By Janae Jean and Spencer Schluter
For our May interview, we had the pleasure to share a conversation with author Danielle Dulsky. Danielle explores the wild feminine, humanity’s deep and embodied connection to the natural world through writing, multimedia art, motherhood, witchcraft, yoga teaching and energy–healing.
Danielle’s most recent book, The Holy Wild: A Heathen Bible for the Untamed Woman, invites readers to create their own spiritual path with the elements—Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Ether, as well as the feminine archetypes of Maiden, Mother, and Crone. For more about Danielle’s fascinating work, visit DanielleDulsky.com. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter@WolfWomanWitch. You can support her work at www.Patreon.com/DanielleDulsky, and “like” and “follow” her work on Facebook@WolfWomanCircle.
The following is only an excerpt from our interview. Listen for more insights about the Divine Feminine, archetypes, the importance of rituals, motherhood, living in harmony with nature, and more. Subscribe to the Conscious Community Podcast on your favorite podcatcher or listen on www.ConsciousCommunityMagazine.com. Find the Conscious Community Podcast on Twitter@TweetCCPodcast or on Facebook@ConsciousCommunityPodcast.
Janae: In your book, you talk about the feminine archetypes of “Maiden, Mother and Crone.” Do you feel that as women we need to embody all these roles?
Danielle: Yeah, I think that’s it. We are all three, maiden, mother and crone, all the time, even irrespective of gender. We have these masculine and feminine energies that cycle within us. It doesn’t even bother me If you call them by those labels or call them something else. What we are really talking about when we talk about the maiden is our sensuality, the way our emotions cycle, and our kinship with nature. Then the mother archetype is two things. In my book, I talk about the idea of the mother’s twin. There are socially acceptable aspects of the mother archetype because she’s a “doer.” She’s generative; she’s productive. So, she’s very good for capitalism and our existing socioeconomic structures because she’s very busy. But, the mother’s twin is the flipside of the mother, which are the less socially acceptable aspects of the mother archetype, which would be righteous rage, will and activism. She also thinks very holistically. While the masculine equivalent, the Father archetype, thinks very individualistically. So, the mother is very holistic; she’s a creator of community and a storyteller. Finally, the crone archetype is very intuitive. She thinks in terms of the cosmic web. While the Sage archetype, which is the masculine equivalent, will fragment and separate in order to examine, the crone will look at the bigger picture.
JJ: Not to distract us from the discussion of the feminine, but what is the male equivalent of the maiden?
DD: I usually call him the Hunter.
Spencer: In popular culture, as Janae points out, women are often only valued when they are under 25 and for their physical appearance and reproductive qualities. This is toxic for young women and especially toxic for women as they age. As younger people, we need the help of elders and their guidance.
DD: We take the maiden’s power away by oversexualizing her. She’s valued until she’s 25 but valued in this limited physical way. The maiden archetype is much broader. She is very sexual, but she’s also an artist and very present, versus the mother who is a forward thinker. As I said, she’s the one who socially acceptable because she’s always creating something, whether it’s children or something else. She’s “mothering” something. Our crones and sages are locked away in nursing homes or whatever and not valued for all that wisdom they have, so we are in a society where we don’t have access to elders. It is difficult to embrace our inner crones and sages because they are those aspects of our psyches that have been socially devalued in ...