We have lost the art of psychological descent, of “going there,” down through the difficult emotions, the darker elements of our personalities. More often than not, soul has been relegated to the moldy basements of the clean and bright McMansions of mainstream spirituality.” “…spirit is the most popular and public ‘face’ of spirituality. We need them both - soul and spirit, ascent and descent – in order to be psychologically Soul, according to Jung, is a feminine concept. If Spirit makes us all One, your Soul makes you…more you. If you ascend to find Spirit, you descend to find Soul, plunging into the murky world of your own private underground. Soul is what we are tasked to work with – and work out – down here. Soul is highly personal, individual, messy, entangled, embodied, complicated, shot through with blood and darkness. Spirit, or however you want to think of it, is some abstract, impersonal state of cosmic perfection that exists “up there.” It is not the gender but what that person is in service of:Īccording to Thomas Moore, “….the spirit is what is divine in us, and the soul is what is human.” I abruptly realized that discussing this idea of the creatrix is, for me, another way of discussing the feminine. “Yes,” I said, trying to sound all wise and knowing, as if I hadn’t just discovered this yesterday. She is taking an online course about female goddess archetypes, and one of those archetypes is The Creatrix. The other night, in a cozy and chattering Italian restaurant, my friend told us that she had just encountered the word again. She is not afraid of power: standing up to it, speaking truth to it, or using it to advance her own agenda. So now she lives in the country/on the beach/in a loft downtown/ in Thailand. Chances are she tried the conventional thing, or came close – the wedding, the ‘safe’ job or career, the house in the suburbs – and it didn’t work out. She believes in interdependence and interbeing: she is her own person while knowing that we are at least partly defined by our relationships. She recognizes her birthright to pleasure and play. She is grounded, sensual, and comfortable in her body. She actively uses her gifts in service of herself, her loved ones, and the world. “Except totally different.” My idea of a creatrix was this: a woman who maintains strong relationships with others while cultivating her natural gifts and pursuing mastery, for however long it takes her. I told a good friend of mine that I was kicking around the idea of a creatrix.

How to heal the divine feminine