Women Love Power®

Feminine Power, Self Discovery & Sacred Sensuality by Ayesha K. Faines

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Why Abstinence can be Sexy–and Radical

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Remember sex?

We went from hot-girl summer to celibate-girl winter in the blink of an eye. Covid-19 put an abrupt end to barhopping — and bed-hopping — shuttering us indoors to be alone with our thoughts and our most instinctive cravings. But these days, women are less likely to view celibacy as a sentence and more as a form of self-care, especially at a time when protecting your energy and prioritizing mental health are tantamount.

It’s hard to even have a conversation about female celibacy that isn’t connected to religion, relationships, or respectability. Celibacy so often entails taking a vow of chastity for the love of a father, the Father, or a future husband. This is why purity balls, where teenage girls promise their fathers and God to remain chaste until marriage, are still a thing. For so long, sexual abstinence was less about a pause and more about the wait for the one — or anyone. Celibacy was either an act of devotion or the maligned mark of spinsterhood. But it’s time to change the conversation altogether.

Celibacy can be radical, self-indulgent, and, dare I say it, sexy. It can give us the space and time to take command of our sexual desires and prioritize pleasure in our everyday life.Celibacy can be the catalyst that we as women occasionally need to switch our focus from pleasing others to pleasing ourselves.  And in a culture of no-strings-attached love, taking sex off the table can clear the path to deeper, more gratifying relationships.

Rarely do we enter the bedroom solely seeking sex, anyway…

Read the rest of this article from my Love & Sex column at Zora here.

How to Let it ‘Flow’: Lessons In the Art of Surrender

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What would life be like if you stopped resisting, and began allowing? What does it mean to connect with the ‘flow’ and how do we marry instinct and desire? In the latest edition of the Women Love Power video series, we dive deep into the heart of the feminine journey, exploring how we, as women, have the power to endure, manifest, and forge profound connections when we tap into the ‘flow’. We explore an alternative approach that ignites our our ability to captivate, strengthens our resilience and connects us to our desire.

Curious as to how to connect to the ‘flow’ on a daily basis and ignite your feminine energy? Get instant access to the Five Laws of Feminine Power today for a play-by-play in module I of how we cultivate feminine energy– and use it to ignite attraction and sustain vitality.

Powerfully yours,

Ayesha

For Most Women, Power Is More Attainable Than (Equal) Love

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An honest look at woman’s quest for love, in the age of rising feminine power. Do we trade love for power– or can we get both?

Would you rather have love or power?

In Greek myth, the goddesses of Mount Olympus were rarely loved. They were lusted. They were tricked. They were possessed… often even subdued. But rarely were they loved.

Depiction of Sky God Zeus and his wife, the goddess Hera. Note how she prostrates before him. Zeus was known to humiliate Hera by taking on many consorts and affairs. She remained steadfast in her love for him, but was known for her rage, directed towards the women her husband chose.

Take Zeus, the omnipotent sky God and  Patriarch  of Mount Olympus. Zeus forced himself on Hera in order to shame her into marrying him— and then humiliated her   throughout their union by taking on countless consorts. He swallowed Metis, his then pregnant lover (whose name means cunning wisdom) after it was prophesied that she’d deliver a son smart and powerful enough to overthrow him, and disguising himself as a white bull, he even deceived,  abducted and raped Europa, a story that to this day is ubiquitous in the European Union.

Even the goddess Persephone’s rise as Queen of the underworld comes only after her husband, the chthonian God Hades attacks and kidnaps her, forcing her to live with him for half the year.

The goddesses of Mount Olympus loved their Gods, often in spite of the abuse, but rarely were they loved or revered in return. Figuratively speaking, they were the women who tithed while their men preached. They had power, ruling over their limited domains, and they had men–but not love.

These stories matters because the Greco-Roman mythological tradition is the  archetypal  blueprint for Western patriarchal society. These myths  assisted the decline of ancient matrilineal, goddess-revering societies, and they continue to exert a powerful pull on the collective unconscious–shaping our worldview,  gender norms, and the ways in which  conceptualize and actualize  love.

Depiction of the Rape of Europa. Zeus disguised himself as a seemingly harmless white bull in order to lure the mortal Europa. He later kidnapped and overcame her. Sex by deception and force is a recurring theme in Greek myth.

The imbalanced, exploitative relationships of Mt. Olympus were a prelude to the romantic conflicts that pervade Western society to this day. In fact,  I am convinced that much of the women’s movement of the 20th century was not just an effort to get equal power, but also equal love.

But equal love is hard.

Equal love is hard to achieve in a society that conditions men to resist emotion while conditioning women to seek it at all costs. Equal love is hard when we equate masculinity with domination,  teaching men they have certain rights over a woman’s body and it’s  hard when we assume that women are just ‘better at love’.

Game. Set. Match. Maybe Love.

I began thinking about our cultural conditioning and  our expectations for  heterosexual love,  while reading a controversial ‘think-piece’ published in Slate Magazine.

In the article, writer Heather Schwedel  says Alexis O’hanian, Reddit founder and husband to tennis champion Serena Williams, is  ‘performing’ love for likes on social media.

O’hanian, who once commissioned a string of billboards along a  California highway to welcome his wife back to tennis after  her life-threatening pregnancy, is known for his public displays of  affection. But rather than elicit a nod of approval, the author calls his efforts  a “baroque and labor-intensive domestic charade” selfishly designed to  solicit praise for “killing the feminist-husband game”.

This is what baffles me.

Everyday women erect emotional monuments to the men. We build towering edifices of  love, sacrifice, longing, and grief.

Why is it so hard to believe that a man in love might erect a billboard?

Williams is the ultimate powerful woman, and, thanks to the cliché that men don’t want to be with women who are more successful than they are, it’s nice to see her with a partner who, despite being a (lesser) hotshot himself, seems happy to take a back seat to her career.”-Heather Schwedel, Slate

At first glance, Schwedel’s cynicism speaks to our broad cultural assumptions about womanhood, race, and who we deem worthy of love. She frames her argument  in  the same beauty politics that have haunted  Serena’s career since its inception, joining the long list of detractors who depict Serena as too powerful, too masculine, and too brown for accolades, no less  love.

(Women are supposed to win approval, not championships.)

But perhaps more covertly, and speaking to my original point, Schwedel’s misguided thoughts also  mirror our own cultural expectations for women in heterosexual relationships– beliefs that undermine the  female  quest for fulfilling, unconditional, egalitarian love. We expect women to revere their men, but we’re a bit suspect when men do the same.

In order to  reach communion, or mutual love and acceptance, both men and women have to first consider  themselves equals, but patriarchies center around male domination and the assumption of male superiority, so herein lies the problem. In order for equal love to even have a chance, both men and women have to unlearn their most basic beliefs. We have to abandon the assumption that emotional withholding is masculine and that men are less than capable of love. We have to abandon the notion that women  must make ourselves worthy of male love, and that arduous emotional and physical labor is the price we pay to keep that love. We have to discard the idea that women are objects of male desire, rather than agents of their own.

The Truth About 80/20 Relationships

There are few things as demoralizing as being in an emotionally unbalanced relationship– where one partner out-loves the other.

But this unequal distribution of emotional and physical labor is commonplace, particularly in modern heterosexual marriages where studies show that married men reap the benefits of their spouse’s emotional and physical labor in tangible ways. Overall, married men are  happier, healthier, wealthier and have better sex  than their single counterparts, where as married women experience adverse health effects unless they are highly satisfied in their marriage. I’d conjecture that  these healthy, highly-satisfied wives are not burdened with performing the bulk of the emotional and physical labor. In fact, an AARP survey of 1147 men and women ages 40-79 who experienced a divorce in their 40s, 50s, or 60s, found that two thirds of women said they initiated the split.

These studies poke holes in our cultural assumptions about who benefits from marriage  while supporting the idea  that our cultural  blueprint for love is flawed.

For the better part of modern history, marriage was an oppressive institution that regarded  women as possessions, so in spite of our gains in the public sphere, remnants of that oppression still exist.

Women are working while  carrying out the bulk of the household and child care duties. Women are still performing the bulk of the emotional labor.  Women are enjoying the sexual liberation without the leverage the sex once offered in a culture that increasingly pressures women to engage in sex without investment or commitment. Our progress is benefiting men.

A 2009 National Bureau of Economics report sheds light on women’s perspective of marriage, suggesting that women in industrialized nations are experiencing a decline in overall happiness, inspite of epic gains in power– in large part, the report explains,  due to the complexity of modern romantic relationships, modern marriage, and the endurance to oppressive female roles.

Empowerment has become the catch phrase of the 21st century, and maybe we are so focused on power because it seems more attainable than equal love.

And this is not to say that true love does not or can not exist in our current society—it often flourishes  triumphantly, but the journey towards finding this mutually  loving  ‘communion’ is severely challenged by our cultural assumptions.

Love and Power are Not Mutually Exclusive

Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.

I have long been fascinated by women who excel in love and life– in fact that’s one of the many reasons I created this platform– to celebrate, and better yet,  to understand them. For years, I’ve mined the biographies of phenomenal women with chutzpah, gall, and larger-than-life personas, — women like Josephine Baker, Cleopatra, Pamela Churchill Harriman,  Lous Andreas Salome, Jeanne Moreau, Josephine Bonaparte, Eva Peron and Erykah Badu. These sirens, like Serena, also inspired the kind of love and devotion you can see from the highway.

And I realized something.

The common thread in all of their stories was not  just romantic success. In fact way too much attention had been given to their romantic conquests — a reflection of our shallow tendency  to define  women  by the powerful men who love them.

No, with time,  I realized  that romantic and worldly success go  hand in hand — and neither have anything to do with looks, privilege, or ladylike behavior.

It’s mindset. Mindset is what catapults mortal women into the pantheon of living goddess.

Their lives and behavior aren’t defined by patriarchal mores and sexist social codes and their life trajectories are not determined by gender.

Mental liberation enables captivating women to form solid self-esteem, the kind we all find hard to resist. It frees them to live full, individuated lives, to know their worth, and to ultimately choose men who are willing and capable of doing the same. These women are confident, cool, and comfortable in their own skin and they understand how to love and be loved. They resist conformity,  know their purpose, and play the field until they find  the man  (or men) best suited for their brand of love.

These women realize that they don’t  have to choose between love and power. For them losing personal power is not the price we pay for winning love. These women prove that a loving power can attract a powerful love.

The women who win  mutual, monumental love,  aren’t just lucky victors in a flawed system. It’s not a matter of chance. They foil all systems of power by means of subversion and self-definition. They are  indifferent to criticism and persecution and they give us a working example of what liberation looks like when paired with agency. They are the  true progressives of our lot, proving that fantastic success and monumental love is possible when we mentally get of the grid.

As Belle Hooks writes that “Nothing indicts female allegiance to patriarchy more than the willingness to behave as though the problems created by cultural investment in sexist thinking about the nature of male and female roles can be solved by women’s working harder.”

So often, when women encounter the kind of lovelessness endemic in patriarchies, particularly in our culture of casual sex, we respond by buckling down on our sexist thinking. In our quest to improve our romantic plight, to get the monumental love our dreams, we often resort to self-blame, self-pity, and self-correction rather than the most aphrodisiacal quest of all— self-love.

Man’s Fear of the Powerful Love

Samson led the people for 20 years until he was betrayed by his wife, Delilah, and captured by the Philistines. It’s a parable cautionary tale against excessive pride and charming women.

In our society, women who buck social expectations by loving how and who they want, threaten the livelihoods of men and women who are fully invested in an oppressive system. They defy  all that we’ve been told about female chastity, purity, fidelity, loyalty and emotionallabor. They challenge our beliefs about which women are ‘lovable’ and and the terms of the love.  They foil our caste systems of desire.

And they are powerful.

That’s what scares us the most.

To render any lover spellbound is  form of power, but especially when that lover is a man.  A captivated man is taboo in a culture centered around male domination and control.

Right now I’m talking about a power beyond sex, but the power to plunge men deep into the emotional abyss where he may lose control— lose his ability to understand, to distance himself with logic, to detach  and to resist. His own sexual destiny may be at the whim of a woman which really turns this who patriarchy thing on its head and the fear of such an occurrence is embedded in the culture.

Consider the most famous femme fatales in history.

Jezebel. Salome. Delilah. Cleopatra. The ubiquotious dark siren  of 1940’s film noire.

What do they have in common?

A touch of evil.

Kathleen Turner and William Hurt in the iconic neo-noir Body Heat. Turner plays a textbook femme fatale, using her captivating looks, charm, manipulation and sex to lead her mark to his demise.

These beautiful and beguiling  pose a deadly threat to every man they encounter. Their pleasure comes at a steep price. She is his weakness, never his strength. They  are seductive landmines stirring both desire and terror, and in the end, they must meet their demise lest men meet theirs.

But sometimes men do encounter, and fall for these powerful women, and the only death that ensues is the fragile ego that keeps him trapped in a system that denies him full love, acceptance, and wholeness too. Sometimes love leads to  a pleasurable death, followed a powerful resurrection.

The Taj Mahal is an enormous mausoleum complex commissioned in 1632 by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan to house the remains of his beloved wife. It was constructed over a 22-year period on the southern bank of the Yamuna River in Agra, India.

The world’s largest diamond was purchased for a woman. The Taj Mahal was created in honor of a woman. Some of the world’s  most beautiful castles were erected for women . One might even argue that civilization itself is a testament to what men are willing to build in pursuit of female sex.

Since the beginning of time men have been demonstrating their love in extravagant ways because contrary to popular belief, powerful women really do inspire powerful love.

We should not feel threatened by women who evoke magnamious gestures of love, or even skeptical; we should be inspired. By freeing themselves from the tyranny of patriarchal attitudes, these women cease to enable toxic masculine behavior in their own lives, and often inspire the men in pursuit of their love to find their own psychic freedom, a gateway to  self-love, healthy emotional expression, and ultimately communion.

Powerfully yours,

Ayesha

Want to dive really deep? Learn the ways women have cultivated their power and beguiling abilities since the beginning of time here.

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Your Vagina Has the Power to Heal!

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When we hear the term ‘vagina power’ or ‘pussy power’, we often think of a woman’s sexual prowess, or even her willingness to use sex as a bargaining chip. Too often, our sexual power is based on the belief that a woman’s chief role in sex is to provide a soft, pleasurable haven for a man– a space for temporary rest and ecstasy.
But what if I told you that your vagina is so much more than a Holiday Inn? What if I told you it was a temple, and a veritable pathway to physical, emotional and spiritual transcendence? What if I told you that women possess a powerful, healing energy that men can ONLY access through them? What if I told you women don’t just receive in sex– we actually give men something they crave on the deepest level.
 
In order to comprehend this, first you’d have to completely redefine sex, and extract it from its modern interpretation.
 
In the ancient world, sex was considered an act of sacred communion, a merging of two cosmic energies, and a means of creation and transcendence. Today, sex as a physical act performed for the sake of reproduction and pleasure.
 
In fact, the very word we use, ‘sex’, is derived from the latin ‘secare’ which literally means to divide– the opposite of communion. The word sexuality enters the english language in 1389, just as western views are totally shifting away from the sacred toward the profane.
 
Our perception is distorted. What we see on television and in pornography is a product of the male imagination. It comes from a hyper-masculine  place where a woman lacks sexual agency, and her vagina is  little more than a receptacle. Most significantly, sex, in its modern iteration, is totally divorced from its spiritual nature, and this rendering blinds women to the real source of their ‘vagina power’.
 
So what is her power? It lies in her mysterious, creative, revitalizing energy that when cultivated has the power to heal, transform, create and ultimately transcend. It is an energy that we don’t even have a word for in our language– though in eastern philosophy it is referenced as Shakti, kundalini, or even yen.
Even renown psychologist Carl Jung wrote in his spiritual autobiography that women have access to a divine energy, that men can only connect to through them!
 
In this video, I share how all women have potential to access this energy and to fundamentally change a man through sex. I talk about how this ‘whip appeal’ is healing to men, but how our modern society not only keeps women in the dark about this power, butreinforces beliefs and practices that actually DEPRIVE us of this power.

Have you experienced your power to heal?

xo,

Ayesha

“Hurt Bae”: When A Man Leaves You Emotionally Bankrupt

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There’s a new viral video, affectionately titled “Hurt Bae” that offers stunning insight into the dynamics of many contemporary broken relationships– the type of emotionally lopsided relationships that most of us will encounter at least once (perhaps repeatedly) in our dating lives. Created by “The Scene”, the short features two ex-lovers facing in their first intimate exchange following a tense break-up.

Even in the relationship’s after-life, it is evident that the power dynamics are still uncomfortably skewed in his favor. We see a woman who is visibly broken and looking for an emotional  reciprocity that simply isn’t there (and maybe never was).

I see a woman who has given way more emotional energy than she’s received. I see a woman who is empty–emotionally overdrawn.

It makes you wonder– how many of us enter new relationships in emotional debt, hoping to find someone willing to make a deposit? And perhaps, the first deposit in our emotional bank account has to be the investment we make in ourselves.

In this video I discuss creating intimacy in a way that doesn’t leave you broken and bereft. Watch the original video here.

Powerfully yours,

Ayesha

Beyonce’s Powerful Hidden Message to Womankind

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In the wee hours of a Sunday night, I found myself engaged in a heady Twitter exchange about whether superstar songstress Beyonce had either  evoked the orisha Oshun or the syncretized Virgin Guadalupe of Mexico.

I thought it was clear.

She had evoked both dieties– and more. I saw references to the Roman Venus, the Hindu  Kali Ma, and possibly the Egyptian  Isis.

Beyonce’s performance of motherhood, beginning with her decadent photo series (worthy of a wall at the MoMA) and culminating in her ten minute medly at the Grammy awards, had not been about honoring one particular diety– but rather using her global platform (and twin fetuses) to challenge modern notions of femininity and motherhood by conjuring the image of powerful creation deities that predate judeo-Christian culture.

Every goddess she called forth represented a unique message to womankind–it’s one of those many  instances in which her visual artistry is more significant than her actual song.

 

For some 25,000 years mankind honored women as the creators of life, primary providers of food, builders, artist ands, healers, priestesses and leaders. Across cultures, motherhood, above all, was perceived as nothing short of supernatural.

Feminine creativity, the power to manifest physical and psychic reality, is one of the Goddess’ primary aspects. People identified ‘the feminine’ as the source of all being–and as such, men and women in the early gynocentric societies tended to live in partnership, rather than domination.

Today, when we evoke cross-cultural images of the the Great Mother, as Beyonce has, it is not a cue to retreat to old ways, some romanticized, pastoral version of herstory.

The evocation of the divine feminine is a call for women to acknowledge their own sacred energy as a legitimate source of independent power. Reawakening the Cosmic Creatress on a global stage asks that we, as women, use our innate powers to take control of our destinies.

 I  invite you to explore her use of spiritual imagery as we unravel the her hidden messages to woman kind.

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Beyonce as The Virgin of Guadalupe

With the elaborate use of lighting optics and holograms, Beyonce, dressed as La Virgen in her signature gold spiked crown and mantle, appears and reappears on stage– a nod to the three apparitions of The Virgin Mary before Juan Diego, an essential aspect of La Virgen de Guadalupe’s legend.

La Virgen de Guadalupe is simultaneously a figure of religious reverence and cultural rebellion.

In 16th century Mexico, a  poor Aztec Indian named Juan Diego was said to be walking through the Tepayac hill country in central Mexico when he encountered a beautiful woman surrounded by a ball of light. Speaking in his native tongue, she identified herself as the Virgin Mary and asked that a church be built on the site. She appeared before him three times, asking that a chapel be built in her honor at that site.

Juan protested that no one would believe he’d seen her, so she pointed and suddenly among the cactus grew roses– the flower of the heart and of her love for humanity. Juan gathered the roses in his cloak and headed straight to the bishop. As he unrolled his garment, an image of the Virgin as a pregnant, dark skinned Indian woman appeared with stars on her cloak, a crown on her head, and rays of sun surrounding her.

Today Catholic scholars have openly doubted the historical existence of Juan Diego, but this we do know– following the Hernan Cortes’ conquest in 1521, a Mexican temple honoring the Aztec creation goddess Tonantzin was dismantled and replaced with a chapel honoring the Virgin Mary. In Mexico, this apparition was named La Virgen Maria de Guadalupe–and from the beginning she was a connection between their polytheistic, goddess past and their Christian future.

The Aztecs … had an elaborate, coherent symbolic system for making sense of their lives. When this was destroyed by the Spaniards, something new was needed to fill the void and make sense of New Spain … the image of Guadalupe served that purpose. -Patricia Harrington

 Many Aztecs continued their worship of creation goddess Tonantzin through La Virgen. Her belt is said to represent her pregnant state. Even her artistic rendering, always cast in the shape of a yoni, surrounded by roses and baby angels, suggests her fertility goddess origins.

Infused with a note of kisch (maybe even a nod to Kehinde Wiley) Beyonce references the La Virgen by draping herself in a blue-green mantle, and surrounding herself with roses, Guadalupe’s sacred flower– said to represent maternal love and fertility.

Surrounded by women who represent the cherub angels on one of the iconic renderings of La Virgen, they wear blue-green dresses, the color of her mantle, and dance atop a bed of roses, her sacred flower. They also, for a moment during Beyonce’s Grammy performance, evoke a powerful reference to The Last Supper.

La Virgen embodies unconditional motherly love, but more than anything she embodied refuge from colonial conquest– a means of honoring their original creation goddess under the guise of Christianity. Newly converted natives continued to come from afar to worship there, often addressing the Virgin Mary as Tonantzin.

Her blue-green mantle was the color reserved for the divine couple Ometecuhtli and Omecihuatl that represented the dual cosmic energies, and her belt is interpreted as a sign of pregnancy. La Virgen was called “mother of maguey (the aloe plant) and the source of the sacred beverage polque, also known as “the milk of the Virgin”. Even the rays of light that surround her image are said to represent the spines on the maguey plant.

This is why Beyonce’s choice to represent her is fascinating. The singer is deliberately blurs the line between the Christianity and gynocentric spirituality. As such, she reminds that our goddess past is ever present, still influencing the way we worship and connect today.  She directs our attention to a time prior to the ascent of patriarchal  judeo-christian religion, when the divine feminine served as a projection of our power as women to create, transform and manifest physical and psychic reality.

The Message: Patriarchal society elevates the concept of feminine chastity as a means of punishing women for their sensuality and encouraging them to suppress this creative, magnetic,  life-affirming power. This wide-spread suppression of our erotic instincts is not only confusing to women, but detrimental to our relationships, our spiritual and mental well-being.  Our ability to manifest anything we want is nothing short of miraculous. Honor it. 

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Beyonce as Oshun

 

Beyonce evokes the Yoruban goddess Oshun by wearing her signature color yellow and gold jewelry. The deity reins over the sweet (fresh) waters, hence the billowing effect of her cape.Beyonce’s  african jewelry serves to further emphasize her reference to African spirituality.

An archetypal symbol for the feminine principle, Oshun reins over the  sweet waters (fresh water)  and the realms of sensuality, creativity and abundance. In Beyonce’s recent body of work, Oshun is a well-known artistic reference to West African matriarchal iconography.
Ochun represents the creative and procreative force that exists in all women, the passionate, erotic energy that can be channeled into the creation of  new art, new life, or even a new reality. This life force has  many names in eastern philosophy, from shakti to kundalini, but most notably, it is the one powerful aspect of femininity that patriarchy attempts to suppress, opting instead to subject women to the contrived virgin/whore binary, both of which deprive women of their instinctive powers.

 Sensuality, creativity and abundance are the gifts of Oshun.

Standing on the stage adorned as Oshun, in gold jewelry that adorns her enchanting, pregnant body– Beyonce represents two realms of womanhood that are traditionally kept apart– woman as mother, and woman as lover. All too often our society attempts to reduce womankind, in all of our manifestation power, to vessels of life  and pleasure. In a sense, we are laborers– our bodies designated to deliver life and to deliver pleasure– in both  instances, our bodies are at work for others.
The fascinating aspect of Oshun, and all of the creation/love deities like her, is that she embraces pleasure for the sake of pleasure. When we engage in ‘self-care’  we activate our own inner Oshun. She walks around with a honey pot tied around her waist, this nectar symbolic of both sexual release, and her own inner contentment.

In this image, Beyonce evokes the orisha along with her mother and daughter. She is simultaneously referencing the powerful mother/maiden/crohn trinity that predates modern religion.

In myth, Oshun seduces out of fullness. She transforms the lives of those around her by ‘sharing’ the sensual, abundant energy she carries within. Hence her gifts to civilization, are music, dance, art, poetry, and the passion that ultimately spawns new life.
When we talk about empowering women, so often we do so in within the context of denying our sensuality– not wanting to be seen as vessels of  erotic energy. Sensuality carries a distincitly negative connotation in patriarchal society–there are women who can not imagine connecting to their body if it isn’t in the context of making babies or pleasing a man. What else can we expect in a culture that exalts above all else, a virgin birth?
A critical aspect of our empowerment is acknowledging and owning this  creative life force; the Oshun, within us. We all have access to this mysterious and magnetic energy; some of us are overwhelmed by it, and others suppress it, but we all have access to this creative energy that mankind has exalted for years—and we can use it to heal, transform, and take charge of our personal and sexual destinies.
The Message: In order to give pleasure, one must know pleasure. Keep your ‘honey-pots’ full. Your pleasure is a privilege for yourself and a gift to others. 

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Beyonce As Venus

Having emerged from the sea a fully developed woman, Venus, like her Greek counterpart Aphrodite, is the goddess of passion, eroticism, and creative force. She is  goddess of the waters, the source of life and the element linked with emotions. Like women, water has the capacity slake, transform and destroy. She represents the transformative power of love and sexuality, and our capacity to grow through joy and pleasure.

Often portrayed in the nude, bathing or wringing her hair after emerging from the sea, her exposure lacks of self-consciousnessness– much like Beyonce, who stood before the world, ripe in her womanhood, and exuded total and utter confidence in her body. When we as women connect to the Venus in us, we experience a lightness of being. When we are passionately involved with a project or a partner, Venus moves through us.

In this image of a reclining Beyonce, she still incorporates Mexican influences, and the gold of Oshun, but also poses like the Renaissance depictions of the Roman goddess Venus.

A depiction of Aphrodite (the Greek equivalent of Venus) with her son Eros. Aphrodite/ Venus is often portrayed reclining.

Venus is said to have risen from the sea, fully formed. Water is a powerful metaphor for feminine power– representing our capacity to slake and destroy.

Roman theology casts  Venus as the yielding, fluid female principle, not unlike the chinese concept of tao, which is essential to the balance of dual cosmic energies. She tempers the masculine and can bestow abundant gifts of military victory, sexual success, good fortune and prosperity.

Sandro Botticelli’s famous ‘Birth of Venus’.
Beyonce, recreating the classic Birth of Venus while incorporating Egyptian imagery and Oshun’s golden yellow.

The message: Our society leads women to live in their heads, but sensuality happens when we connect to our bodies whether it be through dance, massage, or even sex– and we own every inch of our splendor. Contemporary images of beauty are designed to induce ‘longing’– beauty as we know it is a product of commercial culture. Real beauty happens when we ‘altar’ ourselves–even if not on the world stage–at least in front of the bathroom mirror. In an eros-phobic culture, self-admiration is considered vanity, but in actuality it is one of the gateways to feminine power.

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Goddess Tripping Into the Future

When we reclaim the divine feminine, we acknowledge our goddess past. This is not an act of worshipping or even longing for an entity without, rather, it is about acknowledging something sacred within.  As we goddess-trip deeper into the 21st century,with all the unique challenges and opportunities it will present woman kind,  we must recognize that the  sheroic qualities humans worshipped for the better part of history are not fantasy– they are in us. We are vessels of deep love, pleasure, creativity, knowing, and miraculous healing energy. We have the capacity to heal ourselves, to heal our world, to transform any condition, and to create any reality. We. Are. Magic.

Powerfully yours,

Ayesha

PS: The shadows of these great goddesses continue to exert their pull on womankind today through the force of psychological archetypes. Discover the 7 feminine archetypes that underscore your life story, or take a free quiz to uncover the captivation ‘goddesses’ within you.

The “Goddess Complex” aka How to Play Games You Can’t Lose

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“Do whatever it takes. This is a hustle.”

I’ll never forget the woman who christened my TV career with those frank words of wisdom. She was the head of on-air talent at NBC Universal– the woman responsible for turning the likes of Tamron Hall and Brian Williams into household names–and I was a plucky 21 year old who’d talked my way into the C-suite of  30 Rockefeller Plaza.

I sat breathlessly as she watched my demo tape–  a bootleg collection of fake news reports I cobbled together as a summer intern, in hopes that someone  might catch  a  glimmer of star quality in a girl with big hair and a mild speech impediment.

Her feedback was blunt. She told me I was green  (the industry euphemism for terrible) and headed straight for a world of rejection.

And then she swiveled in her chair, looked me dead in the eye, and promised me I would make it.

The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

I did. I became a local news reporter three months after graduation and I owe it all to her.

I wish I could say she placed a high-level phone call, right then and there, on my behalf. I had no such luck.

The only thing  she did was tell me I would make it— and I believed her.

Armed with the belief  that success was inevitable, even if not immediate, I became fearless. The deluge of rejections I received from news directors around the country never fazed me. I ignored the ‘grown-ups’ who told me I was being unrealistic.

Instead,  I used my graduation money to fly to a media conference in  Chicago where, dressed in my very best pantsuit, I handed those terrible tapes to anyone who’d have them. That is how I met my first boss– the woman who put me on air.

And at the tender age of 22, I had learned the lesson of a lifetime .

Fulfilling our desires has little to do with preternatural talent, beauty or luck and everything to do with adopting this mindset:

Life is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Winners win because they expect to win. 

How to Play Games You Can’t Lose

We have little control over how the events of our life unfold, but we do control our interpretation and response.

When we  play games we can’t lose, we  expect to win– and every event that occurs, whether positive or negative, is simply working to move us forward. In this playbook, failure doesn’t exist. Neither does fear.

This is the attitude that separates the creme from the crop.

Most people are primed, beginning in childhood, to view failure as fatal. Failure is perceived as some sort of  moral shortcoming, a blemish on our character, or even karma’s bitchy wrath. It means we did wrong. We are flawed.  It checks our faith and brings forth our deepest insecurities. Failure is uncomfortable and as such, we resist at all costs.

In our attempts to curb failure, we play small. We avoid the bold risks  that lead to real change. We end up lusting for things instead of really activating the faith it takes to attain them.

Even worse, when people sense our fear of failure, they take our power.

When a man senses you are afraid to lose him, he loses the incentive to demonstrate his commitment. A boss that knows you are afraid to exercise your options, has little incentive to promote  your talent. A client who senses you need their business  has no incentive to pay you your worth.

A New Definition of Success

We often define success so narrowly that we practically guarantee a loss.

When life gets tricky, we lose sight of the big picture and become obsessed with individual outcomes. We get wrapped up in winning over one particular man when the ultimate goal is deep, committed love. We give up after one failed business venture when the ultimate goal is economic independence.  We rue over one failed  ‘vegan challenge’ when the ultimate goal is simply a tighter tummy or better health. 

We forget that ‘failure’ is merely feedback, and a signal to move forward, perhaps via a different road. Instead, so many stop just short of their destiny, derailed by the inevitable twists and turns of the journey.

When you surrender to the process, when you demonstrate the radical trust of which all women are enormously capable, that is when you  begin to play games you absolutely can not lose.

How to Slay On and Off the Court

“I just never give up. I fight to the end. You can’t go out and say, ‘I want a bag of never-say-die spirit.’ It’s not for sale. It has to be innate.” -Serena Williams

When I think of women who play games they can’t lose– I think of Serena Williams. (Though every woman on my G.O.A.T. list qualifies.)

With 23 grand slams under her belt, this is a woman who knows how to win. Her entire career has been built on defying expectations. She shrugged of those who ridiculed her muscles and her curves. She ignored those who doubted she could prevail well into her thirties. She even ignored those who labeled her confidence, arrogance.

And that’s not even taking into account her wins off the court– her  romantic hit list is a sampling of Hollywoods most notorious–and enticing– bachelors.

That’s why people were shocked  when she announced her engagement to Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. She’d kept the relationship under wraps (smart woman) and few even knew they were dating. In fact, the gossip blogs, for years, had been playing a game of ‘Guess-Which-Ex’ — as early as a month prior to her engagement announcement, rumors swirled that she’d reconciled with her long time romance, hip-hop heartthrob Common.

But women like Serena don’t make u-turns.

On and off the court, she doesn’t lose sight of her ultimate goal. She plays to win. And she has never allowed anyone– no man ( no matter how intoxicating), critic or  opponent, to derail her .

This is what I call the “goddess complex”, an unshakeable belief in oneself that unlike the pseudo-psychological “god complex”, is rooted in healthy self-awareness.

How to Win… in Love

As women living in a society where rules of the game were largely established by men for the benefit of men, it is imperative that we bring this “goddess complex” in to the realm of love.

One of my favorite sayings is “people enter your life for a reason, a season and a lifetime”.

For me, growing up meant learning to tell the difference.

It’s easy, during the initial stages of romance, to fantasize about a lifetime of happiness with the interesting man sitting across from you at dinner– but that’s a slippery slope.

Every man we encounter on this journey to deep, lasting, spirit-based intimacy is not meant to be a soulmate.

Some men come into our lives bringing pleasure. Some men bring us wisdom. Some relationships, even those that end in heartbreak, bring us greater inner-strength and self-awareness. You may meet men who introduce you to new experiences, new people, or challenge you in exciting ways. You may meet game-changing men who bring you deeper into the depths of intimacy. Some men are in fact in your life soley to prepare you for the real love you seek.

We run into trouble when we try to make seasonal men the love of a lifetime. Not only do we sabotage our chances of encountering the real love we crave– we often overlook the ‘gift’ of the liaison.

All love begins with authenticity and intention.  Honor your authenticity. Set you intention. And then surrender, completely,  to the process. This is the only way to truly enjoy men, and lets face it, romance should be about pleasure.

The irony  is that the more we are capable of loving with a light touch, the more the men in our lives crave being near us.

By raising our expectation, we raise our vibration and our energy shifts in palpable ways.

You develop something greater than courage and confidence– you  develop conviction, the sense that nothing can stand between you and your destiny. You stop operating from a place of fear– and start acting from a place of love, deep self love. This changes the power dynamic in every relationship. You begin to attract the people and opportunities that are aligned with your best interests.

When you expect to win– you literally change the game.

How to Adopt a “Goddess Complex” in 3 Minutes or Less

It’s no secret that most people live their lives avoiding failure, and yet find it at every corner.

You can forever shift  this  power dynamic by  shifting  your mindset. In fact, by the time you finish reading this passage you will have adopted what I call a “goddess complex”.

Unbeknownst to you, you probably already have a “Goddess complex”, but only in certain situations.

Like driving.

Driving is as liberating as it is dangerous. Every time you get behind the wheel there are a number of potentially fatal events that can happen.  And yet, every day, we pile into the drivers seat and push the gas.

As we head for our destination there are red lights, traffic snarls, detours, tolls, accidents, slow pedestrians, fender benders and bouts of road rage– and yet none of these occurrences, aside from complete catastrophe,  deter us from arriving at our destination.

Why?

Because we totally expect to arrive.  If we, for a moment truly doubted our ability to arrive safely, we wouldn’t drive in the first place. We’d be too scared!

But  society doesn’t condition us to fear driving. Society conditions us to fear the big stuff– like romantic rejection, starting anew, or pursuing our wildest dreams.

But these destinations are no different than those on the map. When you drive, the only thing that matters is that you know where you’re going and you trust that you’ll arrive.

The same principle applies to everything thing else you desire in life.

One Final Note

Women at the top of their game succeed because failure is NOT in their playbook.

Think about your greatest desires– not those that have been chosen for you. Not the dreams you feel you should have. Consider the visions  you have for your life that speak to your spirit.

Remember this, so long as you are willing to play the game all the way to the end– you can not fail.

No one and nothing can stand between you and destiny.

So love like a goddess. Work like a goddess. Live like a goddess.

You are indomitable. The world is yours for the taking.

With persistence and power,

Ayesha

The whole world steps aside for the woman who knows where she is going…

Power Players: The Top 12 Femme Fatales in Film History

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The term femme fatale literally means deadly woman, but the only thing she usually bludgeons is the male ego. As you’ll soon discover, she much prefers to outsource her dirty work.   She is a beguiling figure of film noire, the gritty, crime-driven genre born of widespread disillusionment following the Depression and World War II.

Who is she?

At first glance, the femme fatale is an alluring woman who charms a man into a  precariously asymmetrical relationship, and then leads him directly into harms way.  She is a sight to behold, first appearing  atop a winding staircase, in nothing but a towel, anklet and cheap wig– or perhaps sauntering  through the sticky Florida heat in chiffon dress that suggests, underneath, a body made for sin.

Her erotic energy is palpable. The meter of her speech, the texture of her voice, the curve of her gait– everything is choreographed for maximum hypnotic effect. Equal parts mesmerizing and machiavellian, she lulls her victims into unfamiliar emotional terrain–using her body as a precipice  upon which  one might risk life and limb.

Who is she, really? 

A patriarchal inversion— a smart woman who uses her feminine wiles against men, as a means to gain power and independence in a domain where woman have neither.

A fulcrum around which events turn— she acts on desire, rather than wait to become the object of someone else’s.

A transgressor of societal norms— her very existence, even on celluloid, threatens to undermine  womanhood as we know it. She represents an alternative model for femininity–a woman who is bold, sexually autonomous, smart, and selfish– that is, she uncharacteristically places her own needs and desires before others.

The Vagina Has Teeth

She is the culmination of male awe and angst surrounding unbridled female sexuality–the imminent threat of being totally consumed in a woman’s physical and emotional body, as if her womb were quicksand.  Her  archetype appears in gospel, folklore and myth; Samson and Delilah, the Greek sirens, even  vagina dentata, a folk tale in which a woman’s vagina is said to contain teeth. Yikes.

The toothed vagina is no sexist hallucination: every penis is made less in every vagina, just as mankind, male and female, is devoured by mother nature. – Camille Paglia

With her character in the hands of male writers and directors, the femme fatale is predestined for a comeuppance (quite often death)–but no amount of back end retribution can diminish the powerful precedent she sets. Morals aside, femme fatales may be the best fictional example we have of women using their innate power to advance their goals.

There is a lot a girl  can learn from a deadly woman. So pop your popcorn ladies…

Here are my twelve favorite  femme fatale performances for your viewing, and learning, pleasure.

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The Top 12 Femme Fatales in Cinematic History

12. The Postman Always Rings Twice– Based on the 1934 novel by a James M. Cain that was considered so provocative when it first came out that  the city of Boston banned it, noire icon Lana Turner plays a buxom blond trapped in a loveless marriage. She seduces a drifter who  begins working in their diner, and together they conspire to kill her husband. The combination of Lana’s ethereal innocence, and her not-so-innocent tight white shorts are irresistible.

Seduction archetype: The Goddess.

11. The Last Seduction– Linda Fiorentino plays Bridget Gregory, a cunning woman  who steals $ 700,000 from her husband and flees. She lands in Beston, a small town where her crooked lawyer advises her to lay low.  While there, she liaisons with a local guy and turns him into killer.  High notes: Forientino’s androgynous swag, husky voice, and her ability to turn a boy-next-door into her love-addicted, dirty-work doing, play thing.

Seduction archetype: The Boss

 

10. Niagara– In this 1953 technicolor film noire, Marilyn Monroe plays Rose, the younger and very attractive wife of a depressed vet. She and her lover conspire to kill her husband and fail. The tables turn when her husband plots  his revenge. Niagara has a morbid ending, but the sight of Marilyn in a tight fuschia dress, writhing in such a way that mesmerizes  the men on and off screen is unforgettable.  There’s a ten-second shot of Monroe just walking away.

Seduction archetype: The Ingenue

9. To Have and Have Not– To be honest, this is not a classic noir, but Marie, played by Lauren Bacall, is every bit of a femme fatale.This was Bacall’s  first movie role, and behind the scenes she could barely get it together. Watching, you’d never guess.  She was 19 years old, but her extreme languorousness, that famous bewitching ‘look’ and her low,  breathy speech suggested a woman far beyond her years. It’s no suprise that during the course of the film she and her much older co-star Humphrey Bogart fell madly in love. He  left his third wife, and embarked on a long and storied romance with Bacall. The on-screen chemistry is as authentic as it gets, and the dialogue is scintillating! Any woman who aspires to elevate her conversation above banal banter should take note.

 You do know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together – and blow.”

Seduction archetype: The Sophisticate.

8.Out of the Past– Jane Greer plays Kathie Moffatt, a chameleon-like femme fatale on the run from her husband, who  eventually becomes the object of erotic obsession for a hard-boiled detective. Told in a series of melodramatic flashbacks, Greer shows the power of vulnerability, disarming with tenderness all the while using mystery to keep her lover at a distance.

Seduction Archetype: The Siren

7. The Killers- In her breakout role, Ava Gardner plays the gorgeous and mysterious Kitty Collins, a woman at the center of a murder mystery. Her entrance is unforgettable, leaning against a piano and crooning a sultry tune, she stands out against the  women in the room like a panther with white fur. The Killers is a study in presence. Her eyes penetrate; her movement is  graceful and feline. The Killers was made during the studio era when young actresses like Gardner were coached in the art of on-screen seduction.  Gardner wrote in her biography, “A lot of people have told me through the years that it was The Killers that set me on the road to stardom, that defined my image as the slinky sexpot in the low cut dress, leaning against a piano and setting the world on fire.”

Seduction Archetype: The Sophisticate.

6. Double Indemnity–  If you only watch one film noir ever, this is the one to watch.  Double Indemnity is considered the definitive film noire, and Barbara Stanwyck, as Phyllis Dietrichson, executes a textbook seduction.  From the moment she  appears leaning over a  banister, draped in a towel, the chase is on. She seduces an insurance agent and convinces him to kill  her husband and make it look like an accident, so as to  collect the insurance money. The only downfall of the masterful movie is the horrible blonde wig the director insisted  Stanwyck wear. In his defense, he wanted her to look cheap.

Seduction Archetype: The Siren.

5. Basic Instinct– If you can get past the  gore of the opening scene during which an anonymous blonde mercilessly murders her lover with an ice pick– this is a great  neo-noire. Sharon Stone plays Catherine Tramell, a crime novelist and the last person to be seen with rocker Johnny Boz before his mysterious murder. Michael Douglas plays a homicide detective assigned to the case. He is determined to convict Tramell of the crime, only he gets caught in her seductive lair and the two begin a torrid affair. Stone plays the Hitchcockian ice blonde to the hilt and who can forget the gutsy interrogation scene where Stone uncrosses her legs….

Seduction Archetype: The Coquette.

4. Body Heat– If there’s one word to describe this 1981 neo-noire, it is steamy. Literally. The story takes place during a Florida  heat wave and the characters never appear on screen with a thin veil of sweat. Matty Walker, wife to a wealthy, unscrupulous businessman,  begins an affair with an inept,  womanizing attorney. Having fallen head first for the mysterious woman, Matty is able to convince her lover to kill her husband. Are you recognizing a pattern here? Kathleen Turner’s frank mix of sexuality and coolness is exciting to watch. Of note: A master manipulator, Matty Walker gives you a step-by-step playbook of how to get a man to do just about anything. She also makes the case that every siren should own a billowy, white dress.

Seduction Archetype: The Sophisticate

 

3. Vertigo-Kim Novak stars as the distant  femme fatale in Hitchcock’s haunting psychological thriller that begins when  a wealthy shipbuilder hires a retired San Francisco to follow his wife –who’s been acting strange. Novak seduces the detective from afar, her puzzling behavior and sphinx-like demeanor causing a man with acrophobia to scale buildings in her trail. With nuance that only Hitchcock can deliver, Vertigo proves that paradox is immensely sexy.

Seduction Archetype: The Enigma.

2. Boomerang- Robin Givens  plays Jacqueline Broyer,  a seductive executive in this romantic comedy about a playboy who meets his match. While not a classic film noire, Jacqueline is a ravishing femme fatale who uses her powers not for control– but for autonomy. She is the chooser.  With her victim trapped in a hopeless game of surrender and retreat, Boomerang is a modern example of how feminine power can be asserted in the boardroom and bedroom.

Seduction Archetype: The Boss.

1. Gilda– Gilda is the film that made Rita Hayworth a superstar and the ‘love goddess’ of her time. She plays a hedonistic and flirtacious femme fatale married to an older man–a cold, wealthy, casino owner. Unbeknownst to her husband, Gilda has history with his right hand man, Johnny, and the two embark on an intense love-hate relationship in which Gilda teases him with her exuberant sexuality. It’s hard to put Hayworth’s performance in Gilda into words. Her erotic energy jumps off the screen. High point: Gilda dancing in sinful black dress, tossing her jewels to the crowd, and peeling her gloves like hosiery. Few things bring a woman to life like dance.

Seduction Archetype: The Siren.

Which film heroine do you most resemble? Discover your unique brand of captivation with my psychology-backed 13 Feminine Seduction Archetypes™ quiz.

xo,

Ayesha

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