by Mara Branscombe
Exploring the Maiden, Mother, Sage, Huntress, Mystic, Lover, and Queen archetypes will support you to understand the patterns and behaviours inside your current self—all the while revealing how and why you form relationships, choose careers, and digest mind– body processes. Ultimately, we are a combination of all the female archetypes and can access each one at any stage of life. When we can also incorporate and infuse the elements—earth, water, fire, air, and ether—into the alchemy of our healing mediums, we generate an infinite source of energy.
The archetypes provide an open canvas that you can use to awaken intuition and understand how your mind works. The creator inside you will reveal the past narratives and present-moment activations to help you attune to living life like a creative adventure. The unbounded wisdom contained within the archetypes will deeply support your journey. Like reflection points inside the compass of your experience, you will receive striking epiphanies revealing where you are, where you are going, and how to get where you want to be.
It’s time to call in the energy you desire. It’s time to live the life that has been waiting for you. It’s time to burn the limiting roles, smash the preconceived boxes, and liberate yourself from societal norms and trauma of the past. Like gateways into a deeper understanding of self on the path towards freedom, may the archetypal insights and practices in this book form an inspiring, creative journey for personal and collective healing. Understanding and embodying these portals will trigger an archetypal response and naturally, with commitment and curiosity, activate a return to your essential self.
Maiden: Underworld Explorer
Wildly magnetic, authentic to the core, the maiden’s passionate approach to life is infectious. But her shadow keeps her stuck in people-pleasing paradigms, distorts her sense of innocence, and robs her of her youthful spirit and creative power. Learn how to unlock fear-based choices; how to ignite your sense of purpose through creativity, forgiveness, and courage—this is the maiden’s homecoming.
Mother Earth: Matrix
The mother archetype is steady, abundant, and holds a positive lifegiving force in all her actions. Her shadow comes through as overgiving, co-dependent, and depleted. Learn how to embrace a radical self-love to heal body-image trauma, release lack, and generate abundance. Heal your mother’s ancestral line and allow the earth mothership within you to finally flourish.
Sage: Water Healer
The wisdom of the sage archetype streams through the development, discernment, and transformative abilities inside her emotional process. Her healing power and intuitive channels flow through the element of water. The sage’s shadow work is to no longer hide her true emotions, to feel connected to her community and experience her sense of belonging in the world. Learn how to transform wounds into wisdom and accept the full expression of your emotions as a superpower, not a weakness.
Huntress: Fire Generator
The huntress fully embodies the warrior spirit. She knows her worth and unapologetically shares it with the world. She intuits when to activate her visions and how to push through challenges. Her confidence allows her to follow through with her life goals. The huntress’s shadow avoids vulnerability and tends to rely on herself entirely to complete her life’s mission. Find your true inner power, shed old egoic body and mind narratives that make you play small in life. Discover how to wisely fuel your intentions, passion projects, and dreams to avoid burnout.
Lover: Air Alchemist
The lover embraces infinite confidence and sensuality to its fullest capacity. Her mission in life is to experience the deepest forms of intimacy possible. The lover’s shadow shows up in the ways she creates and attaches to drama in her relationships. Learn how to adore and adorn your body to meet the goddess you are. Receive insight into where you push away intimacy in fear of exposing your true self. Overcome fear of intimacy, dismantle the complexities inside your relationships, and activate the deeply satisfying nature of the embodied, sensual lover.
Mystic: Ethereal Time Traveller
An alchemist of spirit and magic, the mystic is an advocate for selfsovereignty and can access higher levels of consciousness through her intuitive gifts. Her work is to release self-judgement to be a clear channel to both the human and spiritual planes. Unearth your inner healer and shed toxic build-up that is blocking your potential to evolve in body, mind, and spirit. Develop your intuitive channels and share your unique voice with the world.
Queen: Universal Thought Weaver
The queen’s perspective is vast and wide. She understands where she needs to put her energy to get what she wants in life. She makes bold decisions for the betterment of humanity. Her shadow lurks in her attachment to perfectionism, being overly critical, and always needing to be right. Learn how to mature your leadership by accepting faults in yourself and others. Dismantle the overbearing desire for perfectionism and refine the voice of the higher self to be channeled through to your external expressions. Letting go to let in truth and knowledge is the queen’s work.
Each archetype is a steppingstone on the winding river of life’s great adventures. To reclaim faith and embrace life as a living ceremony, an adventurous journey, a wild heart experience, an awakened sense of mystery, and a remembering of magic is to embody this precious life you have been given. The feminine archetypes will support you in every single process, at every stage of your life. It is like the recipe handed down from your spirit grandmother—you are supported, you are not alone, you are ready for this journey. You are ready to evolve into the intuitive and life-giving feminine force that is uniquely yours.
Guided by the insight of soul work within the archetypal lens, enhanced by daily creative pursuits and perspective shifts, the embodied divine feminine reclaims her birth right towards wholeness, worth, and a wild, adventurous life force. She walks the path of inquiry, depth, joy, and soul purpose.
The visionary in you is alive and awake to the creative compass within. Navigating, tracking, planning, and seeing all experiences—past, present, and future—as vital steps across the river of her life journey. Her ultimate destination is freedom to live the life she knows aligns with her soul essence. The intuitive within understands that both her shadows and her light forces are her greatest tools and her most essential resources. Walk your newfound freedom home into the joy-infused, soul-retrieved life that is authentically yours.
This is an extract from Sage, Huntress, Lover, Queen by Mara Branscombe, which you can purchase here.
About the author:
Mara Branscombe is a mother, writer, yogi, artist, teacher, mindfulness leader, ceremonialist and spiritual coach. She is passionate about weaving the art of mindfulness, self-care, creativity, mind–body practices, and earth-based rituals into her life and work, and she has been leading community and ceremony since 2000.
If you'd like to see Mara in person, she is teaching at
Alternatives/London on 19 August, 2-5 pm, and at
Findhorn, Scotland between 21 and 26 August.
marabranscombe.com
