The Center for the Divine Feminine and Serpentina
Launches Their Fall Seminar Series, The Goddess is Alive!
By Valerie Sher, Ph.D.,
Executive Director of the Center for the Divine Feminine at I.T.P.
As the director for the Center for the Sacred Feminine, I am often asked, "What is the Sacred Feminine and why is there a center for it?" In response, I often return to a defining moment of my life, when I realized there was a Feminine principle of consciousness and a feminine face of God and I wasn't aware of it or connected to it. I began a lifelong search for knowing this aspect of myself and for the divine guidance of the Feminine in my spiritual life. And I hear my own discovery mirrored in the stories of students arriving in faculty offices in tears, asking "Why didn't I know about this before?" I hear many women and men speak of remembering and reclaiming something that has been lost.
The Center for the Sacred Feminine is born of the cry and longing for feminine images and symbols; for feminine knowledge and honoring other ways of knowing; for being open and receptive and intuitive; for circles rather than hierarchies; and the resacralization of the body, feminine consciousness, and celebration of women. It is a time of recognizing the need for the healing powers and wisdom of the Feminine. Women, and men, are longing for balance and for the Sacred Feminine to reclaim her rightful, healthy, reverent place as Virgin, Mother, Wise Woman, Lover, Warrior, and Saint.
In criticism of the Sacred Feminine, some feminist colleagues suggest the absence of such dogma and instead believe in viewing people as genderless and without labels. And I can see the importance of this concept as the words feminine and masculine are often divisive and can instill defensiveness rather than openness. And in my work with the masculine and feminine energies through embodied movement, some participants remark they are both masculine and feminine, or neither. Or they are in a constant flow somewhere in between. In some cultures, it is considered divine to have such qualities. In some cultures, more than two genders exist. But I hear in the psyches of men and women, that there is a need to reclaim the mythical, psychic, spiritual imagery and essence of the Feminine. Only then can we move into the totality of the whole, emptiness. But we can not go there without reclaiming Her first.
Regardless of spiritual tradition, gender, or sexual identity, more and more are recognizing the need for balance, connection, and right relationships with others and the earth. Balancing qualities like allowing, being, softening, opening, receiving, and intuiting are juxtaposed with doing, defining, toughening, directing, and rationalizing. All polarities are important and none should be discarded. In reclaiming my Feminine, I thought I had to throw out the Masculine until I realized those qualities are what also give me strength and success and the ability to envision and manifest my dreams. I've allowed them to soften and be informed by the essential nature of my Feminine essence, rather than a false Masculine self, which was cut off and imbalanced. I am more connected to the beautiful qualities of the Feminine that feed my soul, such as nurturing, being in relationship, being receptive, and allowing things to unfold; and there is a different quality of being that I feel when I come from there.
In response to this call, (which more and more of us are hearing all the time) the Center for the Sacred Feminine (CSF) at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology was formed. The Center for the Sacred Feminine is excited to join with Serpentina in the production of the Fall season of The Goddess is Alive! seminar series starting September 10. Our common goal is to foster education, research, embodiment, and practice of the Divine Feminine in the lives of women and men.
The Goddess is Alive! lecture series was started in Oakland in 1998 by Serpentina, an organization and website for women-centered research founded by Dianne Jenett and Judy Grahn to bring forward and support the research, projects, and social activism of women who are weaving together threads of scholarship, origin stories, practices, methodologies, images, rituals, movement, music, and videos to reveal, activate, and celebrate the Sacred Feminine in the 21st Century. After over one hundred presentations in Oakland, the successful series is moving to Palo Alto and is being co-sponsored by CSF.
The season includes a series of nine classes/workshops featuring the most recent work of leading women scholars, ritualists, authors, and artists. It offers both well-known and up and coming scholars focused on the Sacred Feminine a chance to offer their work and build a professional network and spiritual community with which to educate, inspire and support each other.
The fall seminar series offers a framework of the Sacred Feminine from a theoretical perspective and through the lenses of a number of spiritual traditions. . It focuses on the power and wisdom of feminine spirituality. The next season (Winter/Spring) will build on theoretical perspectives and various spiritual traditions, while including presentations/workshops on a variety of spiritual and healing art practices. Cultural, historical, and political perspectives will be included in a broad spectrum of themes on the Sacred Feminine.
The Center of the Sacred Feminine also offers scholarships for research in the area of the Sacred Feminine and women's studies that includes a spiritual element. The Center's web site offers research of past awarded scholars, a suggested reading list, and local events/global tours.
The Goddess is Alive! Seminar series began September 10 and runs alternate Monday nights (7-9:30 pm) through December 17. A Healing Circle, led by Vicki Noble, is also included as part of the series, on Saturday December 15 in San Francisco. September presentations include "The Power of Women's Blood" by Judy Grahn, Ph.D. (9/10) and "The Sacred Feminine in Sacred Grove Rituals" by Dianne Jenett, Ph.D. (9/23), an ITP alumna. In last week's opening presentation, Judy Grahn used her "Metaformic theory" and photographs to display powerful new perspectives of menstrual rituals, which she describes as the most priceless and sacred aspects of culture (see www.metaformia.org for more information). Dianne Jenett draws on her ten years of research on earth-based community rituals of renewal and regeneration primarily in Kerala, India where women are frequently the ritual specialists who bring the auspicious energy through their bodies on behalf of their families and communities.
Other presenters include Vicki Noble, M.A., Ana Perez-Chisti, Ph.D., Leilani Birely, M.A., D’vorah Grenn, Ph.D., Kate Wolf-Pizor, M.A., Chief Luisah Teish, Ph.D. (Hon.), and Kayleen Asbo, M.M.
