Category: Interviews with Anyaa

It’s widely acknowledged by those attuned to the energies of the Earth that much more balance is needed. The Divine Feminine, once a powerful force on the planet, has been overshadowed by a patriarchy that diminishes the presence of the feminine. The result: few women in the role of spiritual leader and a culture lacking in compassion and nurturance of all. Cries can be heard, if one listens carefully, for the sacred feminine to be restored as an equal player in the consciousness of this planet.

McAndrew’s work is grounded in Transpersonal and Shamanic psychology, as she walks the spiritual path of the Goddess. Anyaa is an ordained Madonna Ministry Bishop, a Magdalen High Priestess, a Certified Shamanic Astrologer and Shamanic Breathwork facilitator, and teacher of Tantra and a Certified Imago Therapist. Her Priestess Circles empower women to reclaim the lost soul essence of the priestess within, while learning to walk in the underworld of their own fears to gain power, playful passion and magnetism.

She spoke with Edge Life about the role of the Priestess and why the awakening process is vital in the lives of those who experience it.

For those who have never heard of the Priestess Process, describe its intention and for whom it’s intended.
McAndrew: The Priestess Process is intended for women only and women who are interested in expanding their spiritual life and also stepping more into their own personal and spiritual authority. It is to assist women in stepping fully into their spiritual authority, their personal authority, and also something that we call “individuating from the patriarchy.” A lot of us feel like we’ve done that, but there are little places in our psyche where we’re still attached to the patriarchal culture, so the process really gives us an opportunity to be centered around our own Divine inner feminine.

Regarding the patriarchy, do you mean that within women there is still something within them it’s okay to go along with it?
McAndrew: We do an interesting process on the second weekend. It’s a process of getting in touch with what we call our inner patriarch. We’ve found that the inner patriarch is an aspect of the super-ego, like the inner critic or the inner judge, and it gets passed down to us from our mothers. It’s a set of unconscious beliefs and judgments and rules about women and about how to get along in a patriarchal world.

In our process, we interview each other and get to hear our own inner patriarch; it’s a sub-personality, so it comes through in this exercise. We get to see those limiting beliefs. Each woman has a ceiling, and that ceiling is a place that each of us have to push through to be able to be a woman of power. These internal beliefs would have us believe that, somehow, women are inferior, or we should keep our mouths shut.

All of this was created in the Collective for good reasons. If you think about it, 200, 500, 1,000 years ago, for a woman to be in her power meant certain persecution or even death. So these rules, or this inner patriarch, that’s been passed down from generation to generation…

Protected them in the past.
McAndrew: Yes! It was a way for our mothers to actually keep us alive, to keep us safe. So, that’s an example of what I’m talking about in terms of the individuation process.

Continue reading “Awakening the New Millennium Priestess: An interview with Anyaa McAndrew by Tim Miejan July 2005”

It’s widely acknowledged by those attuned to the energies of the Earth that much more balance is needed. The Divine Feminine, once a powerful force on the planet, has been overshadowed by a patriarchy that diminishes the presence of the feminine. The result: few women in the role of spiritual leader and a culture lacking in compassion and nurturance of all. Cries can be heard, if one listens carefully, for the sacred feminine to be restored as an equal player in the consciousness of this planet. One who has listened and responded is Nicole Christine, author of Temple of the Living Earth and creatrix of Celestial Earth Center in Tucson, Ariz. She has created and nurtured a lineage of women who have set the intention to “fully awaken, enliven and integrate the inner priestess” through a process known as Awakening the New Millennium Priestess. Anyaa McAndrew, a licensed psychotherapist in private practice, has worked for 25 years in the sacred work of emotional healing and leads women through the Priestess Processâ„¢.
Tell me about the role of the Priestess in past cultures.

Anyaa McAndrew: There’s a lot of new information coming forth that indicates that the Goddess probably ruled on the planet for maybe up to 25,000 years before patriarchy. Women played the major role in those times and, even after patriarchy came in about 5,000 years ago, there was still the Priestess and the Priest. They co-facilitated and mediated between the Divine and what happened with the people on the earth. The Priestess’s role was that of a mediator, like the Priest or Pope in the Catholic Church. In ancient times, she facilitated puberty rights of passage, marriage ceremonies and served as an intercessional between the celestial realms and the earth realms. Right now we don’t need that. We don’t need Priestesses to be an intercession for us. The point now is not to reinstate the temples or reinstate Priestesses alongside of Priests and Ministers, but to really find those archetypes within ourselves.

That’s a major shift in the role from the past to the present.

McAndrew: Yes. Those roles that are spiritually better than or inferior to the rest are just not effective, because we are moving into a time period when it’s important for all of us to connect to the Divine within ourselves and to have a clear channel. It’s about the role of the Priestess to create what we call Celestial Earth on earth now – to create heaven on earth. The function of awakening the Priestess now is to help women claim their own spiritual authority. It has been very difficult for women to relate to a white, male God, because that’s so different from who they are, so there’s an automatic disconnect that happens when women try to relate to God the Father. They may not even know they are feeling this until they are in their later years, and they disconnected with their own spirituality.

Continue reading “Awakening the New Millennium Priestess: From The Spiritual Path of The Goddess by Tim Miejan August 2001”