the queen and i: re-embracing the goddess within

I found myself more drawn to the news about Queen Elizabeth’s death than I expected to be.  I have never been especially anglophilic.  And I was not at all in sync with Princess Diana or her death.  I knew a lot of people, mostly women, whom it affected deeply.  I was not one of them, however.  That may have been partly because at the time she died in August of 1997 I had a 2 year old and a 10 month old, was selling our home on Capitol Hill in DC, and preparing to move the four of us to our new life in Sacramento.  Or it may have just been, if you’ll pardon the expression, not my cup of tea.  

Despite the babies and the packing, I do remember being fascinated with the phenomenon that Diana had become and trying to understand what was happening.  Why were so many of my friends and relatives sobbing for days and unable to function? 

One spiritual teacher I followed at the time, visionary political astrologer Caroline Casey, had the best explanation I’ve heard for what occurred.  She said something like (this is all from memory of memory of 25 years ago, so apologies to Caroline and I’m paraphrasing), the human heart yearns to worship gods and goddesses.  We are built for it.  And while there are on some level Gods to worship, there are not really goddesses.  Yet, deep in our spiritual dna humankind remembers that we once worshiped goddesses and that we still need them and their power.  Celebrities are the closest we have to gods and goddesses.  And a beautiful young princess celebrity is even closer to goddesshood than, say, a kardashian.  So when we lose that physical form, a massive mourning of the collective consciousness emerges.  It is a mourning not only of that particular celebrity goddess but of our lack of goddess in this time.

Now, 25 years later, with the British Queen dying at 96 after the longest reign in British history and as the longest female reigning monarch in world history, it appears that world reaction, while strong, is less completely staggering than it was to the death of the princess goddess at the age of 36.

Perhaps this is because there is an emerging recognition in the human heart that the era of the goddess is returning.  It is increasingly clear, at least to me, that the divine feminine is re-emerging (part of what is terrifying and igniting its opposite).  As the devastation of climate change, the war in Ukraine, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and the increasingly insane hurricane of Donald Trump and his followers awaken us all to the ravages of toxic masculinity, more and more people I know turn to feminine pronouns for the Divine, indigenous earth-based cultures and quite possibly ayahuasca to restore the world to balance.

Since Diana’s death, we have seen the emergence of much more audacity and power in public women.  From comedians (like Amy Schumer, Samantha Bee, Margaret Cho and Hannah Gadsby) to politicians (like first major party nominated candidate for president Hillary Clinton, Stacey Abrams, Elizabeth Warren and first female, first African American and first Asian American Vice President Kamala Harris), to a new generation of powerful young female activists worldwide (Malala Yousafzai, Greta Thunberg, Xiuhtezcatl Roske-Martinez and Zambian Thandiwe Chama) women are claiming our own personal power and divinity.

Perhaps Queen Elizabeth’s death can be recognized as a turning point where we no longer need place only one or two women on the throne of a patriarchal society and religion, but can all embrace the loving fierce goddesses and queens within us.