The names of the Great Mother are many, and yet each manifests as a fractal of her whole and complete energy. Any depiction of the Divine Feminine that willfully removes certain aspects are surely a creation of Patriarchal imagination, and she is frankly tired of the disempowerment and projection. She may choose to emphasize certain qualities – but that is again a fractal of her capacities. This Great Mother – Isis, Kali, Tara, Sophia, The Black Madonna (who contains the “White Madonna” - our familiar chaste virgin Mary– as an aspect of her full potency) -these are some of her names. She has manifested everywhere and sincerely does not give two shits about “cultural appropriation.” That is an issue that human egos have when they feel they have been ignored, co-opted, white-washed and used from the dominator culture. Its understandable, and respect is always needed, but in my experience, the Divine Feminine is very practical and she’s like, “whatever works.”
Her form shifts as way of welcoming for each person who desires a conscious relationship with her. If you choose a form that someone else decided is the right one, it may not work that well for you. Look, feel, and ask to be guided. Sincerely, it doesn’t matter what the form looks like, what matters is that you feel connected and that she is not a truncated version born in a Patriarchal straight-jacket of behaviors. She may also appear in a variety of forms – so that you can see the many aspects of her fullness – and that is also okay and sometimes necessary. First and foremost -she has no form at all. That is, she is formless energy, embedded in every aspect of creation – not just the ones that seem motherly, positive, or even spiritual. The formless Feminine may bring to mind the “Holy Ghost” of Christianity. What a strange term, honestly. Does that mean she died? It has felt like that, most certainly, but doesn’t it seem strange: Father, Son and the Good Dead Mother (Holy Ghost) who is also now a bird? This set up is echoed in so many myths and fairy-tales where the real Queen dies and so the King marries another but she is not kind, and often brutal. The evil step-mother is an archetype of the inauthentic feminine – a figure who is a creation of the male imagination, meant to serve his needs. However, she is often depicted as cruel or greedy or even jealous of the daughter of the dead Queen. This has been a large part of the energetic condition of the true feminine that is suppressed and the false feminine that is created by the dominator culture. Back to her energy: the formless aspect of the Feminine has also been given many additional names: Emptiness, the Void, Wisdom, Cosmic Womb, Akasha, Ether/Space.