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The Dark Feminine: A Reintroduction
You’ve been looking for a way to embrace this energy; allow me to reintroduce you.
By: N'diah Love
- ♡ July 19, 2022
- 2:04 pm
- ♡ Femininity
Read Time: 8 Minutes
Social media will leave you thinking that feminine energy is something you can just put on when the occasion calls for it. Like a pair of perfectly painful So Kate Loubs you secretly hate but need to own because they go with almost every outfit.
Indira Varma Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love
I’ll admit, on occasion, even I have painted feminine energy in a semi-superficial light. Describing it as a tool that can be pulled out when the situation calls for it. But on my own heroine journey, I dived deep into the misunderstood abyss of a woman’s true nature. Of my own true nature, and I have rediscovered the Feminine in a way that has never been fully expressed in popular culture. In 2020, I wrote an article called “An Introduction to the Dark Feminine.” At this time, I was uncovering what it meant to be a woman beyond respectability and politics— beyond speaking softly, acting agreeable, and nurturing others. I was opening up in ways that felt like reopening old wounds; only I had never faced these demons before. These were new devils as I discovered new levels and learned to face and embrace my shadow. It wasn’t until then that I began the process of true becoming.
Dark Feminine: In Discovery
Feminine energy or “Shakti” (shak-tee) is first and foremost the energy from which we all came. It is pure, creative energy. It animates all that we are and all that we can perceive. And in its rawest form, all feminine energy is “dark feminine energy”—dark meaning “hidden” or unseen. Without Masculine energy or “Shiva” (shee-vuh), we would not be able to perceive Shakti. Just as without the Sun, we would not be able to perceive the moon. Or without light, we would not be able to perceive matter
Without any refinement, feminine energy is the chaos of spontaneous creation and destruction. It rules the often-misunderstood processes of death and birth, transformation (alchemy), and spiritual (sexual) ecstasy.
Women, or feminine energy beings, are Shakti’s physical representation (or refinement), pure creative energy. Ordinarily, this is why the natural value of a woman is typically “unseen” and innate. It has long been connected with intangible attributes like intuition, emotion, reception, stillness, creativity, and surrender. It is also no mistake that our wombs are the hidden portals through which an entire human being is brought forth.
The Disconnection
You would think that as a wielder of this mysterious Shakti energy, you would be able to see into the future (intuit), create at will (manifest), and experience pleasure unending (spiritual/sexual ecstasy). But somehow, most women are disconnected from their intuition, utterly unaware of their thoughts, and have never even experienced an orgasm (smacks forehead). The processes of becoming aware of our true nature and learning what I call the “womanly arts” have been hidden and protected. This began as colonialism and white patriarchy spread and attempted to destroy and rewrite much of our cultural understanding of the divine feminine and masculine energy.
Throughout history and in most cultures across the world, young women would go through a phase of initiation into womanhood. She would be surrounded, taught, and led by wise women who learned the branch of alchemy and art forms like herbalism and plant healing. She explored dance and song, pottery making, cooking, weaving, storytelling, lovemaking, sexual energy transmutation, and, most importantly, self-awareness practices.
In 2022, we are no longer initiated into womanhood. Instead, we walk blindly through life, most of us never even having a conversation with our parents about sex, much less sexual energy. We are naïve adults until our nature comes calling us home one day.
Enter the Dark Feminine
In our lives, the Dark Feminine will manifest uniquely as an attempt to jol you into self-awareness. She may manifest as unfulfilled sexual fantasies or rebellious sexual nature. You could see her develop as a deep attraction to “bad boys” or “the wrong guy.” Perhaps show up as a need to be creative and rebel against the typical career structure. Some will find her as the desire for “the finer things in life”. She may call you to the strip clubs or the yacht clubs. She will call you through exhaustion of your sexual resources to a man who doesn’t protect and provide for you. She may haunt you in the form of alcohol abuse. She may thwart you into isolation and stillness with a health diagnosis. She may continuously put you between a rock and a hard place with your finances and relationships to make you realize that SOMETHING is missing. Your life is juiceless and fruitless until you recognize that what you are missing is the connection to your eternal source of pleasure and energy. Your life force. Your divine feminine energy.
Facing your shadow
According to Carl Jung, your shadow is the culmination of the aspects of your personality which you reject and repress. These are the aspects of who you are that you believe society will disapprove of, so you bury them deep inside of your subconscious mind until they manifest in ways that will be harmful to yourself and others. As a feminine energy being, some of your shadow aspects may show up as victimhood, promiscuity, resentment, rage, cruelty, shallowness, hyper-independence, overly controlling, manipulation, irrationality, naivete, irresponsibility, co-dependence, insecure attachment, narcissism, and non-commitment (just to name a few!)
And no matter how your shadow shows up and flips your world upside down, it shows up to be understood, embraced and integrated into the full scope of who you are. And just as each woman has a different personality or archetype, each has a different set of shadow traits. So on my journey, I continue to work to integrate aspects of codependency, rage, insecure attachment, and more.
Your Dark Feminine Journey
Although we no longer go through the liminal phases of initiation into womanhood, it doesn’t mean that all is lost. I have come to understand that our initiation has to come from our own decision to embark on a heroine Journey and come back into union with all that we are. We can access the wisdom needed for the journey through specific spiritual practices created by the women before us, meditations, yoga, reading, and research. Apart from this, we must come into a community with other women who have embarked on the same feminine journey.
I have developed a process through which I have been able to come into union with my divine feminine energy. This transformation allows me to hold myself from being constantly triggered, insecure, and ashamed of my deepest desires. Instead, I am an embodied, empowered, undeniable FORCE of a woman who savagely claims and manifests the exact experiences I want from love and life. This coursework is a product of years of research, enlightening experiences, and my connection to divine wisdom.
If you are interested in embracing your own raw and unrefined dark feminine energy or being coached by me on a deeper level of womanhood, click here to schedule a one-on-one. You can also email me at ndiah@letssweettalk.com
