The Divine Feminine Beyond Gender Roles

Having The Empress as my birth card while being an agender neurodivergent fat traumatized lesbian makes for some... interesting spiritual thoughts.

Oftentimes when I see talk of the Empress or any representation of the divine feminine there's a focus on motherhood, on nurturing qualities, on kindness. Even worse, older materials or more Wiccan materials often focus on being with men, how women interact with men

If the lesbian label doesn't make it obvious enough, I don't exactly have close interactions with men. Outside of work, I have one friend who's bigender and I talk to my dad. Men just aren't part of my life in a large or significant way- I have too much distrust from trauma and I'd just rather hang out with other sapphic women.

But even aside from that, I don't... exactly fit into that idea of it. That idea of nurturing and kindness, of a motherly nature... just isn't me frankly. I'm more Queen of Swords than Queen of Cups, y'know?

Recently, I got the Sasuraibito Tarot and this deck has what has to be my favorite Empress card ever. For once, she's not pregnant (don't judge me I have a major fear of pregnancy ok), and she's not just shown as a kindly force. She's sexual, she looks like she would probably fight you if you messed with someone she loves. Seeing this card got me thinking: what do I even consider the divine feminine?

Now... I can't lie. The concepts of the divine feminine and the divine masculine aren't really a thing in my work. There's divine womanhood and divine sexuality and divine love but... what does feminine and masculine even mean? There's feminine men and masculine women. The men are still oppressors in our culture, even if they're more subject to toxic masculinity, transphobia, and homophobia. They're men, and at the end of the day still safer than masculine women.

Lately there's been the ever-disturbing trend of demonizing and insisting that butch and gender non-conforming women somehow benefit from misogyny. Lemme tell you, as a newly realized femme I wasn't treated better when I was butch. I was, shockingly, treated worse. The shocking is sarcastic, anyone who grew up gender non-conforming would know that being gnc means you get bullied by boys and girls alike.

When I speak of divine womanhood, I speak of all the ways womanhood is shown. Butch womanhood is divine, femme womanhood is divine, loving women is divine, sex between two women is divine. Some women push back, some women thrive with computers and debate. Not all women are in touch with their emotions and that should be just as celebrated in divine womanhood.

Now, yeah, nowadays people talk about how divine feminine and masculine are elements of us are but I'm not gonna lie, I see this as a fucking cop-out. It's a way of admitting that not all women are quiet and emotional without questioning your beliefs.

What about nonbinary people? How do agender people fit into this? Trans people in general? And don't act like we don't exist in ancient practices- it was shown and discussed in many ways in mythology. The terms may not have been what we use now, but it's there. Transness has always been a thing, and acting like the divine don't know this is bullshit.

When you remove the idea of gender roles- the idea that femininity must be quiet and emotional and in turn question the idea that masculinity must be in control, must be cold, you inherently destroy the concepts of divine feminine energy and divine masculine energy. Those concepts only exist with gender roles.

So in my practice, I refer to the divine womanhood, the divine nonbinary, the divine void, the divine manhood. No longer are Aphrodite, Demeter, and Hera the only examples of divine women. We open the floor up to the Theai such as Athene, Artemis, Persephone, and more who were never quiet, who were never this idea that women were only fertile and motherly and empathetic. We open it up to the warrior women, the ruling women, the women who are multifaceted.

And we destroy the idea that maleness must be toxic and that men can only exist by harming and using women. This should be a lesser goal to liberating women, honestly, but I know for some they must think of this. By doing this we can question Zeus, we can discuss how Achilles loved another man, how Poseidon did the same, how Dionysus was trans, how Apollo was a poet and artist and far more emotional that Artemis.

Talking about the divine beyond our gender roles is necessary. Not just for feminism or social justice points, but to better ourselves. To better our understanding of the divine. To show those who avoid paganism because they feel they don't fit that no, no you do. The gods know. They know you, they know your experience.

#divinewomanhood #transpaganism #gender