual and collective journey.

Initiations of the heart, such as conscious death & rebirth, sacred marriage work, embracing our shadow selves and our inner masculine, telling our shamanic life stories, journeywork, and embodied sacred sexuality take us deeply into our core belief systems which block our true natures from full expression. By expressing, forgiving and integrating all parts of who we are in our fullness, the power we have been missing in our lives emerges naturally. The Shamanic Priestess takes her rightful place on earth, as The Compassionate Transformer.

The various stages of Initiation, and finally Emergence, can result in the full empowerment of a woman as a priestess whose temple is the everyday world. She exerts her influence in all of her roles—as daughter, mother, lover, career woman, neighbor and in every interaction she has, moment to moment. At last, the divine feminine and the divine feminist are joined. Finally, we can embrace a movement of soul and spirit, human and divine. We can include the very essential factors that make the new feminine mysticism grounded and practical, yet imaginal and sacred.

Women’s spiritual work calls for full embodiment if we are to co-create a New World with Spirit. We can no longer afford to be disembodied victims of a worn-out patriarchal system on any level: physical, economic, political, social or spiritual.We are consciously calling back power we may have never known in this lifetime or for thousands of years. As many have predicted for these times, it is women and the feminine that can have the greatest impact.

The new priestess walks everywhere and does everything within the ordinary flow of her life. The difference is that she is fully aware that where she walks is sacred, what she does is sacred and who she is, is sacred. The shamanic priestess “priestesses” the World.

written by Anyaa McAndrew

I heard an angel cry within the stone so I carved until I set him free - MichaelAngelo