Accelerate your Spiritual Development.Join the Watkins Wisdom Academy and learn from the best spiritual teachers in the world.

Leah Russell3 min

How to Discover the Goddess in You

July 7, 2023

by Christine Lister A Goddess is a divine being embodied in a feminine form, often with supernatural powers or attributes. Goddesses are often associated with virtues such as love, marriage, motherhood, fertility, wisdom or freedom. Ancient peoples in various civilizations and religions worshipped the Goddess in her many forms. However, the simplest manifestation of the Goddess was as Mother Earth. The Earth is the giver of life; the Earth nurtures and sustains life, and so can be likened to the powers of a woman — that of being the womb of creation, the supreme feminine creator. Myths are sacred traditional tales that explain the world and our shared human experience: stories with universal truths and wisdoms embedded in them. Myths answer timeless questions and remain as relevant today as they were to ancient civilizations. They are expressions of archetypes and archetypal patterns in which we instinctively know how the story goes: happy, sad; tragedy, triumph; love, romance, heartbreak; damnation, redemption. In the same way, we instinctively know our own stories. By interpreting them, intellectually or intuitively, we bring out their symbolic meaning, as we do with dreams.

The truth behind archetypes

Archetypes are like the DNA code for all humankind. They contain universal themes of human life, inborn models of people or personalities that play a role in shaping human behaviour. The concept of archetypes was introduced by Carl Jung, who suggested that they were archaic forms of innate human knowledge passed down from our ancestors, largely based on mythological figures. He described these archetypes as symbols of basic human motivations that drive our desires and goals, and which become personalised when they are part of our own psyche. Archetypes are a mirror into yourself, a psychic lens into your soul. The more you learn about the nature of an archetype, the more you understand yourself. The number of existing archetypes in you is not static or fixed. There are natal archetypes, ones that travel with us from birth to death. Then there are other archetypes we visit now and again but which are not enduring. Activation of a specific archetype of the Goddess in you is influenced by both inner and outer forces — by your innate predisposition; by your parents’ expectations of you; the era you live in; the culture you live in; the cultural stereotypes imposed on you; the phase of your life (puberty, menstruation, pregnancy, menopause); other people, events and experiences; and your spiritual practices and lifestyle. Archetypes are also contextual: if your life situation changes, a different archetype may be activated. Connecting with your Goddess is the key to finding your true self. A woman may go through long phases in her life where she embodies only one Goddess. More often, she will embody several Goddesses at any given time. They may overlap or combine; they may manifest continuously throughout her life or come and go; but typically, she will be drawn to those Goddess archetypes that best reflect her inherent energy and personality.

The twelve Goddesses in you

The potential of all these Goddesses is present in you, and in every woman. You are not limited to one Goddess or one archetype. You are all of them at some time in your life; you draw from them all. Some Goddesses are more dominant than others, but each of them is a gift to you. To fully embody your Goddess essence, the key consideration is whether or not she feels authentic. These twelve Goddesses encompass the whole woman, the fullness of femininity, and represent our instincts and deepest desires. There are the elemental Goddesses who embody the powers of nature, elemental forces that reflect aspects of the natural world like the Earth, moon and sun. Then there are the independent Goddesses who represent the element of self sufficiency and autonomy in the female psyche, who exist in their own right. There are also the relational Goddesses who represent the traditional roles of women that depend on them being in a significant relationship, and have the potential to become problematic. And finally, the transformational Goddesses who represent change, metamorphosis, passion and wholeness and encourage us to surrender to the power of flow. Goddess archetypes are female personality types that we intuitively recognize in ourselves, the women in our lives and in our culture. There is nothing inherently good or bad about a particular Goddess or personality type. Each Goddess archetype has both positive and negative traits. By becoming conscious of, and connecting with, your Goddess or Goddesses, their archetypal patterns and the powerful influence they have on your psyche, you will discover the key to the real you, to your reality. This is an extract from Goddesses in You by Christine Lister, which you can purchase here.

About the book: Using an intuitive blend of mythology, psychology, feminism, spirituality and women’s wisdom, this book introduces you to twelve Goddesses, each of whom relates to a feminine archetype, or archetypes. Together, they create the panorama of attributes and the fullness of the feminine nature that exists in human imagination and the common collective memory. Exploring the profiles of 60 notable women, it shows how these underlying unconscious archetypal behavioural traits are the powerful invisible threads that shape the roles and govern the beliefs, deepest desires, drives, motivations, actions and emotions of most women.