The Flower before the Fruit
“Where flowers bloom, so does hope.”
—Lady Bird Johnson
For the next few weeks, I’ll be offering you some symbols of Spring to feed your imagination and invite you deeper into the gifts and energies of this potent season.
This week, we are exploring the archetype of the maiden goddess.
In the ancient Celtic imagination, the land, and the forces of nature that shape her, were envisioned as embodiments of the goddess. It was the Old Hag, the Cailleach, who brought the harsh winter, the young Maiden who initiated spring’s unfurling, and the Mother who ruled over summer and harvest.
The roots of the upcoming Christian holiday of Easter can be traced to older European folk celebrations surrounding the Spring Equinox. The name itself perhaps derives from the ancient Germanic goddess, Ostara or Eostre, who was associated with the coming of spring.
Interestingly, Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon of spring. This lunar rhythm is yet another wink at the divine feminine, who has long been associated with the moon’s cycles, and whose story is the ancient stratum underlying this Christian tradition.
Personally, having grown up in a patriarchal culture that devalues women and in a faith tradition that imagined the divine in strictly male terms, connecting with feminine images of the emanating principle of life has been both healing and inspiring.
Regardless of gender, we each carry both masculine and feminine qualities within us, and yet, the feminine principle has been devalued and even demonized by the over-culture for thousands of years.
Reconnecting with an ancient worldview, where the feminine is seen as a sacred source of life, can help us bring home exiled aspects of our human experience and inhabit more of our own aliveness.
For our thriving and the thriving of our planet, our wholeness is needed.
The energy of the maiden goddess is one of exploration and becoming. She is the one who brings possibility, beauty, and a youthful exuberance for life.
She has just entered her fertile years, but what she will give birth to is yet to be known.
She is the flower before the fruit, whose fragrance and beauty nourish the senses and whose unfolding will also nourish the body come summer, when the fruit has ripened. In this way, she is the embodiment of hope for what is yet to come.
The maiden goddess invites us to return to a youthful perspective of possibility and emergence.
Whatever age we find ourselves, the archetype of the maiden lives within us.
She is the one in us who knows how to shake off the stiffness of winter and step courageously towards a new horizon.
She is the part of us who trusts that our own innocent curiosity, wonder, and longing, are sacred threads worth following.
And so I invite you to let the maiden speak to your own aliveness:
Who are you when you allow yourself to follow your emergent desire?
Who are you when you stand in your own innocence and beauty?
What new horizon beckons you to see again with eyes of hope?
And what courage must be kindled in your heart in order to move towards your own tender unfurling?
Pssst….know someone who might like this post? Pass it on!
Connecting to the body’s wisdom and the longings of our soul are important aspect of the work I do as a 1:1 Soul Companion.
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Hi, I’m Stephanie!
As a Soul Companion, educator, and sacred space holder, I am passionate about deepening our connection to the earth, our bodies, and the Divine Mystery that dances in all that is.
Let’s journey together into the sacred wild!
