The Maiden

Let's go a little deeper shall we?

Through the archetypal feminine lens to meet one of the most important archetypes a woman will ever meet.

Whether you choose to meet her or not, she will influence your life.

From the subconscious she will orchestrate countless opportunities for you to see her, hear her and feel her.

Have you ever of the good girl pattern?

Or felt this pattern's grip on your life?

Her origins rest in the hands of the maiden.

Like all archetypes, there is a conscious and unconscious aspect. A light and a shadow.

This work doesn’t change this truth, but it does allow a woman to understand herself and gives her the support and tools that are needed to meet this aspect of her psyche.

Looking at your life through this lens is one of the most powerful things a woman can do to reclaim her essence, to trust her body's rhythms and wisdom, and live life in accord with Truth/ the Feminine.

After exploring the split in my last post The Feminine, I want to explore this in more depth through the archetype of the Maiden.

The mere thought that this work would eradicate duality only further perpetuates the patriarchal conditioning that there is good and evil, right and wrong, and that a war needs to be waged in order for balance to be restored.

However, through a feminine lens, everything has a time and place, and can be met through the lens of wholeness. Not by discounting the harshness of existence, but rather having a tenderness to it, albeit with fierce boundaries, and anchored in love.

The feminine lens is what we are restoring and remembering.

Adopting this lens allows a woman to see the truth that nobody is coming to save her.

Whilst this may sound brutal and somewhat feminist in nature (which I would argue that feminism only further perpetuates the patriarchal conditioning, creating division) it could not be further from the truth.

This lens provides liberation.

So, I want to introduce both sides of the Maiden to you.

Both sides are needed.

Both sides are valid.

And most of all, both will be met on the journey if you seek my guidance.

I hear so many people speaking ill of the maiden energy, especially as women begin to age, to become biological mothers.

They speak of her carefree nature, and free time, but the truth is that if a woman has not done the work to nurture this aspect of herself, both sides of the maiden, then judgement (also known as jealousy/ envy) will taint the way she sees other women who are in this phase of their life.

I believe it is never too late to do this work.

A woman can meet the maiden within her at any point in her life.

In fact, I would go one step further to say that if she wants to be an embodied woman, and live in alignment with her soul, then she must go within and become the love that this aspect of her needed and never received. She must become the mother to her own maiden.

It is when the woman tends to the maiden aspect of her psyche, does she have the opportunity to align with her woman instead of the girl. It is then that she truly knows, with every fibre of her being, that nobody is coming to save her, because she no longer needs to be saved.

The mother is the aspect that naturally emerges when a woman tends to her maiden.

The maiden is commonly referred to as the archetypal phase women pass through when they are young up until the point that they have children. From childhood up until about 30 in our modern living standard. The maiden, in biological terms, is an unmarried woman without a child.

Some say that the Saturn return phase is correlated with this rite of passage, an archetypal threshold a woman crosses into archetypal mother.

But some women never spiritually evolve beyond this phase of their lives and remain Maidens, or displaying some of their characteristics, for the rest of their lives.

In Nature the Maiden can be seen as the bud, emerging, but not yet blooming.

The integrated Maiden continues the natural journey, from bud to bloom, whereas the wounded/ unintegrated Maiden stays trapped in the bud, stunted in growth, without having had the right growing conditions (the shade, the frost, the drought, or other weather conditions, or improper pruning, care or nourishment by the gardener)