Women, creativity, and intuition.
The womb is the absolute symbol of the divine feminine and by being open to the symbolism that it carries we can embrace our innately intuitive wisdom, our creative life force, and our cyclical, shape-shifting nature as wombyn.
I often hear from women that their biggest struggle is to embrace ALL of themselves. That there is always some aspect of compartmentalizing themselves or denying certain aspects of themselves that they sense within. The challenge is that we are multifaceted creatures, and the facets are often contradictory and polarized in nature. We are not taught that all of this energy is equally valid, and that it can not only thrive in this contradictory nature cohesively, but that the embrace of all of these facets as dependent on one another is crucial for our wholeness, and empowerment.
This is the power of working with Archetypes, Goddesses, and the symbolism of the cyclical nature of the womb. It helps us drop into this truth, and learn how to truly embody the vast energy of our soul that flows through us.
Women are innately intuitive and I often refer to women’s power as dancing between the worlds. When I speak of dancing between worlds, I mean that women have an innate ability to track and sense the unseen. They have an innate ability to drop into the subconscious and they have an innate awareness of the unspoken. They have a strong sense for the energy that is moving within them and around them, whether it’s collective energy, cosmic energy, earth energy, or their energy.
The womb is also quite literally the portal between spirit and earth.
When a woman conceives a child, she is gestating spirit into physical form and birthing it on earth. The womb is the center of creation, and when raw creative energy moves through us, whether it’s to paint, to dance, to write, to build a dream, birth a child, or to pursue a calling, it is spirit that is moving through us, asking us to be a portal to gestate this energy into physical form.
Know that regardless of whether you have, or were born with a physical uterus, does not matter. We were all born from a womb, and we all have this energy center within us. The womb holds the metaphorical and symbolic wisdom of dancing between the worlds, and our cyclical nature as women, and anyone can tap into this.
Through a cycle of menstruation, there are four literal and symbolic phases that define wombyn.
The follicular phase is after a woman stops bleeding to before she starts ovulating. Then there is the ovulatory phase, which is roughly three days long and this is the only window when a woman can get pregnant. Sperm can live up to five days (some say seven) and the time when an egg can be fertilized is just within that short window. The third phase of the cycle is the luteal phase and this is the time after ovulation, before menstruation. And lastly, we have the menstrual phase, when the woman is actively bleeding on her period.
This four-part wheel is symbolically aligned with the energy of the four seasons. Spring, summer, fall, and winter. And each phase carries the same energy as the seasons. The follicular phase is spring, the ovulatory phase is summer, the luteal phase is fall, and the menstrual phase is winter.
When you think of the energy of each season, spring is a time when the days are getting longer, we are coming out of the hibernation of winter, animals are coming out of nesting, everything is green and budding, and new life is everywhere.
Come summer, everything is in full bloom or full blossom. The days become longer than the night. Solar energy is strong. We are often the most extroverted, active, playful, outgoing, and busy this time of year. Kids are out of school, vacations happen, and everything’s life force is at its peak.
Fall comes, and we often feel ready to slow down, we are feeling the pull to begin to retract back into ourselves. The sun is setting earlier, the mornings and evenings are getting the fresh crisp air. It’s time to harvest and prepare for winter, the leaves are falling off the trees, and everything is becoming bare. It’s a time of year when the veils are considered thin, and we have the most access to connect with our ancestors, those who have passed, and the other world.
Winter is a time of hibernation and letting go. The nights outlive the daylight. It’s cold, it’s cozy, it’s quiet, and it’s a time to rest and be home by the fire. There is a sense of stillness and unplugging that occurs in the winter, and without this, we wouldn’t be recharged come spring.
You may have heard the term cycle syncing as it’s becoming more and more popular these days. It ultimately refers to synching your lifestyle with this hormonal and energetic cycle I’ve just described that happens month to month within menstruating women. Today I will not be getting into the physical aspects of this, but I think these concepts are very important and crucial to a woman’s wellbeing and I’d like to refer you to the book In The Flo by Alisa Vitti for a deeper dive on all fronts.
The focus today will be on the spiritual and energetic aspects of this wheel, and illuminating this wheel's reflection of the heart of divine feminine energy.
We live in a world that pushes us to go, go, go, and be “on” all the time. Rest, relaxation and self-care are shamed as lazy, and our worth is very much tied up in our amplitude of thriving and accomplishment, in a very active way. Women are not designed to function like this. It’s not entirely healthy for men either. Men do have a 24-hour circadian rhythm that they cycle through day by day where women are on a much different system, but men also carry the divine feminine within. This cyclical nature is happening all around them, even if it’s not physiologically, and they can tremendously benefit from this insight.
Our innerspring or follicular phase in a spiritual sense is a time of dreaming. It’s a place where creative energy builds to a heightened state leading to the ovulatory phase but the dreamy, creative energy is more centered in the crown chakra than our sacral or womb center where the creation actually takes place. It’s dreamy, it’s ethereal, it’s not in tangible form, it’s in the idea realm. Our crown is open to spirit to speak to us and it’s as though handfuls of tiny seeds are being sprinkled lusciously within our beings.
When our ovulatory or inner summer phase comes, this is when our ambitions are at their heights, and the seeds are coming to life. The ones that stick are taking root. We are in a very active state where our will is naturally flowing. We have not only the energy to take action and make things happen but we are inspired to. The biggest misconception of will is that it’s of force and discipline but if we honor our cyclical nature this energy will naturally rise and move us in full force when the time is right.
The luteal or inner fall phase is a time of listening, and deep reflection. The veils are thin between our conscious and subconscious minds. This is a time when it’s important to slow down and listen. We reflect on the seeds that arose, the actions that were taken, where we have come, and we can see with new eyes a different perspective of clarity.
When our menstrual phase comes it’s a time of utter stillness and release. It’s a time to rest and it’s ultimately a ceremony in itself of letting go, of death and rebirth, and surrender. It’s not a time to dissect or analyze, it’s not a time to take action, it’s a time to simply let go. Know what you’ve come to realize, be grateful for what’s been, know what you may do differently next time, and then simply let go. When spring comes around again, it’s a time of new beginnings. We do not carry any of the baggage from the past cycle forward. We have learned from our mistakes, we know what worked and didn’t and it’s time to start anew and cycle through another layer.
This cycle can be focused on creating, our relationships, our healing journey, or anything really. Each cycle we go another layer deeper. We sometimes work with brand new seeds and sometimes we stick with the same theme for some time until a chapter closes.
When we are on a healing journey the spring is a time of truly sensing all the potential of new life. It’s passion rising for a new beginning leaving our past and pains behind us. When summer comes we are in full celebration of life, we are present with life, we are soaking up what we have, and are actively participating.
When the luteal phase comes around there is often a deep reflection and access to healing whatever arises simply by the illumination that happens. It’s feeling the depth of our story, our beliefs, our perspective of the world, and life and our situation. It’s becoming deeply aware of our patterns, and habits, and it’s often a raw time within the wheel where we feel the depth of our emotional nature.
When the menstrual phase comes it’s time to release. To let it move. To leave it behind. To see it, thank it, grieve or cry if needed, forgive it/yourself, and let it go. When spring comes, we are back to the pure potential of new life. Letting the old go, being right here, right now with all the possibilities to come.
In relationships, it’s the same. Our libido and craving for connection, our flirtation, and sensual self is rising in the spring, peaks in the summer, and then a more introverted, self-reflective state begins in the fall. In the fall we need more time for ourselves, we need more alone time, we need more introversion, and in our menstrual phase, we need absolute stillness, solitude, and rest. When spring comes, it starts again.
Another point to keep in mind when regarding relationships, community, and our social life is to know libido is often translated to “life force,” which means that regardless of our relationships being intimate or platonic, our passion for life is building and rising, with a libido to connect and sensually connect with life. It’s extroverted, open-hearted, and active. Where fall and winter we recluse back into ourselves.
The root of the word hysteria is deeply tied to the womb and I believe hysteria comes when were are unable to honor this cyclical nature within us.
Women, particularly their emotional nature is blown off as invalid, dramatic, or blamed on hormones. The thing is that our hormones do very much affect our emotional, and mental state, but we often feel strongly, not irrationally. The truths that live within us are amplified. They boil over the surface. It’s important to understand that the less we honor our cyclical nature, especially the medicine of the fall and winter, these emotions build and build because we’ve ignored them and haven’t given them space to speak to us and move through us, and eventually they boil over with building intensity until we do.
Creation and heightened intuition or even action are not confined to one or two of these phases. It’s different forms of these things that take place. Different perspectives of these things take place. This is the dancing between worlds. The first half of the cycle is a rich experience in our bodies, on this earth, in this life, and in the second half, we dance with the unseen. We dance with our subconscious, with a deeply spiritual nature, with a deep intuitive knowing, while in the first half we are intuitively and spiritually open but it’s almost energy outside of us dancing with us when the second half is a deep dive within. To ourselves, to our past, and our ancestral lines.
This is where the womb is a symbol of the divine feminine. It’s a symbol of the cyclical nature that teaches us that the feminine is far from rigid - including being stuck in a four-part cycle. Shifting 90 degrees each quarter. The womb is the symbolism that teaches us the way.
Our initiation into becoming a woman is our initiation into this cyclical nature.
Our initiation into womanhood is when we get our first moon, our first period, or our first menstrual cycle. Our bodies completely change, hormones are running amok, and we are thrown through a great initiation that is teaching us of the divine feminine, its innate intuitive wisdom, its ability to dance between worlds, and its shape-shifting nature. We are never taught this and teenagers are often labeled as dramatic, and emotionally wild, and ungrounded. This is their initiation into womanhood, to learn what it means to dance with this wheel and it's very challenging when you are given no preface to what is happening, how to adapt to it, let alone how to honor and cherish it as your magic as becoming a woman.
Motherhood is the next initiation, the next life cycle of the womb. (This can be metaphorical if you don’t physically have children). Pregnancy is symbolic to the luteal phase, and birth and postpartum are symbolic to the menstrual, inner winter phase. It’s the spring and summer that lead to conception, calling that dream or spirit in, and it’s the luteal phase that gestates spirit into being. And in winter, comes birth. The ultimate surrender and letting go. The actual birth is in surrender and letting go. It’s not active. It’s the stillness, that allows us to settle into the void of the darkness that is pure intuitive magic.
The mother has so much to teach us about our creative life force. That the passion of spring and summer plants the seeds, but the time and depth that takes place in the fall and winter energy takes up a lot of space and is quite contrary to the pressure, and ideology western society puts on us.
Then comes the wise crone. The wise woman. The elder. The Crone slowly stops hormonally cycling. She is initiated as the keeper of the wisdom of dancing this cycle. Her body no longer needs to take her there, she has learned the ways and is now ready to be the guide, the mentor, and to pass on the knowledge that lives within her.
The crone has come to deeply understand that it’s not just her body that is cycling. She has come to understand that the earth is cycling, the cosmos and planets are cycling, the moon is cycling, and the sun is cycling. Everyone around her is cycling through their own wheel of life, and the chapter of life they are in. She understands the collective is cycling, the ancestors are cycling, and the stories of trauma, grief, new life, and new love are cycling all around her. She has learned to dance with not only her multifaceted, cyclical self but in she’s learned how to dance her own wheel and harmonize in relationship to the cycles all around her.
This is the divine feminine wisdom. As women, tapping into art, and creation, and our intuition, it is this shape-shifting nature that we are seeking to master because this cracks us open to the raw creative life force of Life. It teaches us to channel it, to be a portal of gestation, and to bring it to life. Whatever that art form or whatever that wisdom is that is moving through us.
The womb is the journey, and it's the symbol. It’s the access point to embody our feminine wisdom in its full form.
