Archetype of the Goddess

Tony Crisp

A great deal has been made by some authors of the enormity of the difference between the man and the woman. Therefore the goddess aspect of our nature has been talked about as if it were something completely outside the nature of man, and the male god aspect as something foreign to a woman. Dreams do not portray human nature in that way. Of course cultures such as that in the west have passed through a largely male dominated phase, but in past ages the balance was the other way. The important fact is that we each hold the full potential of male and female within us, though physiologically in most cases we are polarised one way or another. However, the deeper one digs the more fully whole one is. That is why the feature on god/goddess above does not stress gender in any way.

Perhaps the oldest form of worship were feelings of awe felt in regard to the woman and her ability to give birth. She was seen asa goddess, and goddess worship was probably the first human religion. It recognised the miraculous power resident in a woman's body, the bloodiness and wonder of an emerging new life, and the close link this had with death. Such powerful responses are still very much part of our inner life. The goddess still walks among us. See: god/goddess.

The two following examples show how the goddess can appear in male dreams.

Goddess Shrine

A Goddess shrine in Sicily. Photo Tiziana Stupia

I am an explorer in a strange land. A woman went into a trance like state while dancing, and became the Great Mother. A Yogi could have union with her within the Divine will, as she was a Goddess, and he was then uniting with the Divine. B.S.

On a raised mobile platform a goddess stood. I loved her and flew to her, skimming above the heads of the people. I talked to her because her love for me allowed me to be close to her. She told me the only love I could receive from her was that which I gave to a human woman. In as much as I give love to a human female, she would love me. She was all women. She then dived into a lake and swam underwater. I flew above the water thinking we would dance a ballet together - her in the water, and I in the air. She did not appear though. Simon

As can be seen from the dreams, they show how an ordinary person can experience the divine through love of and with a woman. Therefore sex in dreams, and especially the full union of self with another often links with an experience of what is felt to be holy.

Another often overlooked link with the Goddess is that at a deep level burial itself is understood to be a return to the Great Mother, and entrance into her womb, and therefore a first step in the process of transformation and resurrection.

In Western Culture the worship of the Goddess is still alive in Roman Catholicism with the veneration of Mary, and the many shrines of great power that have developed around her. Lourdes is an excellent example with its cave and spring of water. Such shrines are often deeply linked with miraculous healing. But in earlier cultures the goddess was connected with fertility and was especially worshipped by women who could not conceive.

In Egypt the Goddess who incorporated many older beliefs was Isis. Like Mary, she is often portrayed with a child in her arms or actually suckling her baby, Osiris, a divine infant. (See: child archetype; great mother.)

Tiziana Stupia says, in her Goddess Spirituality, that, "Connecting to Goddess is, in my view, a vitally important aspect of modern woman’s quest for wholeness. Because we have generally been raised in a masculine-oriented society, we lost many of our own inherent feminine instincts and energy patterns. I find it inconceivable and saddening, for example, how many modern women are unaware that their menstrual cycles are connected to the moon, and how powerful and intuitive their moon time can be if they are open to exploring it. In our society, many women have a poor relationship to themselves, their body and each other, and the Goddess movement is partially also a way of healing these wounds."

But the goddess archetype has many aspects, as can be seen in the different presentations of her in different cultures. Kali for instance is both creator and destroyer, the mother who gives birth and the life that brings death.

Isis

Isis in one of her many forms

The goddess Athena was not only a warrior, the original shakespear or spear-shaker, but also was linked with cultural crafts such as weaving and metalworking.

{short description of image}

We see these features in many healthy and vigorous women and in some men. They display not only the nurturing and patient love given in motherhood, but also the fierceness of a tigress in defending their children and those they love. So every woman is a goddess when she births a child and gives herself to her baby with love.

But yet another aspect is shown of the goddess in the traditions of Persephone. She was known as the Queen of the Underworld, and therefore links with awareness of and exploration of the unconscious and the roots of human personality.

In order to understand this and other archetypes, it has to be understood that the worship of any deity such as Isis, Venus, Persephone or Mary, is an approach to those forces perhaps slumbering within us. Our prayer or worship calls upon that divine potential in us to awake and enter our waking life. We might do this in need or in wonder, or as part of our growth to wholeness. Whatever it is, the approach to the Goddess has been one of the greatest of succouring influences throughout history.

In today's world, whether we are female or male, we need the balancing power of the Goddess in our external life. Without this contact with the sustaining and nourishing forces of life within us, we can easily become dried up, sterile, intellectual but empty pods of life.

Useful questions are:

As a man can I recognise the goddess aspect of the woman who is my mate?

As a woman can I recognise the goddess aspect of myself?

How do I relate to the goddess?

Can I approach the Goddess with any feelings of devotion, love or wonder?

Archetype of the Lover

Tony Crisp

At a straightforward level, the dreamt of lover is an expression of all the emotional longing, sexual need and unexpressed sensual desires we have. The lover is an enactment in the virtual reality of our dreams of the enjoyment or pain we feel, of the perhaps secret desires we have, the unmet needs, the fears and agonies we meet in connection with intimacy.

As an archetypal image, it holds in it all the massive physical, racial and cultural forces that attract and bind two people together or tear them apart; all the degrees and levels of maturity in love; and also all the attraction and difficulties we face in meeting our own growth as a person.

Because the image connects with all our personal and transpersonal experience of love, it may well hold in it the trauma of childhood abuse, which may work out in a series of dreams or fantasies regarding the lover.

In Dante's Paridiso, Beatrice, the beloved, is the goal Dante reaches when he manages the journey through hell and purgatory into heaven. These hells and heavens we each carry within us in the form of fears such as losing the person we love; habitual attitudes such as that of feeling our partner is out to trick us; chips on our shoulder such as conflict with the society we live in or the authority figures we confront, and genuine childhood or birth traumas. Stanislav Grof reports many experiences of hell were met by people uncovering birth trauma in therapy. It may well be the need for love and intimacy that not only calls us to the journey of personal change and facing our inner hells, but also carries in it some of the strength and wisdom to help us meet the turmoil this can bring. This call and its innate strength are both invested in the image of the lover.

The Lovers

Because of this side of the beloved, one needs to remember that the lover can be understood as anima or animus figures.

Love, and therefore this archetype, also include one of the most fundamental of processes, that of hunger, absorption and growth or rejection. Whatever you love, whether a person, a book, a car, an animal or a flower, you take something powerful into yourself of it that changes you. The experience adds to what you already are. In so doing it enlarges who you are, what you can understand or express. It gives you a wealth of experience you did not previously have. Like food, you either absorb it or are poisoned by it. You either grow or are ill - perhaps even a mixture of both. See: affair; last example in adolescent; anima or animus above; example in abscess under body; examples in penis under body; lover under roles; sex and dreams.

Divine Lover

The archetype is fundamental in nature, and not simply generated by human activities. Nature itself displays love in the various levels of its expression. The sun pouring out its energy as it dies, penetrating and fertilising or energising the processes of the earth and bringing forth life is a form of love. The self giving and union of sperm and ovum are an expression of what, in our experience of self awareness, we call love. The opening of the sexual organs of a plant - what we call a flower - is an expression again of what humans call love. If a woman displayed herself in that way to a man we would say she was in love. All of these fundamental drives, urges and body transformations are part of the archetypal power of love.

But love is a river that transcends its natural or cultural boundaries. We all have links of sympathy, and we can think of these links with other people as a type of landscape. We each build and exist within this landscape of our own affections and tendencies. This landscape is within the strong wall of social and cultural customs and norms. But occasionally a leap is taken over that wall, beyond that landscape. She-wolves have been known to suckle and rear human children. Did the wolf leap beyond her own landscape to do this? Did her love and caring build the bridge from her landscape to the being of the child? Sex itself may form a link with another being through which we take in something of another landscape, another person, another living creature. Through it we may form links with somebody very different to ourselves. A human being may care for another in a way that takes them beyond the usual limitations of their family, sexual needs, financial gain, and cultural links. Love exists between humans and animals, humans and divine beings, humans a the beauty of the earth and life on it.

In the end the lover is a shape shifter who is male and female, animal and the fecundity of nature, the baby in our arms and the unseen presence we feel as our love expands beyond the boundaries of our senses.

Useful questions are:

What can I learn from the way I am relating to my dream lover?

Are there problems, difficulties or angers and resentments in the way of my union with the lover? If so what are they?

Honestly, what is my track record in loving?

Dare I really look at myself and say how I have destroyed or enhanced love with a partner?

Archetype of the Scapegoat/Martyr

As explained elsewhere, all of the archetypes are embodiments of behavioural stances that humans have developed over millennia, or are established patterns in nature. Such patterns were originally in a primal state, but over millennia have refined in extraordinary ways. Countless people have lived out the various modes of behaviour, everything from hermit to leader, saint to horrific and malefic destroyer. Each of these depict a direction each of us can go in making choices in life. Perhaps we only embody an archetype such as that of the sadist for moments, or perhaps our whole life is given to it. Whichever it is, our personal life and what we do, is still only a tiny portion of the immense range of behavioural possibilities even within that one stance.

P. W. Martin, writing in his book Experiment In Depth about archetypal influence and how it overpowers the person if they are possessed by it, says, 'A man so driven will not necessarily be self-regarding in his action. He may be completely disregardful of his own personal interests, a fanatic, a martyr even, for the cause. But archetypal energy is inherently ambivalent, as destructive as it is constructive, a dynamic which in the end is self-annihilating.'

The Scapegoat

The Scapegoat by William Holman Hunt

The archetype of the scapegoat has, like all the others, different aspects. One can be a martyr in giving oneself to a cause, or one can be a martyr in that one forever feels one is being abused or used by others. There may be a sense of being asked too much by those around you or by the events of life. In such martyrdom there may be a hidden belief that if one does what is asked, if one sacrifices ones life for another, then one will be appreciated and loved. If one gives enough, maybe one will be recognised and rewarded.

Hands

Parents, but especially mothers, often have a sort of inbuilt martyr at work in them. It is from this they manage so many years of self giving. At one side of the martyr archetype there is the power of enormous self transformation; the development of the ability to go beyond ones own personal needs, decisions and awareness and enter another life through action and love. The other side of the archetype is the dark world of fanaticism and self glorification. The seeking of pain or even death as a means to fame or renown or regard in the eyes of ones peers. Such might be the drive in suicide bombers.

Martin's whole theme in Experiment In Depth, is that there is a way between the opposites of being possessed by an archetype, or living a life in which there is a connection with wider energy or real individual creativity. Finding this balance is particularly relevant to the martyr archetype. See: processing dreams; therapeutic use of dreams.

Useful questions are:

Do I feel others have abused me?

Am I happily self sacrificing, or do I try to get acclaim or love in that way?

Am I ready to die for a cause - if so what cause or belief?

Tony's in print Books in the UK or USA

Books - Stories - Poems - Articles/Features - Links - One Stop Shop - Home