[00:00:00] Betty: When patriarchy did a different attitude, did move into Europe, it was that idea I have to separate from nature, from the feminine in order to get my own independence. And that has guided Western culture for a very long time disastrously.
So, because we really find our ability to be independent when we have that ability to relate to others and to love and to nurture community and wholeness. And it is a deep perspective nature. Our ancestors felt that the most important thing for them was to understand nature, to understand her laws, what were her laws.
[00:00:48] Laurin: Hello friends, and welcome to Curiously Wise. I am Laurin Wittig, your host, and I have an amazing woman here with me today. I always have amazing women, but Betty Kovacs is my guest today and she has such a depth of knowledge about a topic that is near and dear to my heart. So, I'm gonna introduce her and then we'll dive into our conversation and you'll find out what we're gonna talk.
Betty Kovacs PhD earned her doctorate from the University of California Irvine in Comparative Literature and Theory of Symbolic Mythic Language. She taught literature writing and symbolic mythic language for 25 years. She served many years as chair and program chair on the Board of Directors of the Young Society of Claremont in California, and sits on the Academic Advisory Board of Forever Family Foundation.
Dr. Kovacs is author of a book called Merchants of Light, the Consciousness that is Changing the World, and it is the winner of The Nautilus Silver Book Award and the Scientific and Medical Network 2019 Book Prize. She's also written The Miracle of Death. There is nothing but life. So welcome, Betty. I'm so happy to have you here.
[00:01:57] Betty: Thank you so much and thank you for that wonderful introduction.
[00:02:00] Laurin: We're gonna talk about the divine feminine. And this is something that I know you have a depth of knowledge about, so I'm really excited about this and it's something that's really been on my radar increasingly, strongly lately. So, we're gonna let you take us on a journey here with this.
So the first thing I wanna ask you is how do you define the divine feminine?
[00:02:25] Betty: Yes, that's an excellent question to begin with. First of all, the divine feminine is in everyone, male and female. And historically the divine feminine has been symbolized as nature, as the female body that gives life. Also takes us back into her body at death. And then continuation of life. She is the heart, she is feeling and joy and love.
She is relationship, bringing everything into wholeness. So that's a short definition, but she is life itself.
[00:03:03] Laurin: And I know that one of the things that I hear talked about a lot and that I talk about a lot is the balance that she brings to the world that we need right now. The masculine energy has gotten so strong that we need to bring her back in, in an equally strong way.
[00:03:20] Betty: Oh, absolutely.
[00:03:21] Laurin: How far back can we go and find evidence of the presence of divine feminine and in the everyday life of people?
[00:03:29] Betty: Well. So far, and every excavation goes back earlier, but we know in the cave cultures that she was present. Her body is present of the body that gives life, nurtures life and sustains life. Maintains life. So as early as 40,000 BCE around that time, we know that in the cave culture, she was present.
And of course, in the later ones with the megalithic cultures, certainly she is present. Anytime a culture honors and respects nature, life, birth and death as a cycle, as a process. Any type of relationship, as I said, or love or joy. But actually, the basic definition for her is that she is life itself.
So, anyone who is really looking at the wholeness of who they are, life is present and must be respected and loved and represented, and so she is.
[00:04:37] Laurin: Mm-hmm. So, I know that I had watched a couple of videos of you on YouTube. I'll recommend that to people cuz there's a lot of information out there with Betty, that you had talked about some evidence of the divine feminine through the sand people of the Kalahari. And where there do you see, was there something specific in their art or their music or their stories?
[00:05:00] Betty: You know, they say that they have been around for 65,000 years. Archeological evidence makes them seize them around 30,000, but I think they probably are correct. But they have lived so completely at one with nature. They don't really have possessions. They lived in the desert. They knew how to live within it.
But the reason that we can say that they were very rare of the feminine is that they live daily with nature with life with heart. The heart was central to everything, the feeling. And we're even told that when they are out on a hunt and someone wants to get in touch with them, they begin to feel it like a ringing, like a tapping in the heart.
And they get the message they know and before they arrive home, the people there know they're coming and that with what? So, but they also knew they danced, of course. And of course, the rhythm in the dance always can make us open to the heart, to the, to the rhythms of life and feel joy. I mean, we can be so down, but if we dance, we can begin to feel quite lighthearted and see a whole different view of life.
But they achieve, they knew how to achieve an altered state of consciousness. You know we are told we are all born out of universal consciousness. We are all cosmic consciousness, but we have a valve that limits that vast consciousness to a trickle so that we can do our daily lives, you know, live and do interviews, cook dinner, and so on.
And, but the real trick for every group of people is to learn how to release that valve enough so that again, we, we experience who we are. The vastness of who we really are. And the sand people knew how to do this very well through dancing. Sometimes they danced hours and night and day until they said this energy began to just boil it within them and go out the crown of chakra.
But then they were with cosmic consciousness and that is feminine that is historically symbolized as feminine. It's within all of us. That's who we are and the heart. And they also did it as a kind of communal thing. Someone told them once, did you know that there are people in India who sit and meditate alone to achieve this?
And they were so sad. It was like, all alone? Because there's this communal, they touch, they dance and they can even, this is very strange, sort of shape that energy into a little arrow and throw it at someone. And that can kind of ignite that energy within them. So, but they, the fact that they were humorous, that laughter which is, and would infect a person. It's that I think that we can say that they understood that feminine aspect of themselves by their love and oneness with nature and their joy, their dance, their ability to achieve cosmic consciousness, which is the origin of ourselves, and that is the feminine.
[00:08:16] Laurin: Yeah. Fascinating. Yeah, so many different traditions have that ability to connect with the cosmic oneness. And, I think, for at least those of us in the states, meditation seems to be, you know, sort of the one that gets talked about a lot. But I know runners who get into that state when they're running long distances and dancing.
I have a friend who does ecstatic dance cuz that connects her to that. So, there's lots of different ways to do that. And it is from an American's point of view, that idea of, being sad for us, being alone when we do those things.
[00:08:47] Betty: No. That's funny.
[00:08:49] Laurin: Yes, it is funny and it, it's telling isn't it about our culture that we do tend to isolate to do almost anything important to us. So.
[00:08:56] Betty: Yes. And I think it's so important that you point out that through running or through dance or through so many different activities that we are able to release that valve and experience who we are.
[00:09:09] Laurin: Yeah. Yeah. I love drumming particularly.
[00:09:12] Betty: Yes, that's a very ancient method.
[00:09:16] Laurin: Right, right. Yeah. And boy, it'll, it'll get me in that state very quickly. I love that. So, so the role of the divine feminine in these ancient cultures was really that role of, if I'm understanding correctly, of just seeing the world as a whole, seeing humanity as a whole, seeing us all as part of each other.
[00:09:36] Betty: Yes.
[00:09:37] Laurin: So, it's that understanding the life process, understanding that we're all a part of it and the sand is a great, great example of we're all interdependent.
[00:09:48] Betty: Oh, are we ever.
[00:09:49] Laurin: Yeah. And, and our culture is like, no, I'm totally independent, you know?
[00:09:54] Betty: I know it's a, and that was what so many people when patriarchy did a different attitude, did move into Europe, it was that idea I have to separate from nature, from the feminine in order to get my own independence. And that has guided Western culture for a very long time disastrously.
So, because we really find our ability to be independent when we have that ability to relate to others and to love and to nurture community and wholeness. And it is a deep perspective nature. Our ancestors felt that the most important thing for them was to understand nature, to understand her laws. What were her laws.
And in the megalithic period, the individual was seen as the mediator between the energies of the earth and the energies of the cosmos. So that these huge, well, huge, and they're megalithics, they are huge structures, were both temples and observatories. They knew of the procession of the equinoxes. They knew the solstice and equinoxes.
So, they had a very great knowledge of her laws. And always it was how do we keep connected the, the energies of the earth with the energies of the cosmos and ourselves be in harmony with that. And so, it was a deep respect for nature. And of course, once patriarchy came in and there was a moving away from that, there was a horrible disdain for nature.
It was the idea, well, you know, the dreadful expression of putting nature on a rack and torturing her secrets out of her. This shows the extreme that our understanding or lack of understanding went to. So, it's from that love and understanding that we are a part of nature, that is our body too. And the relatedness that's so important.
But and it's also, we could put it in terms of right brain and left brain. The right brain does everything we've historically seen symbolized by the feminine and the left brain is fed by the right brain actually, and the right brain has its own logic, a poetic logic. We've even disdain that and said it's all nonsense.
But of course, that was a misunderstanding of the left brain and I think that now we're beginning to see that what the right brain really is that it is connected to the heart, and the heart is connected to the cosmos, and so that feeds the left brain. And the left brain must always take its information back to the right.
It knows how to analyze, separate, look at things. That's good. We need that. It's a beautiful function, but it's dangerous if it cuts itself off as we have from the heart consciousness.
[00:12:47] Laurin: Yeah. Yeah. That heart consciousness is, is powerful when you can tap into it and…
[00:12:53] Betty: Absolutely, and it comes in through the right brain, the symbolic brain, and just it is. It is the power of a cosmic heart that we are connected to. And, you know, the organization, Heart Math, has done so much research to show scientifically the power of the heart, but they teach meditation of, you know, focusing on the heart, breathing through the heart by connecting yourself to the cosmic heart.
And then that flows into the right brain and left brain. But it can just open us up into that cosmic energy.
[00:13:27] Laurin: Yeah. Yeah. I think, I catch myself speaking and putting my hand on my heart when things are real, when I'm really feeling them. And I see other people do that too, who goes, oh, there's no, you know, it's just a gesture, you know? And it's like,
[00:13:40] Betty: It's no. Not at all.
[00:13:41] Laurin: It's not. That’s an intuitive, it's an instinctive thing to, to help us tap into that energy I feel.
[00:13:49] Betty: Yes, and the sos I think we’re absolutely correct when they said the heart is not just an organ that pumps blood. It is the organ of soul.
[00:14:00] Laurin: Mm.
[00:14:00] Betty: The organ of soul. And of course, that's what allows us to feel, to be in touch with all of the parts of the universe and see their wholeness because that is, it is love that connects us, but it is the organ of souls that we, we take in the heart consciousness through our own individual heart. So, consciousness.
[00:14:27] Laurin: Mm-hmm. Mm, yes. I, I love to commune with trees.
[00:14:34] Betty: Mm-hmm.
[00:14:34] Laurin: And I often will put a hand on the tree and a hand on my heart.
[00:14:38] Betty: Hmm
[00:14:38] Laurin: And then I can really feel them. And it's, it's one of the early things I learned as I was beginning my spiritual path is how to, how to tap into that with trees, which are much easier than moving animals you know? But…
[00:14:51] Betty: That's true. Yeah.
[00:14:53] Laurin: Those are good for that too. It's to, to learn how to connect heart to heart. It's really powerful and healing, super healing.
[00:15:00] Betty: Very much so when I think of in the cave cultures, they did honor animals as actually a connection to the divine. They honored them as sacred beings with knowledge,
[00:15:12] Laurin: Mm-hmm.
[00:15:12] Betty: So that was, and certainly all of nature, trees, plants, and the feminine divine is symbolized by plants, by trees, by the stars, by rivers, and they're even ancient images of her giving birth to streams and mountains,
[00:15:30] Laurin: Hmm.
[00:15:30] Betty: She is that.
[00:15:32] Laurin: Yeah.
[00:15:33] Betty: And human beings as well. She gives birth to everything, as does the Cosmo.
[00:15:39] Laurin: Yeah,
[00:15:40] Betty: But the Egyptians understood that. There can be no civilization without feeling, and they, they nurtured their meditations, nurtured the feeling in the heart that that was necessary for civilized life.
[00:15:54] Laurin: Yeah. I know that there's a, a connection with Jesus and Egypt in terms of there's a mystical part of Christian that we've lost or hidden and that, that's, I've just done a little bit of, of reading about the Egyptians. I haven't, I haven't dug into it a lot, but it's fascinating to me that there was this very mystical connection to the universe that they had figured out.
[00:16:16] Betty: They really were powerful visionaries and mystics. And of course, that high achievement influenced the Hebrews. And we now know that the first temple tradition was a shaman mystic tradition, and we know that it was destroyed in 621 BCE, but that Jesus was a rebirth of that shaman, mystic tradition, all linked, of course with Egypt.
And so he was, he was of course, very close to the feminine. But that's what, of course, history tried to strip away from him. He was, I mean, the evidence that we have, no, he was pretty clearly married to Mary Magdalena. They had a beautiful relationship and they symbolized what Yaba had earlier symbolized in the first symbol, the male God and the female.
With whom they gave birth together, they gave birth to the world. Later, he abandoned her and he became a tyrant in the Old Testament. And Jesus comes back and relates once again to the feminine, the heart consciousness. So, he carries that Egyptian and first temple, Hebrew tradition of the shaman, mystic, and heart consciousness.
[00:17:34] Laurin: Yeah, he was a pretty balanced person, wasn't he?
[00:17:37] Betty: Yes. And yet the church took that balance away and, and made Mary Magdalena a whore, said to get, get her out of the picture. But all of this is coming back today. The research is, is reestablishing those traditions.
[00:17:53] Laurin: Yeah, it's interesting. It seems like a lot of new information about that period of time and, and these traditions has come up in our lifetimes. I, I know the Dead Sea Scrolls. I, I was very lucky to go to Israel when I was 11 and the Dead Sea Scrolls Museum had just opened and so we got to go and see the display there.
I had no idea at 11 what they are, and now I'm like, I can't believe I got to see it.
[00:18:19] Betty: You saw them? Well, yes. It's after World War II when we were so distraught as a planet that these Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered and those mystics at the Dead Sea refused to go along with the second temple tradition. No. They said, we carry the true covenant of Israel, which is the first temple shaman mystic tradition.
So, they were carrying on that ancient mystical tradition. And Jesus is born about at the end of of their time. But then also after World War II, we found the Naati text. And these give us a very different Jesus. Here we see Jesus say, I did not come to save you. I came to remind you of who you are.
[00:19:06] Laurin: Mm
[00:19:07] Betty: You are the light. We come from the light. And not to follow the Christ, but to become the Christ. It's just these texts that, and we found both the Nakamati and the Dead Sea when we needed the most, although it was, or receiving them was delayed, but, but yes, and that's one thing I say in Merchants of Light, that in the 20th century, independent scholarship discovered various groups of shaman mystics through.
I pretty much focus on Western culture, but it's like, isn't this interesting that all of this was happening now? We're rediscovering our past.
[00:19:46] Laurin: Yeah. Yeah. It's what I call Divine Right Timing, you know?
[00:19:50] Betty: It is. Yeah, exactly. It absolutely is.
[00:19:53] Laurin: Yeah. Yeah. Just the perfect timing. So how was all of this lost to us? I know some of it is this, the patriarchy has risen and, hidden a lot of this from us, but it's, it's not completely gone, but we don't, we're not as aware of it. Is that…
[00:20:12] Betty: Well, it is, it is waking up and again, in merchants of life, I, I show how these early powerful shaman mystic, and when they lasted long enough scientific cultures because the mystics were scientists too, and we've tried to say that separate it is not, but we know that Egypt, there were just various things that happened in time.
Sometimes it's time itself that things change, but with the Hebrew tradition, which it was influenced by Egyptian mysticism, that, as I said earlier, in 621 Josiah destroyed it. The Deuteronomist destroyed it. We don't know who they are, they're priests, but they destroyed it. And it became a masculine, a much more masculine tradition that left out the mystic.
So we know that that was, and we have, we have such distortions coming from that time. For instance, we all knew the story of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden and the tree. Well, a major symbol of the feminine is the tree. Is that beautiful tree as you had talked about, your connection with them, rooted in the earth, reaching to the sky and in seals an art before the dreadful stories that we got from 621 about the tree. Before that, let's say 2000 BCE, there were images of the tree just hanging with fruit and the God on one side and the goddess, the divine feminine on the other, and both of them pointing to the tree of take. If you are ready, it is for you. There was never a prohibition of eating from the tree of knowledge or life, but when the Deuteronomist took over, they got rid of the divine feminine.
They took out her sacred text of wisdom and many Jews took them to Egypt, but they got rid of that in the, in the Hebrew tradition, they also burned her tree. She had beautiful groves of trees. All of them were burned, all of her images, I mean, all in that area. Archeologists have found the feminine Divines image everywhere.
The doodle runners got rid of them, and unfortunately later when the Roman Church took over, they carried on that tradition of no feminine and of law, not heart consciousness, but you follow the law. And so, the Roman church then made Jesus a God that we must follow and we are nothing. As the Deuteronomist told us in that story of the tree, God said, do not eat from that tree.
And when Eve did and gave it to Adam, they were exiled from the garden. And then from then on, every individual was born with a terrible sin. We are flawed nature. This is terrible. It's nothing at all like our true stories and we know that our true stories are actually not just made up. They are organized by the organizing principles of Soul of the Psyche.
So, we find them similar all over the world, and they are always promoting our evolution, our love, everything that the feminine divine does. So here we have these dreadful stories and the Roman Church picks it up and so, that had wiped out the divine feminine and the mystic. In the Roman church, if you were mystic, you were heretic.
So now we have a religion that's based on left brain belief systems, but it always must be what we experience through the heart. Otherwise, how do we know? It's a matter of belief. And when we experience it, we don't have to believe, we know. No. That experience is knowing. So that's in the West when major two reasons how we lost it.
And anytime there's a culture that wants to control us, they will want to get rid of that heart consciousness, the feminine. So, there it was. And then the church, even here, there were mystic scientists who were working. They destroyed those times. And when they got together to have the Royal Society for the Study of Science in 1660 in England, the church would not allow scientists to study anything but matter.
So, it's really the church that brought about materialism. So that's, these are major ways that it was lost in the West. And we are, but we're, we're remembering it. All of this history is coming back. We didn't know these things before. We didn't know we had this powerful shamanistic scientist past and I say in merchants of light, there are five waves of remembering when the church absolutely just wiped out any knowledge of that for several hundred years.
Then it was reborn again in the high Middle Ages, a mystical tradition. You know, it was said that Jesus taught a hidden tradition and he did. It was a mysticism and that tradition lasted and went secretly throughout Europe and then rose like a phoenix at Sharp Cathedral in High Middle Ages, and then again in the Italian Renaissance.
Again, it came up in the Rosa Crucian in 1600 and then in the German romanticism, and now today is the fifth one. So, I, I show how it always emerges and when it emerges, the dominant symbol, of course, is the feminine divine because she's the one who has been suppressed all of these hundreds of years to great detriment to our culture.
[00:25:46] Laurin: Yeah. So interesting. So, I do have a question cuz I know that you have a background in symbology and I was raised in the Episcopal church, so we had Jesus, but not up on the cross. We had the cross, you know, Jesus was a person in the Bible. And we didn't have the Virgin Mary as a symbol in the church.
We had her in stories. But I was just recently in Europe and I love to go into old churches cuz there's peacefulness there that, that I don't find many other places, they're always, almost always Catholic, the ones I've been in, and they always have the Virgin Mary somewhere. So, to me she is probably at her root.
A symbol, an ancient symbol of the divine feminine, but she's been put in this sort of secondary position. So where does she come from or how does she fit into this conversation that we're having?
[00:26:44] Betty: Yes. Well, she definitely is the divine feminine, the mother. And Art certainly shows her as the, you know, the mother of Jesus. And and then there's of course, it, it says in the non-commodity text that Jesus always walked with three women, his mother, his sister, and his beloved. The word really translates as wife.
So I think this is really beautiful because it's showing the masculine relating to the various forms of the feminine. Yes. With the mother, who is Mary, and also the sister who is Mary, and then Mary Magdalena, who is his spouse or his companion. So, he relates as, and I want to say too, we are all the masculine, you know, the masculine is usually the symbol of the individual who is born into the world.
And we all have the feminine and we have the masculine, the right brain, the left brain, and they must work together and be balanced, as you said in the beginning. So, Jesus reconnects himself to the feminine, all aspects of her, not just the mother.
And of course, later the church actually did allow Mary to go to heaven, but she was second rate, always pushed to the side. And this is simply patriarchy. And I should just as a quick aside say that Europe was not patriarchal until about 4,000 BCE when there were tribes coming in from the Russian steps and they were patriarchal, but Europe was not.
It was matrifocal and it held sacred all the things we've talked about in relationship to the feminine. So, she then is beginning to regain her central place, never just as one aspect of the feminine, because the feminine has many aspects. And in Kabbalah, I have to say, this is the Jewish tradition that picked up the omitted pieces and they knew that the feminine was missing.
And when she returned to the divine, then we would be whole again. And of course, they honor the feminine and Jesus is that person who brings the feminine back to Judaism, but then that was wiped out too. But it's coming back.
[00:29:01] Laurin: Yes. It, it really is, thank goodness. So do you see evidence of, I mean, we feel it's coming back. I know that we, you know, we feel that, but do you see evidence of this divine feminine really rising in any sort of tangible way right now?
[00:29:21] Betty: Oh, I do. Well, first of all, you know, with the women's movement we had political and social rights and that kind of thing, but of course it's, we always have to have the spiritual integration of the feminine before things really do work well. But yes, I do. In terms of research, first of all, there are many women in the, in doing this research as well as men, but they definitely, the research is, is just incredible.
That's digging up the feminine dimension of the divine that has existed from 40,000, I mean, the beautiful. Images that have been found and the literature, the, the artwork has been found. And for instance, in scientific and medical network, I'm sure for years there were many men and now there are so many women.
And there they are talking it about yes quantum physics, science and mistressism. And they really are focus on the feminine, and Anne Baring was part of that for a long time. She's done major work on the feminine. I think the myth of the goddess, she and Jules Ashford, so Anne Baring and Jules Cash, but it's just, it's everywhere.
The archeologist at UCLA Maria Gimbutas discovered that whole old European culture that existed before the patriarchal tribes came in and there...
[00:30:43] Laurin: Mm.
[00:30:44] Betty: Perhaps half a million artifacts of the feminine, just joyful images of the feminine. She did not find any violent images. She could not find war.
[00:30:55] Laurin: Wow.
[00:30:56] Betty: That she said, it is not endemic to our lives, to civilization.
[00:31:00] Laurin: Oh.
[00:31:01] Betty: Don't have to have that. And here was a joyful culture in old Europe and we didn't even know about it until Maria computers discovered that she told, she was actually became a friend of mine and she said, I saw every, I was in every museum. I saw every image I could find. And of course, she was sponsoring digs as well in that area.
And she said finally I could see the shape of the spaces in between the patriarchal images. Finally, I saw what I was looking at and her work, of course, she's been criticized terribly by the, by those in power. And I read an article recently that they're trying not to even feature now in, in universities and her books are huge.
She actually has the pictures of these images and but it's, that's always a problem is that those in power will try to push aside these types of images or this type of research, but it's coming back anyway. I don't think they can stop now. And it's just everywhere that people are awakening to the, it is a renaissance period for sure.
And we need it because we're up against a great deal of darkness as a result of all of the censorship of who we are. So yes, it is. It is the most developed and extensive that I have studied yet.
[00:32:25] Laurin: Nice. Yeah. I think this time with all the technology that we have, which is really unfettered, like the gatekeepers can't keep us contained anymore.
[00:32:34] Betty: They can't. They can't. And this is, this is absolutely wonderful. And the media even in that, I mean, it's corporate owned, so they control what it is. And here are all of these in these independent journalists are getting these digital systems and they're giving information with all kinds of data to support it, and it's like, hey, something good is coming from this. You know?
[00:32:55] Laurin: Exactly. Exactly.
[00:32:57] Betty: Yeah,
[00:32:58] Laurin: You have to discern, the quality of what you're, you're watching,
[00:33:01] Betty: Yes. That's.
[00:33:03] Laurin: It has really, I mean, we've seen so many, so much evidence around the world with uprisings and wars and things where this technology of communication that is so easy to use now and access for most people has changed the trajectory of history.
[00:33:19] Betty: Yes, we're connecting.
[00:33:21] Laurin: Yeah, we are. Yeah. You know, I hadn't, I, that's the obvious one. We are connecting across distance and even my friends close by during the pandemic. We have kept in touch this way.
[00:33:34] Betty: And that's so important. And I, I think with myself too, when I, we launched the book in London and when we came back was within a month or two, there was covid and, and yet, if I had been, as we had planned going to bookstores, it. You, you get a few people, you know, and in some of these, there've been, you know, thousands, which I would never reach otherwise.
And people are doing that all over. And I think it's wonderful that this is a very important way to connect. But I also am feeling that we have to remember that we also need to get together physically,
[00:34:10] Laurin: Yes.
[00:34:11] Betty: And talk and touch and hug and eat and, and share casually all kind. This is, human beings need the presence of each other and I think so many people have suffered from that isolation. And we just have to remember, this is wonderful and it has its space, but we can't forget our other kinds of spaces and connections.
[00:34:34] Laurin: Right. One of the things that I did back in 2018 was I started. What I call it, the Wise Women's Circle.
[00:34:40] Betty: Mm. Yeah,
[00:34:42] Laurin: And I had some friends, invite some friends and we had about 10 people at the first one and two years later when we kind of had to stop with the pandemic. Cuz it didn't translate to Zoom very easily. We had 40 people as a member of that, 40 women.
[00:34:56] Betty: oh,
[00:34:56] Laurin: Every person came into that going, I have been looking for this kind of community.
[00:35:01] Betty: Oh, that's so good. Oh, yes.
[00:35:03] Laurin: So I've gotta, reignite it now, but I've really missed it.
[00:35:07] Betty: And you know, things happen when we get together because we, the mind is one, and we'll come, one person will come up with other something and the other will see it from another perspective and, and just light up the whole room. We need each other. Consciousness works together.
[00:35:23] Laurin: Right, right. And that, that perspective thing really is one of the big things that I learned from that circle because I would, I would throw at a topic that I needed to talk about and everybody would have their own wisdom around it. And it really helped me to back up from this, the storm in my life at the time and see it from different angles and be able to be a bit more discerning about how I wanted to react or how I wanted to deal with something. It was such a gift.
[00:35:55] Betty: Yes. That's, we do need that because we've had 2000, at least years of focus on the left brain and a denigration of the right brain or say, focusing on what has historically been symbolized as a masculine and completely ridiculing the feminine. And her power is coming back and loving the masculine when the feminine enters, she never tries to subdue the masculine.
That whole power is to integrate and relate with it, whereas the, the, the left brain, you know, it, it separates and analyzes and that kind, and you can easily try to get rid of the feminine. It's when the feminine rises, it's always to relate and integrate and make whole, so, and that's what's happening. And there's so many ways that we can do it, like with the Wise Woman group and so many other ways of coming together and just letting it happen, you know?
[00:36:50] Laurin: Yeah. There's so much joy in it.
[00:36:53] Betty: Yes.
[00:36:53] Laurin: The, the Women's March back in 2016
[00:36:57] Betty: Yeah.
[00:36:58] Laurin: Was, I, I, I was awestruck by the joy in that moment where we were all sad and upset and, you know, and, and, but there was so much joy in coming together.
[00:37:09] Betty: Exactly! And we were just packed and standing the whole time and, and joyful, yeah.
[00:37:13] Laurin: Yeah. So,
[00:37:15] Betty: Yes. Because we know really that there's something we can do. We have tremendous power.
[00:37:21] Laurin: Yes. Yes.
[00:37:22] Betty: I mean out of the heart; I'm drinking of the heart power.
[00:37:24] Laurin: Yeah. It's, it's like you said, it's loving, it's joyful. It's light, it's inclusive, it's connecting. There's so many things about it that are what we need. Yeah.
[00:37:36] Betty: And yes, in inclusive and connecting and politically, we have so many different groups against each other, but I try to tell myself, this is a time when all of this darkness has to surface. We have to, and it's part of our species. Let it come out. Let's look at it, rather than immediately jumping on it and how awful.
You know, that kind of thing. Look at it for what it is. Yes, we do have a, a good analytic mind and we have a good heart consciousness, but it has to express itself. Let's let it come out and not think categorically, you know, try to see what is this darkness and if we'll begin to see it in ourselves too, so we can heal ourselves and, in that way, help to heal our culture. But it's, it's we won't heal without the feminine divine.
[00:38:26] Laurin: No, no, there's no, we have to bring it back in. We have to bring it back in. All right. Well, this is lovely. I think we have just a couple of minutes to do what my rapid-fire questions. These are just for fun. I ask everybody these questions and I love the answers that come up.
So, this is just four quick questions. It's just whatever comes to mind first is the best and greatest answer, okay. So, you don't have to work hard for this. So, my first question is always, who is or was the wisest person in your life?
[00:39:01] Betty: My mother
[00:39:04] Laurin: So, what was she so wise about?
[00:39:07] Betty: You know, she was I think just about being me, being myself, having confidence. And she wasn't, she never, I think she wasn't able to finish high school because of the death, early death of her mother, the women died very young throughout her family and just her good common sense and her confidence in life and wanted me to have confidence.
[00:39:33] Laurin: Wow. That's a, that's a big gift.
[00:39:36] Betty: It is. It is. It is. Yes.
[00:39:39] Laurin: So, what's your favorite, or your go-to self-care practice?
[00:39:43] Betty: I think just simply being alone I, I just kind of can let everything fall into place and I, I think. We probably all need those times when nothing is coming at us. You know, just no, no internet or television or whatever, just to be, and I, I kind of need to do that each at the end of each day when I'm tired, you know, as to kind of check myself.
[00:40:09] Laurin: Yeah. Yeah. What lights you up when you're feeling down?
[00:40:13] Betty: Well, I think relationship, and Kim and I now share the house together. Her son is married and mine as I talk about a miracle of death, are now dead. And It's just, it's a delight. She works in her office and when, and I work in mine and then we come together and it's always laughter and fun and discussing things.
So yeah, that can lift me up for sure. Now if I don't have her, I have to have other ways of doing it. And that would be being alone.
[00:40:45] Laurin: Mm-hmm. Okay. And do you have a favorite mantra or affirmation?
[00:40:48] Betty: No, I don't think I have a favorite one. I don't think I do.
[00:40:53] Laurin: Okay, that's fine. Not everybody does.
[00:40:56] Betty: There's so many.
[00:40:58] Laurin: Yeah. Yeah. There are so many. Are there one that you would like to offer to the listeners?
[00:41:02] Betty: You know we had experience with this energy field that is now connected to the planet, the merchants of light and the matrix of light and I always am talking with them and calling their presence. And it's not a mantra, but it's an, an an exercise or a meditation of pulling the energies of the earth up to that light and then allowing that light to flow down through me to the earth as a kind of anchor and then connect at the heart. And that's an exercise that is very, very helpful to.
[00:41:41] Laurin: Nice. Very nice. All right. Can you tell our listeners where to find you online?
[00:41:48] Betty: Yes, it's kamlak.com, K A M L A K. And there are articles there and you can purchase the books there. There are also videos and webinars and podcasts. So, and if you want to join the newsletter? Sign up for the newsletter. Then you'll get a chapter from Merchants of Light. It's kamlak.com.
[00:42:13] Laurin: All right. Yeah, there's so much good meaty material there. Alright, well this has been, an amazing conversation. So, I thank you so much for being here and for talking with me and helping me understand the history of, of the divine feminine as much as what's going on today. And I hope my listeners have, have learned a lot.
[00:42:37] Betty: Oh, thank you.
[00:42:38] Laurin: So I wanna thank the listeners for being here with us today as well, and I hope that you have found some nugget of wisdom to take with you. Maybe something that you'll get curious about and go do a little reading on your own. I can think of a book that might be a good place to start.
[00:42:54] Betty: That's the history. All right? And it, I have 16 years of working on that.
[00:43:00] Laurin: Yeah. Okay. So definitely. That's a good place to start. And I hope that you'll come back next week. We have a new episode every Tuesday here on Curiously Wise, in the meantime. Be curious. Have a great day.
Thank you so much for joining us today on Curiously Wise. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to subscribe, so you don't miss future fabulous conversations. And if you had any ahas, please share them in a review on Apple Podcasts so we can continue to pay forward the unique wisdom we all have.
If you want to know more about me or my intuitive energy healing practice Heartlight wellness, please head over to my website. www.heartlightjoy.com.
Curiously Wise is a team effort. I am grateful for the skill and enthusiasm. Arlene Membrot, our producer, and Sam Wittig, our audio engineer, bring to this collaboration. Our music is Where The Light Is by Lemon Music Studio.
I'm Laurin Wittig. Please join me again next week for another episode of Curiously Wise From my heart to yours, may your life be filled with love, light, joy, and of course, curiosity.