Female archetypes
An introduction to connecting with your ever-changing, cyclic feminine nature.
When Carl Jung describes woman as both “one and many,” does a part of you smile and nod your head? This female plurality is the gateway to many mysteries…
I’m very happy to have the opportunity, via this wonderful site, to write about the 13 female archetypes that make up the Wheel of the Priestess. This excellent tool will help you explore your divine feminine!
The Wheel of the Priestess
It was when I was studying the mysteries of the divine feminine that I began exploring this wheel, which was given to me by two American priestesses: Sianna Sherman and Ashley Turner.
The wheel presents twelve female archetypes and their corresponding zodiac signs, to symbolize the twelve months of the year. These twelve archetypes represent gateways and bridges to key aspects of your personality.
We all have an inner “warrioress” who defends and protects us, a “lover” who encourages us to love life to the full, a “muse” who wants to release our creativity and self-expression, etc.
At the center of the wheel is the 13th archetype: the Priestess.
Who is the Priestess ?
The Priestess is you in your entirety, at the center of your life. She is the powerful, intuitive woman that you are – a woman in contact with the universe, who listens to messages from invisible worlds, who recognizes the signs and lets herself be guided by her heart and by her body.
She is linked to the cycles of the seasons and the cycles of the moon. She is on her path of evolution, learning, healing and awakening. She represents the divine in you, which wishes to be expressed through you.
To use this wheel, every month, the Priestess explores a female archetype within a zodiac season. In doing so, she explores a part of herself so she can be infused with its magic. ✨
What is an archetype?
Generally speaking, archetypes are symbolic figures, icons or models that act on our psyche in an individual and collective way. “They are instinctual images that are not intellectually invented,” explained Carl Jung. They are easily found in fairytales and stories. They determine a particular behavior, a role, or personality traits. For example: the heroine, the queen, the princess, the villain, the tyrant, the magician, the wise man, etc.
What is a female archetype?
Female archetypes are universal figures that enable women to identify with themselves and bring facets of their personality to the surface, to awaken key aspects of their life. They are feminine icons that encapsulate a powerful energy that is able to join us together, to reunify parts of our personality that have been forgotten or destroyed, and to put together the fragments of our soul. These icons hold a magic that awakens innate feminine gifts and talents that are often forgotten, hidden, or have remained secret. Reactivating these archetypes that are sleeping within us takes us on a journey to the heart of our divine feminine. By looking into our depths, we can awaken the mysterious and mystical goddess that lies within each woman.
Woman is “one and many”.
Carl G.Jung
Archetypes sometimes act on us simply by looking at an image or illustration, or listening to a story that carries their message. They live through our invocations, our invitations, our rituals, our prayers and our realizations.
The archetypes of the Wheel of the Priestess were chosen for the universal truth they embody. They are fair, balancing, pluralist archetypes, through which each woman can recognize herself and embark on a path of creativity and spiritual freedom, filled with colors, poetry, depth and wisdom.
The 13 archetypes that make up the wheel, and which we will explore together each month in this section, are :
The Muse, the Mother, the Wild Woman, the Healer, the Sacred Wife (or Lady of Balance), the Alchemist (Queen of Death), the Wise Woman, the Midwife, the Visionary, the Mystic, the Warrioress, the Lover and the Priestess.
An acceptance that the feminine is multi-faceted is both essential and liberating. It’s like the moon, which reveals a new aspect of itself in the sky each night. It does this quite openly and makes no apology for being different each evening, because this is its nature. Understanding this metaphor is crucial to understanding feminine energy, whose nature is cyclic and ever changing.
My understanding of the divine feminine began here, simply by incorporating this notion.“I embody my feminine self fully when I accept and incorporate my cyclic and ever-changing nature.”
Exploring different archetypes is a journey that awakens the source of this cyclic energy!
It is perfectly normal for a woman to be full of energy, adventure and passion one day, then to want to slow down and stay at home another day. It is perfectly normal to feel full of vitality one day, then exhausted the next. Just as a storm can come suddenly at the end of a beautiful sunny day. Just as the wind can blow away the clouds. This ever-changing nature is characteristic of feminine energy, of life-creating energy. This energy flows through our wombs every month, preparing them for the possibility of giving life. It makes the moon dance in the sky when night falls. It makes the seasons turn so the earth is abundant. This is why embodying one’s feminine plurality is perfectly just and divine. For a woman, it means taking a stand and embracing her true nature. She takes all these parts of herself that compose her breathtaking inner beauty, and puts them back together.
I’m delighted to be able to share my thoughts with you each month !
