The Sacred Feminine

Embracing the Role of Ritual and Ceremony as a Powerful Mark of Self-Love

How understanding the power of rituals gave me purpose and resolve

I used to think that rituals were purely performed out of superstition.

Rituals, especially religious ones, appeared to hold some false notion that something good would happen to you if you followed God’s instructions to the tee. Likewise, if you failed to follow the rituals laid out by God, something bad may happen as a result.

My pride usually got the better of me

I had the same idea about the ‘alternative’ rituals that have become more and more fashionable in western culture over the years. Not that it stopped me from enjoying a night out under the moon with my friends, or sharing in a blessingway — a ritualistic celebration of the heavily pregnant mother and her soon-to-be-born child. But I just couldn’t get into the zone of really feeling it!

If truth be told, I was too proud to be seen as a believer. I saw this kind of belief and full immersion in the act of performing rituals as a kind of weakness and gullibility. I wasn’t outspoken about this, but inside I refused to lower myself.

It only takes one person to change everything

There was one person who changed my mind about it all. She was a woman I first met in India on my earliest trip with a child in tow. She was a smiling, sweet-natured American of whom my first impression was of a very practical, capable, and down-to-earth woman. Over the couple of years that followed, I discovered the many hats she wore.

Kat was a mother, a writer, a Reiki Master, a meditator, and started training in shamanic healing during one of my visits. I also learned that she had lost her first baby at ten days old. When I met her she had just given birth a month earlier to her second, and now her only, child.

She was running a guest house with her husband, taught Reiki, and gave healings. She would organise ceremonies for all the most significant occasions and invite friends and visitors to the guest house.

She led rituals unashamedly. She was warm-hearted, big-hearted and open-hearted, and lived her life with unpretentious joy.

I had never met anyone who just did things with such zest, passion, and joy, so uninhibited.

After she left India and moved to Hawaii, we stayed in touch. She began publishing articles in Elephant Journal, and I loved to read her stories of change and transformation. A lot happened in the years that followed her departure, the first being that she fell in love.

Whatever made her fall out of love with her husband, I have no idea, but I suspect that they simply grew apart. The person she fell in love with was a woman, and I could sense the absolute breaking open of her soul that this union was creating.

However, out of honour for both her husband and herself, Kat took some time away, alone. During that time, she travelled back to India and it became a pilgrimage dedicated to, and a discovery within herself, of the Divine Mother — Devi, the Goddess — the Supreme Feminine Energy.

She visited some of the most important Devi temples across the vast country. She saw women on pilgrimage in each of these temples and witnessed the rituals they undertook and the devotion that poured out of them. She realised that something much bigger was at play here. The acts of ceremony and ritual were being performed out of deep self-love that these women were honouring in themselves. For her, she knew it was no different. It was why she was here.

And then, she created the most sacred ritual of all to honour her self-love and self-worth; she married herself.

Self-marriage as a declaration of love, honour and respect

The idea of committing to another in body, mind and spirit in marriage is an age-old concept and tradition. To love, honour and respect another is something that men and women have been vowing to do for centuries.

But what about making those vows to ourselves? Why is that not generally a thing?

In essence, I would say that it hasn’t become institutionalised because it doesn’t make any legal difference to anything if you marry yourself, while marriage is basically a legal contract, and gives each partner a certain amount of material security in a partnership. But, marrying myself wouldn’t make a smidgen of difference to whether I or I get the house if I fall out with myself.

Yet, despite the legal implications of marriage, the overriding reason that people marry one another is for love. And to share a ceremony declaring this to the world with their loved ones.

So, for Kat to decide to make this vow to herself and create a ceremony for the occasion, despite there being none of her family there to witness and celebrate with her, was a powerful way in which to honour herself in a way we don’t often value.

Kat, along with my time spent in India — time spent in ashrams, and lots of visits to temples — allowed me to see that I had entirely missed the point. Perhaps there were people who performed these rituals purely out of fear or hope, but the vast majority of ceremonial activity I saw was driven by something else entirely: devotion.

Devotion to the process itself, devotion to the community that performs together, and devotion to oneself. Because simply committing to the process itself was an act of self-love. And when one acts out of real love, one can only experience pure joy in that action.

Kat helped me to see that I deserve to let go, enjoy ceremony, and value myself enough to treat every type of ritual in my life as sacred. I realised that it wasn’t about following in blind faith or pretending to be something I am not. It was simply about enjoying the moment, releasing tension, judgement, and distractions, and being fully present with myself and whatever activity I was involving myself in.

It has transformed the way I experience everything, from sex to making a cup of tea. The simple ritual of a morning routine, whatever that may be — a smoothie and a workout, meditation, or coffee in bed — is an act of honouring oneself in those moments to do whatever puts you in the best mood for the day.

I ritually write intentions each month with the new moon and honour the full moon with time spent being in quiet contemplation. My daily journaling is a ritual. Even vacuuming the house and scrubbing the bathroom are rituals that honour my home, my space, and my enjoyment of it. Birthday meals and cakes are all rituals that honour someone and mark our love for them. And, in doing so, we honour ourselves as their cherished friend or family member.

The ritual itself remains a convention, whether a religious tradition or something completely mundane — the activity serves a purpose but symbolises something much bigger.

Self-honour, self-love and self-respect.

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