Why Women Fear and Crave Our Erotic Dark Feminine Power
“If only we had been prepared
If only we had known
If only we had been given the map
To find our way back home
But we are now remembering
What the moon and the womb
Have always shone
We must descend to the underworld
If we are to reclaim our throne.”
- Camille Willemain
Queen of the Underworld
It’s 2017.
I’m living in a small Caribbean beach town in the jungle of Costa Rica, guiding women’s rewilding retreats, writing a blog read by millions of people around the world, living the dream of my own imagination, and my life as I know it is about to be destroyed.
My perception of reality is going to be shattered.
The veils are going to be lifted.
It’s going to be harder than I could have ever imagined.
And paradoxically…
It’s going to bring me home to the deepest love in existence.
It’ll activate my long buried gifts from other lifetimes as a priestess.
I’ll finally unlock the deepest well of my power as a woman.
I’ll reawaken the wisdom of rebirth inside of my own female body.
Years later I’ll be guiding women into the long lost mysteries of their own Dark Feminine Power, hidden, buried, and forgotten through thousands of years of patriarchy… so we can finally harness the power of Creation in service of the world we all deserve to live in.
But first… I’ll have to re-live and remember the process.
Before I can become a sovereign queen of my womb… I’ll have to die as the naive maiden… the daughter of thousands of years of patriarchy.
I’ll have to uncover in my own body and psyche, the ancient Greek mythology of the one called “Persephone”, dragged down to Hades by her father’s dark brother.
I’ll have to untangle that quintessential woman’s coming of age patriarchal story… so I can grieve thousands of years of abuse, entrapment, and violation in my lineage… and finally remember our deeper origins as women.
I’ll have to die to these old stories, so I can remember I have always held the power of Creation in my own body. To know that my power is not a sin. It’s the greatest Love that made everything.
Like Inanna… it’ll begin with a calling.
A longing. An aching.
Like a seed planted somewhere deep inside of me… finally ready to crack through the oppressive pavement.
In the legendary myth of Inanna’s Descent to the Underworld, recovered on engraved clay tablets, buried in rubble in modern day Iraq, and translated by Sumerologist Samuel Noah Kramer across the span of over four decades…
Inanna, the Queen of Heaven and Earth, places her ear to the Great Below and she hears the call to the Underworld.
Down in the Underworld lives her sister Ereshkigal, the Dark Queen, the other face of her own wholeness, who holds a vital aspect of her power.
But before Inanna can claim this power… first she’ll be dismembered.
Stripped of all of her worldly powers until she’s totally disoriented and naked.
Killed through the wrath of her own lion-headed sister.
And hung on a hook to forever rot in the endless darkness.
Ironically, unraveling this process again and again in my own story, this is what I’ve discovered…
As women, we’re designed to seek out the darkness.
To travel deeper into the unchartered terrain of soul, body, and sexuality.
To know more.
Taste more.
Discover more of the mysteries of Creation.
But there’s a huge difference between a darkness that drags us under when we’re naive and uninitiated… and a darkness we come to trust as the black moon menstrual calling of the Great Mother… a darkness that’s here to regenerate us and rebirth us into more than we’ve ever been before.
When my own lion headed dark sister… my own Queen of the Underworld… came calling… she whispered to me… “the keys are hiding in your womb Camille.”
And as the daughter of thousands of years of patriarchy…
I had no map.
No guidance.
I was injured repeatedly.
Eventually, I had to recreate a map for myself.
Through uncovering our ancient mythologies.
Studying the long forgotten stories of womb priestesses.
And spending countless hours, days, seasons, and finally years learning how to deeply listen to the voice of my own female body.
Now… guiding this work for thousands of women in our Earth Daughters community, again and again I’ve seen it…
Women crave to claim their Dark Feminine Power and express this power in magical, creative, and regenerative ways in the world.
But then comes the fear…
Will I be destroyed by this power?
Will I be rejected by the world (and even by GOD) if I embody this power?
And perhaps the biggest deepest one…
Will I destroy the world with this power?
Yet… we still crave the darkness.
We seek to taste the darkness.
Whether we know it or not… we ache to remember the darkness within us.
For those of us who came to finally resurrect the ancient long forgotten power of the Feminine in our lineage, eventually the time will come when we can no longer ignore it.
When something inside of us or something outside of us… will come in with the wrecking ball and demand that we finally claim it.
That’s why in this article I’m sharing with you the wisdom I wish I had known on the path of resurrecting my own Dark Feminine Power, and the ancient knowing I’ve uncovered through years of being an “archaeologist” of the deep feminine soul, body, and sexuality.
So let’s dive in and explore…
“Why do women fear and crave their dark feminine power?”
Ultimately, it comes down to this —
As women, we’re here to know our power as creative erotic beings in a female body.
We hold the wombs that birth ideas, visions, and literally all of humanity.
We are Creatrixes at our Source.
We awaken and embody the deepest Source of this power through being initiated into our own darkness. Because darkness is the void from which everything is created.
We crave it, because it’s how we’re made. How we’re designed. Our natural innate Goddess given sacred primal urge to cycle and spiral with the rhythm of creation, and to endlessly transform the world.
We fear it for two reasons…
We’re designed to fear it.
We’re conditioned to fear it.
Fear and awe are two sides of the same coin.
Our reverence of the power of Creation demands that we understand it’s not actually our power.
It’s LIFE’S POWER.
And we must be in right relationship with life inside of us to honorably wield it… because this power can absolutely be used for evil instead of good.
But the secret is… our bodies as women are designed to keep us in right relationship with power.
Dark Feminine Power is both spiritual AND menstrual. All of Creation is born from the void of source… as the light that dawns in the darkness of the unknown… and life is born from the womb of woman, who becomes fertile because of her cyclical nature that includes the menstrual death cycle.
That’s why Dark Feminine Power has always belonged to women (even though our world religions and political systems have attempted for thousands of years to appropriate, harvest, and distort it… “nothing but the blood of Christ” would have in one time been “nothing but the blood of menstruation.”)
We also fear it because we’ve been taught to fear it.
To demonize it.
To distrust it.
The most impactful and divisive narrative in patriarchy is that our power… our blood… our menstruality… makes us separate from God.
This narrative could not be further from the truth.
Our power, our blood, our menstruality, is what makes us the Nature of Goddess.
Our world will remember the vital necessary power of the Sacred Feminine, when women choose to trust this power in our bodies, and initiate ourselves through the ancient primordial wisdom of our erotic darkness again.
What happens when we avoid this power?
The truth is… we actually can’t.
It’s a creative force of existence.
It’s here whether we want it to be here or not.
Our world religions and political agendas for thousands of years have taught us to demonize, fear, hide, and turn away from it, but that has never made it go away.
Instead, it has disconnected us from the true regenerative medicine within it, and rendered us vulnerable to predatory forces who know the power inside of it.
Rather than be “safe” from the darkness… when we reject or deny this power… we become victims of it.
In ourselves.
In others.
In the world.
Like Persephone, unaware of the dark nature of Creation, never taught about the red river through her feminine lineage, dragged into the rites of passage of her menstrual eroticism through dark masculine incestuous violation (the story was once called the “Rape of Persephone” for a reason).
Further… it’s sapped the life nectar from our world.
Because freshness comes through rebirth.
Life is born through death.
We now live in a time when dark kings have stolen the power of regeneration.
When our collective fear and avoidance of the death cycle has trapped us in a world void of the true wisdom of nature.
When technology has become the “Oracle” and we pray to capitalism as “God.”
It’s crucial for the healing, regeneration, and sustainability of humanity in harmony with Gaia and all of Her creatures…
That women take back the ancient holy grail of Dark Feminine Power in our own bodies, and become the Queens of our Wombs again…
So we can all delight in the beauty of nature that makes life worth living.
Honor all of our seasons of life, death, and rebirth in Creation.
And remember who we are again.
The good news is… resurrecting Dark Feminine Power doesn’t have to be terrifying or traumatic.
Like the shimmering night sky filled with stars in the black moon time… it can be filled with beauty, depth, truth, and MAGIC.
When we do this work together in a powerful, sacred, loving community of women… it can actually give us LIFE again.
If you feel the calling of your own Dark Feminine Power, the fertile magic of the Undeworld in your own female body, and to take your sovereign descent back to the ancient primordial wisdom of your womb again…
Together, let’s begin the work together here.
Claim your fears of dark feminine power
As I shared earlier, fear of Dark Feminine Power is both innate and it’s conditioned.
We’re designed to fear this power in order to revere it, to live in right relationship with it, and to earn our rights to wield it through the path of initiation… women’s rites of passage.
We’ve also learned to fear this power… through our culture… our lineage… and our other lifetime experiences… in all of the ways women have been outcast, exiled, or burned for expressing it.
The fear that comes from reverence is a healthy fear, a productive fear, one that inspires us into a fuller embodiment of real power beyond ego.
But the fear that comes from conditioning is a stifling, oppressive fear that keeps us from truly living out our potential, subtly or extremely enslaved to the patriarchy, staying trapped and limited in how fully we can birth a new world.
The first step in working with fear is to name it.
Look it straight in the eyes.
And let it have a voice.
So let’s face the three core fears when it comes to claiming Dark Feminine Power…
Fear One:
“I will be destroyed by this power.”
The truth is… you will be destroyed by Dark Feminine Power.
That’s how it’s designed.
It’s here to dismantle anything that stands between you and the truth of your own wild evolution.
But the core source of love inside of you can never be destroyed. Love survives everything in existence.
A harsh reality is… avoiding or rejecting your Dark Feminine Power does not make you immune to it. Rather, it will come in other ways and other forms. Through all kinds of situations that bring you down to the Underworld.
While there are initiations we can prepare ourselves for, and there are initiations we can never prepare ourselves for, the more we consciously choose to meet Dark Feminine Power inside of ourselves, the more capacity and wisdom we cultivate to meet it, know it, and work with it in empowered ways.
The question is…
Will you let yourself be destroyed by your own Dark Feminine Power to discover the truth of who you really are… or will you live a half life trying to avoid it until something outside of you drags you down?
Fear Two:
“I will destroy the world with this power.”
It’s entirely possible some of us lived lifetimes when we did cause harm through the use of our power.
In fact, in the story of Inanna’s Descent to the Underworld, Ereshkigal grieves the death of her husband caused by selfish acts of Inanna… and it’s why the judges of the Underworld cast upon Inanna the eye of death.
But the true medicine of Dark Feminine Power is designed to bring us into right relationship with our power in the world. (That’s why Inanna must descend to the Underworld again.)
Dark Feminine Power is here to humble and refine us so that we wield our power in service of the greatest good of All.
We’re far more likely to use our power in unconscious harmful ways, when we’re disconnected from the Source of Creation inside of ourselves… which includes the essential darkness.
Being in right relationship with power will ask us to continually return to the empty fertile void of darkness, to strip away your own ego, agendas, and even willpower, and to let a deeper power of existence bring you into greater alignment.
That can be as simple as going into stillness during menstruation, with the black moon, or in the winter season, and handing over your will to a greater will of Creation and asking Her to guide your way.
And at the end of the day… it may not be possible to be alive and never cause harm.
To engage with the world means to do so imperfectly.
That’s why what’s more important than withholding our power out of fear of causing harm, is to know how to work with our power to create healing. To contribute more good in the world, and to know how to apologize, forgive, make amends, and repair.
Being human means making mistakes.
But the more of us truly deeply listen to and honor the power of Creation in our bodies, which is ultimately love, the more we can rebalance the hierarchical power dynamics in the world.
Your power is not meant to be greater than anyone else’s power.
Our world flourishes when we’re all Queens of ourselves.
It’s actually the redistribution of power through each of us coming home to our own, that makes power safer and safer in the world. Power is not a “finite” resource, and we all keep each other in balance this way.
Fear Three:
“I will be rejected by loved ones, the world, or GOD if I claim this power.”
You might be.
And that’s a harsh painful reality.
But for some of us… denying the fullness of ourselves is too great a price to pay for societal, familial, or religious acceptance.
Sometimes, the greatest act of love is to dare to stand strong in the truth of ourselves, even if it means we lose things in the process.
It’s entirely possible to still love others, the world, and even those who have harmed us… without sacrificing any aspect of ourselves.
Ultimately, we honor, serve, and uplift the evolution of our world and humanity when we’re true to ourselves.
All parts of ourselves.
Darkness and light.
Love and power.
Claim your desire for dark feminine power
How would it feel to give your Dark Feminine Power a voice?
To let her sing and express from inside of you?
To finally listen to her longings and let her take up more space?
Go somewhere in nature, to the water, the trees, the Earth, and let your own Dark Feminine Power speak.
See what she has to tell you.
And notice how Gaia responds.
Dark Feminine Power mantras for inspiration…
“Nature is darkness and light, and I am Nature.”
“Everything is born from and returns to the fertile darkness.”
“My darkness is actually a powerful force of LOVE.”
“My darkness isn’t dangerous, it gives me safety.”
“When I embrace my Dark Feminine Power, I can protect the true light of the world.”
“My wholeness depends on embracing ALL that I am… including my darkness.”
“I came here to know my power in this lifetime, and to channel that power as a force for good.”
“ALL that I am is sacred and whole.”
“I trust myself.”
You might also place some loving Dark Feminine Power mantras on your altar, and repeat them whenever the fear arises…
to give strength to your own deepest soul truth.
Reclaim your dark feminine power once and for all…
Every autumn season for 7 weeks in sacred sisterhood together, we descend into the womb of our Dark Feminine Power for our sovereign rebirth, in Queen of the Underworld guided by the living mythologies of Inanna of ancient Sumeria and Persephone of ancient Greece.
Our journey is one of psyche, soul, body, and sexuality, as you rediscover the power of Creation in your own womb.
Doors are opening soon… join the waitlist so you don’t miss it.
Then share with me in the comments…
What does the voice of your own Dark Feminine Power want you to remember?
Channel Her voice within you… and see what she wants to speak.
In reverence of your darkness and your light.
Your power and your love.
All that you are is sacred and whole xx
May we all remember again.
Love,
Camille 🌹
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About the Author
Camille Willemain is a feminine embodiment facilitator, dance meditation teacher, energy healer, medicine woman, and feminine mystic, specializing in feminine spirituality, archetypal psychology, womb wisdom, somatic awareness, and ancient Goddess religions as doorways to women’s pleasure, power, sovereignty, creativity, truth, and love.
She has been facilitating women’s healing work since 2013 and is the founder of Earth Daughters women’s community. In 2019 she birthed Whole Woman Mystery School as a pearl from her own profound death and rebirth journey, and she continues to learn, heal, deepen, expand, and grow as her greatest devotion and contribution to the whole.
Her journey has included living 7 years in the jungle of Costa Rica, writing a lifestyle blog read by millions of people from 2012 to 2018, and trusting her gift of communicating with the spirits of nature through her intuitive travels and self guided pilgrimages in more than 25 countries across the world. It has also included the hugely vital inner journey of healing trauma and learning to feel safe in her own body.
She considers herself above all a Voice for Gaia Sophia and a Keeper of Sacred Space, here to offer transformational doorways and inner sanctuaries of love, safety, and celebration, for women to come home to the truth within, and to trust that truth as medicine for our world.