Let’s talk about the forgotten women

Re-membering our forgotten women, a heads-up about tomorrow and more!

Well hello, how are you?

It’s been a while since I wrote a post in this section of the feed (although we’re keeping up with regular Divine Connection and inspiration posts over on the paid part of this feed, and my gods this month’s Sekhmet post felt BIG!) while I’ve been getting a new website live. However the thoughts have definitely been percolating. Not least when it comes to the forgotten women of our past.

It started a few weeks back, when I went to visit the British Museum’s recent exhibit – Feminine Power: from the divine to the demonic.

It’s fair to say that I’ve been looking forward to this exhibit since I first read about it over a year ago, so was pretty much bouncing to actually view it… Until I walked through the door. And then? Well I was just a little disappointed.

It wasn’t the artifacts on offer that were the problem – the amazing statue of Kali above and original version of John William Waterhouse’s Circe painting were worth the visit alone. And the original copy of the Malleus Maleficarum, a book that led to the deaths of thousands, had a powerful enough effect on me to no doubt get a post of its own here one day.

But those things aside, the exhibition just felt empty, with very little true feminine power to be seen or felt in the signs, the stories, or the space around us. It was almost as though a group of people had sat around a table and said, “you know what’s hot right now? Feminine power, why don’t we run an exhibition on that?” with no real thought about how to really represent that.

Of course, it’s likely that’s pretty close to the actual discussion that happened. This is The British Museum after all, an institution famed for its treasure trove of ill-gotten gains from a colonialist past it seems strangely comfortable with – something I could easily rant about forever!

Empty feelings and distinct disempowerment aside though, there was something else about the exhibition that upset me even more: Just how many Goddesses were wholly missing from the room.

The Forgotten Goddesses

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting for a moment that every single Goddess from across the whole of time and space should have been represented (although if anyone has funding for a Goddess museum, PLEASE could I be involved?!), and nor am I complaining about the ways that some of the most potent Divine Feminine figures from across our world were represented.

But while it was great to see the Egyptian Isis and our friend Sekhmet, the Greek Venus and Circe, Rome’s Athena, the Hindu Kali, Buddhism’s Tara and Quan Yin, and Hawai’i’s Pele represented, this Goddess geek couldn’t help but notice just how little representation there was for the feminine power of these lands that I – and the museum – call home.

In fact, as a newbie to the Divine Feminine, you might well have walked away thinking the Goddess was a figure worshipped only in the depths of history, or somewhere to the far East or West of the exhibition.

After all, aside from a single panel on Sheela Na Gig, together with a carving taken from an Irish church, there were no mentions of the Goddesses once revered within this land.

No mention of Elen of the Ways, the woman said to have been responsible for the road system throughout Britain.

No comment on Brigid, an Irish Goddess so powerful that the Christian church had to name a Saint after her in order to lead locals to convert.

No depiction of Gwynhyfar, the Welsh sovereignty Goddess at the centre of the undying Arthurian legends.

And nothing at all on Beira, Scotland’s Queen of Winter and bringer of the cold to the far North of this land.

The list could go on; it could stretch even further if we were to include the Aborigine Goddesses of Australia or the feminine deities of the indigenous American and Canadian peoples too, all of whom were omitted as though those lands most heavily influenced by Britain’s colonialism had somehow lost all connection to the Divine Feminine.

And maybe they have. Isn’t the lack of powerful feminine role models part of the reason so many women today feel so disconnected from their own feminine power, the reason “The Great Mother Wound” is such a popular subject in the wellness industry right now, and one of the most potent reasons that patriarchy has been able to condition us all into submission over the centuries?

But here’s the thing; when these patriarchal systems overthrew the Goddess, she wasn’t the only woman who was cast aside and forgotten.

The forgotten women

It’s such a cliché to say nowadays, but there is a reason that the stories of our past are known as “history”. As the old saying goes, history is written by the victors, a group that was, certainly over the most recent couple of millennia, predominantly men – and largely rich, white, able-bodied, and straight passing men at that.

And when those victors are, for many centuries and in many places, the only ones taught to actually write? Well that becomes even more true, with the stories of other groups passed on through verbal traditions that are undoubtedly more susceptible to being changed or forgotten throughout time.

That’s something I found myself hugely frustrated with earlier in the year when the Scota, the Egyptian princess said to have become the mother of Scotland, was the focus of our Divine Connection materials(you can access that pack here). For all I read and learned about Scota – including the fact that stories of her were contained in some of the earliest British history books; and references to the burial site of a woman in Ireland from the time Scota was said to have lived, and including beads found nowhere else in the world except for the Egyptian tombs of pharaohs – every source I found referred to her as a mythical or “pseudo-historical” figure.

It's something I became furious with on a trip to Bamburgh Castle recently, when I learned that Bamburgh – once capital of the ancient kingdom of Bernicia – was named after Bebba, wife of Ælfrith and a woman I’d never heard of, despite having been to the castle on at least three school trips in my youth when I heard countless stories of Ælfrith!

And something that broke my heart last weekend when an unexpected trip through a village in Wiltshire led to me learning about four sisters beaten to death as witches after their arrival coincided with a local smallpox outbreak in the mid-1700s.

Because the more I follow this path of Divine Feminism, the more I learn about the women whose stories have been lost and forgotten over the centuries that patriarchy has held the reins.

I use the words “lost” and “forgotten”, but let us be clear, when it comes to the women whose stories we don’t know from the past, the reason for that is often anything but accidental. So often throughout history, women have been denied access to education and literacy precisely to prevent them from sharing their wisdom, their stories, and the power of their voices with those that would follow.

And though I’d love to think that isn’t something we need worry about today, in an age where so many have access to basic education and can so freely share their voices online, we all know only too well just how many marginalised voices are still censored right across the world – including on our own doorsteps.

This can’t continue.

We are the women that have not only voices, but platforms from which to broadcast those voices.

We live in a world where we have access to not only information from those in positions of power, but also from others who have their own powerful and important stories to share.

And as Divine Feminists, we find ourselves on journeys that offer information not only from academically approved sources of information but also from the very land beneath our feet and the blood within our veins. There are stories in all of those places that are waiting to be told, isn’t it time we give voice to them?

Because the more I think about this, the more passionate I become; and the more determined I find myself to re-tell those stories of the women that came before us – in our own lineages, on our own lands, and further afield too – and to encourage others to do the same in order to bring those forgotten women back into our consciousness.

Because I don’t know about you, I can’t help but think our remembering of them and their feminine power is a bloody important step to the re-membering and reclaiming of our feminine power.

This is a subject that the wonderful Yolandi and I talk about more in this month’s episode of Love, Light and Bullshit Bingo – available now on both Acast and YouTube, so please do check that out if it’s something you’re interested in.

Re-membering our stories

And meanwhile, if there’s a lost story or a forgotten woman – mythical, historical or otherwise – you would like to remember in this space then please feel free to do that in the comments below. I would LOVE to read and share in those stories.

Tomorrow’s gathering: A head’s up

A quick reminder/ head’s up that tomorrow sees the first Divine Feminist Community Gathering in its current format, and I could not be more excited!

We’ll be meeting over on Zoom at 19.00 UK time (14.00 ET/ 11.00 PT) tomorrow for a good chat about the current energies at play and how we’re all navigating these wild and wonderful times, before journeying together with the energies of this month’s Goddess Sekhmet and it would be wonderful to see you there.

For paying subscribers of this blog, the session is included in your subscription, and I’ll be re-sharing Zoom details tomorrow.

However, those who subscribe to the free version of the blog are more than welcome to join us too! Just head over to Cloud Studios and pay whatever you can afford to join us for the session. Can’t make it tomorrow? Not to worry, I’ll be sharing details of next month’s gathering with you very soon!

Some other news

• I’m hugely honoured and excited to share that The Divine Feminist is this month’s pick for The Unbound Press book club, meaning that I got to chat about the book and her first ten months in the world with the always wonderful Nicola Humber on The Unbound Book Club podcast recently.

• Meanwhile today I also shared details of Be The Bridge, a nine-week course on connecting more deeply with the spirit world and other unseen realms which will be starting on 19th October. You can read more about that here, and if you would like to get involved, sign up before 10th October to benefit from a 25% discount on pricing!

• Finally, each week over in the other part of this blog, I share a list of the things that have inspired me or made me smile in recent days – but this one inspired me so much I needed to share even further! This story about the former home of Ron Gittens in Birkenhead, UK made me both sad and incredibly joyous when I read it earlier today. An “upstanding and eccentric but lonely man” who lived alone until his passing in 2019, Ron covered the walls of his rented flat with his own depictions of art from throughout history, creating a haven his family now hope to turn into a museum and space for artists.

OK, that’s all from me for now. Thank you so much for reading, and for sharing this space with me. I’m already excited to see those of you who can make it tomorrow and to read the stories of your forgotten women.

Love,

Ceryn xx