What would the divine feminine or Goddess nature want to ask or expect of a man today? If you were a man representing the divine masculine, and had the chance, what would you want to ask or say to a woman at this moment? Can we even imagine ourselves and each other as different expressions of a divine source, more than merely a personality?

These were among the inquiries that helped inspire a profound exploration of the divine feminine and the Goddess archetype at this Fall’s Metamodern Spirituality Lab. To learn more, Portals brought together Aviv Shahar and Lab organizers and metamodern leaders Layman Pascal and Brendan Graham Dempsey, along with participants Mariah Rose McKay and Antonia Louise.

This is the newest conversation in the Portals series exploring metamodern spirituality.

A central theme for this special collaboration of women and men was exploring the role of the Goddess, the feminine, in metamodern spirituality: an embrace, rather than historical denial, of the feminine presence at the heart of the human’s universal nature. The Lab itself was a space where gatherings and rituals supported a freer expression of the divine feminine and masculine influences in both women and men.

The openness allowed for the emergence of many facets of the Goddess nature: maternal, warrior, healing, wisdom. For many participants it produced a trust and chance for intimacy that in turn generated a deep sense of healing and release of ancient tensions between the genders.

Other Lab insights include:

• It’s the importance of community; we cannot do this alone. It’s the practical elements, but also the deep and intimate bonds we form, and the healing power of deep relationships.
• There is the long-wave dimension and nature of this work: we need to include the generational transmission; a project of the next 100 years.
• When the god and goddess are prepared to embrace each other, inside each of us, a birthing process occurs; those two configurations merge into a third nature that liberates a new future.
• We don't know the ripple effects of how our hearts and consciousness can affect the world when we change our relationship to the goddess.
• This quality of intimacy and way of being with each other, where people are held in a place where they can begin a sentence without knowing how they will end it, takes time to build.
• We honor the broad spectrum of ways women show up from a “masculine” stance, and men from a “feminine” stance; these are potent and helpful ways of looking at the world and ourselves.

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.