The Conscious Feminine Rising—Call Her
Sophia, Ann, Buffalo Woman, Ma... Call Her whatever you like BUT CALL HER. Try not to get stuck on the little things: God, Goddess, Shiva, Shakti, Yang, Yin... Call Her. —Marion Woodman
"To struggle for justice is to struggle for connection, to be faithful to that most radical of all realities—that we are one."
—Carter Heyward, Our Passion for Justice, one of the Philadelphia Eleven—a leading voice in feminist theology
Dear friends—old and new, welcome to The Salty Crone. 💜
On January 20th, I did something exciting—I inaugurated myself with my new website that charts the next four years of simple sweet soul sanity. Have a look and join me. ✨🔥
Denial, exclusion, and silence of the female gender are divinely ordained, natural, or necessary.
This is the lie I (we) were (are) told—the patriarchal wound that injects images of trauma upon our intrinsic value—until I had a dream. The dream voice said, “Go to the Church. There you will find someone you can trust and talk to.” It could have been an auditory hallucination. That can happen when you’re broken-ass cold turkey—amid a dark night of the soul—neck-deep in female shame.
It was 1982, eight years after the defiance of the Philadelphia Eleven1 in 1974 when Carter Heyward led her pack and refused to be silenced by institutional barriers. Together, they broke ecclesiastical rules and were ordained as Episcopal priests. At the same time, in the Catholic corner, Mary Daly, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, and Rosemary Radford Ruether2 would rather burn in hell than succumb to patriarchal dogma. Satan did a happy dance when they reframed the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-12), to “Blessed Be Women who defy silencing within the Church.” Mirrored by #MeToo in Contemporary feminist movements that call out systemic sexism and abuse.
Beneath this lie lurk deeper, more insidious messages about power, authority, and not just a woman's place in spiritual life—but her right to choose—for her body and the bread and wine of her own existence and those she loves.
I was baptized into the Catholic Church. I bolted at 14, fleeing a litany of laws that left women with too many mouths to feed and wounds to silence. I vowed never to return—not knowing I could choose another spiritual path. The dream exposed cracks—breathing room to question, to see, and to step beyond a faulty paradigm's wreckage. During this strange, liminal stretch of my life, I lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with a single mom who smoked weed with her teenage son, a radical lesbian feminist on the path to becoming an Episcopalian priest, a Jewish midwife from the Boston Women’s Collective, and a Black Civil Rights Activist who also enjoyed pot. And then there was messy me at 25, newly sober, inexplicably applying to theological seminaries, in earnest to excavate my soul.
Trump demanded an apology from Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde after she urged him to ‘have mercy’ on LGBTQ+ people and migrants during a prayer service marking his shocking inauguration.
Referencing Trump’s claim that God saved him from assassination, Budde said, “You have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy on the people in our country who are scared now.”
Trump’s attack on Budde—dismissing her as ‘not smart’ and ‘uninspiring’—was predictable, a textbook reaction from a white man who equates authority with dominance and sees a woman in spiritual leadership as a threat rather than a voice of moral reckoning.
Blessing is not submission but standing—acting on truth despite opposition and consequences.
Patriarchal wounds run deep. Virtuous, brave voices throughout history have fought tirelessly to protect the marginalized, to recognize the sacred in all bodies—and to uphold feminine leadership—women who face male authoritarianism—who reject complicity and passivity. There is no going back—no assimilation—no returning to spaces that mock, condemn, or exclude LGBTQ+ people.
In Grandmothers of the Light: A Medicine Woman’s Sourcebook, Paula Gunn Allen reclaims the term cosmogyny3—not just as a theory of the universe’s origins, but as a spiritual and social order shaped by gynocratic values. Unlike traditional cosmogony, which is often filtered through patriarchal or neutral perspectives, cosmogyny values diversity, women, balance, and relational harmony as the structuring principles of existence.
Before contact with European patriarchies in the 15th century, many tribal societies across the Western Hemisphere were organized along gynocratic lines, where egalitarianism, personal autonomy, and communal well-being were not divisive but mutually reinforcing.
"Tribal society found a way to institutionalize both values, providing a coherent, harmonized, supportive social system that nurtured, protected, and was enriched by individual life and creativity."4
These communities valued peace, reciprocity, shared leadership, and the just distribution of resources—a model of both governance and spirituality.
A cosmogyny, then, is not merely a creation myth but a living system, guided by feminine wisdom, in which spiritual and material balance sustains the collective.
Paula Gunn Allen emphasized that our myths, whether consciously acknowledged or not, still shape cultural structures today. Stories—are not just remnants of the past; they are ritual maps, guiding us toward a lost spiritual home—toward gynocosmos.
Allen summons us to keep telling our stories.
I now see my dream as an initiation, my soul guiding a different understanding of what Church means. At 25, I took it literally: find a Church—something outside myself that I could trust. Like so many before me, I searched for spiritual sustenance in the house of the patriarchs, assuming my redemption—my belonging—could be found there.
Thankfully, the thread I followed was not woven by men hiding behind pulpits or crime lords weaponizing women, but by the women who went before—those who dared, who defied, who risked everything to break out of cages, shed shame, reclaim power, and demand a diverse world rooted in feminine love.
They wove their stories forward with courage—refusing erasure. In their defiance, they awaken the powerful feminine archetypes within us—needed now more than ever for spiritual guidance, protection, and the balance that sustains our collective wholeness.
Today, the same dream speaks with renewed clarity: "The Church is inside of you. Stay here—drink from your inherent value. This, you can trust. Welcome home."
The Feminine Archetypes Revolution—the patriarchy is Dead
We are reclaiming, embodying, and integrating feminine archetypes in revolutionary ways. Here are seven to energize for your self-discovery:
1. The Maiden → The Independent Seeker: She represents youth, new beginnings, and curiosity—naïve but full of possibility, unshaped by societal constraints. Examples: Persephone (before the underworld), Aurora (Sleeping Beauty), Ophelia. Today's Maiden is often a bold explorer, activist, or entrepreneur like Greta Thunberg or Malala Yousafzai.
🔹 The shadow is the perpetual "good girl" who is unfortunately unresourced with tools of discrimination to claim her sovereignty. But she is not bad or wrong—she can heal/mature.
2. The Mother → The Creator, Nurturer, Giver, & Community Builder: Women are redefining motherhood beyond biology—as caretakers, healers, and leaders of movements (e.g., environmentalists, doulas, feminist organizers). Examples: Demeter, Gaia, Mary, Tara, Jane Goodall.
🔹 The shadow is the “Martyr Mother”—women of the 1950s domestic ideal—expected to abandon their dreams to serve their families.
3. The Wild Woman → The Unapologetic Feminist, Rule-Breaker—Resists Domestication:
This archetype is more visible, vocal, and celebrated than ever. Women are reclaiming their bodies, sexuality, and instincts—dismantling shame around menstruation, menopause, aging, and desire. Mythic: Lilith, Artemis, Baba Yaga, La Loba. Examples: Patti Smith, Maya Angelou, and Frida Kahlo who lived unapologetically, painting her pain, love, and defiance of gender norms.
🔹 Shadow Side is the rebel without a cause—trapped in rage, reckless self-destruction, or performative rebellion. Examples: Amy Winehouse, Janis Joplin, and Billie Holiday—immensely talented women whose raw authenticity and fierce independence were undermined by pain, addiction, and lack of grounding, leading to their downfall.
4. The Lover → The Embodied & Self-Aware Woman with Deep Desires: The modern Lover isn't just about romance—she’s about embodiment, self-love, pleasure, and creative power. We see this in sensual movements, body positivity, and women embracing joy on their terms. Mythic: Aphrodite, Ishtar, Guinevere. Examples are Audre Lorde, Marilyn Monroe, Jane Fonda, Meryl Streep…
🔹 Shadow Side women exploited—who lose autonomy to capitalistic patriarchal fuckery.
5. The Queen → The Sovereign, CEO, & Political Force: Women have power in ways never seen before—leading governments, corporations, and social revolutions. The positive Queen leads with vision, integrity, and service, using power for collective uplift rather than personal dominance. She is confident, decisive, and rules with wisdom such as Hera, Cleopatra, and Queen Elizabeth I. Modern Examples: Melinda French Gates and MacKenzie Scott—women who transformed personal upheaval into a force for global good, directing their wealth and influence toward gender equality, education, and systemic change.
🔹 Shadow Side when a powerful woman is coerced to believe she is "cold, crazy, or difficult and needs a lie-down,” Gaslighting silences her authority, forcing her to doubt her instincts and shrink. Example: Britney Spears—labeled unstable.
6. The Sage → Seer, Mentor—The Female Thought Leader & Truth-Seeker: Mythic: Hecate, the Cailleach, Grandmother Spider, the Oracle of Delphi. Modern women are publishing, teaching, leading spiritual communities, and reclaiming lost wisdom traditions. The Sage is seen in podcasters, essayists, poets, and women challenging mainstream narratives. Example: Toni Morrison—her writing is a legacy of wisdom, offering generations insight into race, power, and humanity.
🔹 Shadow Side the detached intellectual—emotionally disconnected or dismissive of others’ perspectives.
7. The Mystic → Visionary Guide—Modern Priestess & Spiritual Seeker: Interest in intuitive wisdom, goddess, and ancestral traditions—integrates science, politics, and spirituality, refusing to let male dogma define her mystical practices. She is a bridge between worlds like Isis, Pythia, Mary Magdalene, and Hildegard of Bingen—devoted to the unseen.
🔹 Shadow Side the “Escapist Mystic”—disconnected from reality, using spirituality as avoidance and the “New Age Guru" who exploits followers.
The Feminine Archetypal Journey: Culminates with the Crone
A woman matures through these archetypes cyclically in moon time—by descending through the underground. Inanna descends, is stripped of her power, humiliated, and ultimately killed by her dark sister, Ereshkigal. She remains until she is revived to return as a different woman—who has integrated her darkness.
Her story mirrors the deep cycles of a woman’s life—loss, betrayal, heartbreak, death, grief, and being stripped of prior everything—old identities, followed by resurrection with embodied wisdom. This myth speaks to the Maidens’ betrayal, the Wild Woman’s exile, the Lover’s heartbreak, the Queen’s fall, and the Crone’s cumulative return as a wise protector who contains multitudes and becomes the container for all prior archetypes.
The Crone has walked through many a fire and earned her scars and wrinkles. She does as she pleases. She carries a sharp sword, a warm heart, and a belly full of laughter. Marion Woodman is the perfect example of a Crone.
“Once the question is in consciousness, the answer is constellated in the unconscious... the answer often lies in the unconscious waiting for the question to be consciously asked. [...] What has to be let go to make room for the transformations of energy that are ready to pour through the body-soul? —Marion Woodman, Bone: Dying into Life
🔥 I appreciate your comments on any part of the essay, especially this last part.
Does a woman, a writer, an artist, or a creator of any kind need to suffer to create meaningful art?
“MIND THE GAP.”
This warning blares over the speakers in the London Tube: Wake up. Pay attention. Danger ahead. We are in a collective gap now. The noise of it is inescapable. It’s here, and it’s dangerous.
Throughout history, activists, feminists, prophets, great artists, and poets are considered highly sensitive people—attuned to imaginings beyond our ordinary senses. This is true today—and we are not immune to suffering or real danger. Quite the contrary.
We feel it.
We listen to it.
Our art is informed by it.
A vision appears in the dark—often fleeting. It carries inherent goodness—a longing to weave solid threads toward a collective solution.
Not to spiral in the darkness of the gap. But to taste the bittersweet emotion of moving forward together—often with blindfolds on, wrists chained, tears bleeding—yet kissing their vision close.
They spoke, wrote, painted, danced, circled, led, collaborated, rested, cooked, fed, protested, and held each other forward….
They knew that fixating on injustice alone is a death drug—depleting, paralyzing.
The gap is terrifying—a dark abyss that threatens to swallow us whole. Maybe the antidote is already here. In our creative imagination—our ability to act upon it. Not to escape. To bring the unseen into reality—for others to touch, feel, and connect anew.
It is easy to forget that we are threaded to something ancient, holy, and beyond ourselves.
Mystics call this the language of the soul—whispers in the night—closing the gap.
Like the Philadelphia 11, who made Bishop Mariann Budde's prayer service possible—there is not a single woman who did not mind the gap for a new reality to take shape.
Ordination. Liberation. The empowered feminine archetypes break through every cultural restraint—transforming reality.
Not without risk or standing in the fire together—refusing to be prey.
As Audre Lorde said:
"Your silence will not protect you."
Not now. Not ever.
So No, we’re not going to submit.
Not to constitutional threats.
Not to injustice.
Not to the psychotic crime lords who mistake oppression for order.
✨ What is the vision that is calling you forward?
🔥 What is the archetypal fire that lights you up?
with love,
Prajna O’Hara, The Salty Crone
Leave a heart 💜 comment. Listen. Circle for a while—for your creative imagination is the antidote.
copyright@PrajnaOhara.com
P.S. My last essay Weaving Our Story Forward invited you to contribute your favorite books to our feminine canon—to replace the “dead white man’s curriculum.” Thank you for contributing your favorite titles.
shared: Why Does Patriarchy Persist?5 Keep them coming.The Philadelphia Eleven: eleven women who were ordained as Episcopal priests on July 29, 1974, at the Church of the Advocate in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Their ordination, conducted by three retired bishops and one resigned bishop, was not officially sanctioned by the Episcopal Church at the time. This historic event ignited widespread debate and eventually led to the official recognition of women's ordination in 1976. The group included women from diverse backgrounds, but the majority were white. They were: Emily Hewitt, Alla Renée Bozarth, Marie Moorefield Fleischer, Carter Heyward, Alison Cheek, Betty Bone Schiess, Merrill Bittner, Suzanne Hiatt, Jeannette Piccard, Katrina Welles Swanson, and Nancy Hatch Wittig. All eleven were ministers, professors, mentors, authors, and leading voices for women in ministry, gender discrimination, bridging the intersection of gender, sexuality, and a feminist theology of liberation. Carter Heyward, a prominent member of the group, Authored several influential books, including A Priest Forever and Touching Our Strength: The Erotic as Power and the Love of God. She advocated for LGBTQ+ inclusion in the church, being one of the first openly lesbian priests in the Episcopal Church. Alla Renée Bozarth authored The Book of Bliss and A Journey Through Grief, offering spiritual guidance, empowerment, and healing. Jeannette Piccard known as a high-altitude balloonist, became the first woman to enter the stratosphere in 1934, earning her recognition as a pioneering scientist. She used her platform to advocate for women's ordination and worked as a priest to bridge science and faith. Suzanne Hiatt was a driving force and the key organizer in the movement for women's ordination.
Mary Daly, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, and Rosemary Radford Ruether didn’t submit to power—they rewrote the rules, reclaiming theology as a space where women don’t yield but lead. They worked tirelessly to flip the power dynamic rather than soften it.
Grandmothers of the Light: A Medicine Woman’s Sourcebook, Paula Gunn Allen (1991) “Cosmogyny: A word you won’t find in the dictionary yet. I built it by changing “cosmogony",” which is defined as “a theory or story of genesis and development of the universe, of the solar system, or of the earth-moon system, from the Greek kosmogonia, the creation of the world,” to “cosmogyny” (Greek gyne, “woman”). For my purposes, “cosmogyny” is more accurate. It connotes an ordered universe arranged in harmony with gynocratic principles… prior to contact with European patriarchies in the 15th century.
Grandmothers of the Light: A Medicine Woman’s Sourcebook, Paula Gunn Allen (1991) preface.
Carol Gilligan, Naomi Snider, Why Does Patriarchy Exist?
Thank you for sharing @Wild Lion*esses Pride from Jay
“Does a woman, a writer, an artist or a creator of any kind need to suffer to create meaningful art?” This is the question that jumped out at me. All beings suffer –and often it’s our suffering that alerts us to the need for personal change. Suffering can be a doorway into what needs our attention. Suffering can morph, it can texture our hearts and grow our sense of compassion.
Like you, Prajna, my first experiences with the nature of God was exposure to all that was masculine; and as a female I was supposed to “know my place,” and my place certainly wasn’t a seat at the table. It was only in my fifties that I began to embrace what I’d always known, but had been afraid to speak: Women are free and sovereign souls, baptized in the blood of the feminine cycle and purified in the heart of a divine mother who heals and inspires. To that end, I pray to a Mother/Father God; allow myself to be taught and held by the forest and rushing waters; and learn the essence of growing old with grace from the Grandmother Oaks.
The vision that calls me is that of the sacred crone, the enchanted old woman, who know that the trees hold our stories until we are ready to tell them. I have both suffered and celebrated to get here and no experience, no person and no thing was ever wasted in forming who I have become and am still becoming.
Sending you love and appreciation for the good work you do in the world.