What Happens When Women Gather to Invoke the Goddess?
There is something rather delicious about a group of intelligent, capable women deciding to spend one hour a day for nine days invoking and honouring the Goddess in her many forms..
Women who run businesses.
Manage families.
Meet deadlines.
Pay mortgages.
Make difficult decisions.
Know how to get things done.
And yet, somewhere underneath all that competence, perhaps there is another knowing.
A quiet sense that we are more mysterious than our CVs would suggest.
That underneath the lists, responsibilities, roles and sensible shoes, there is something ancient, intelligent and wildly alive.
Shakti.
The same mysterious life force that grows trees, moves oceans, gives birth to stars—and somehow remembers to breathe us while we’re busy answering emails.
We don’t have to manufacture it.
We don’t have to become more spiritual to deserve it.
And we certainly don’t need another self-improvement project.
It’s already here.
In every cell.
Every breath.
Every flash of intuition.
Every creative impulse.
Every moment we’ve known No before we could explain why.
Every moment we’ve felt an enormous Yes rising through the body before the sensible mind had caught up.
The ancient Goddess traditions gave this intelligence faces.
Durga.
Lakshmi.
Saraswati.
Kali.
And during Navaratri, we deliberately turn towards it.
Just one hour a day.
One hour to step out of ordinary life and into something rather extraordinary.
This year we’ll journey with the Nine Faces of Durga—one face each day.
We’ll hear their extraordinary stories.
Chant their mantras.
Make things.
Draw.
Write.
Meditate.
Perform rituals.
Probably lose our place occasionally.
Possibly have a dog contribute to a mantra. 😄
And something rather interesting happens when we do this together.
One woman’s insight sparks something in another.
Someone says something you’ve secretly thought for twenty years.
A mantra lands somewhere below the thinking mind.
A story written thousands of years ago suddenly feels uncomfortably current.
You laugh.
You recognise yourself.
And then one day you hear yourself say a completely clear, authentic, unapologetic:
“No.”
No explanation.
No little apology attached.
No spending the next three hours wondering whether you’ve upset someone.
Just No.
And it feels so good.
You think:
“Oh my Goddess!! It’s true…
that was Durga speaking just then.” 😄
Not Durga somewhere in the clouds.
Durga in you.
The courage.
The instinct.
The tenderness.
The ferocity.
The part of you that knows when something is simply enough.
The divine intelligence that has been quietly accompanying you through every catastrophe, triumph, bad decision, great love, reinvention and ordinary Tuesday of your life.
Perhaps this is one of the great gifts of practising together.
We remind each other of what we have forgotten.
Not that we need to become Goddesses.
But that the Goddess was never somewhere else.
That’s the experiment I’m inviting you into this Navaratri.
One hour a day.
For nine days.
Nine Faces of Durga.
A little mantra, myth, creativity, ritual and mischief.
And a group of curious women asking a rather wonderful question:
What happens when I stop looking for the Divine Feminine outside myself…
and start recognising her in every cell of my being?
Come and find out.
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