Touching the Divine through the Priestess Archetype
Power is our sacred birthright, yet many of us have disowned it due to the destructive ways we have felt and witnessed its misuse on the planet. As women, we often view “power over†or warrior~achiever mentality as good enough reason to stay away from power. However, we walk very differently on an empowerment path when we are fully encouraged to be with our soul as the source of our power.
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.
Just the thought of working with women in a sacred way and helping them live their potential made my heart sing. The second I was offered a chance to apprentice a priestess circle, (someone invited me from my original circle called The Rainbow Rays), I wanted to accept. The thought of helping to create space for women to aspire their dreams, a place to hold their true voice was honoring for me, and I knew the time would come but not quite yet!!!.
Then it came! I now have the privilege of apprenticing the Sacred Sisters of the Phoenix Fire, an amazing group of spiritually conscious women that want to change their lives through the Priestess ProcessTM. This process helps women identify and integrate the emotional, psychological, and spiritual issues that sabotage their efforts at creating a life of fulfillment and abundance. It is an initiatory process that consists of seven weekend sessions over the course of one year. The patriarchal cultural model of duality that we live under is crazy if you take it too seriously. That’s because there are worlds beyond rationality and logic that resonate with the relational model of wholeness women carry in our DNA. While we are all spiritual beings, it is especially important for women to connect with and live from their own spiritual authority so women can raise the world consciousness to a higher, life-sustaining level.
What exactly is a priestess? A priestess is a woman who lives her life from her heart and sees everything as sacred. She serves as a bridge between heaven and earth, a walker between the physical world and the spirit world. Her intention is to make the world a better place by being a conduit of Spirit and setting the stage for all people of the planet to return to the heart space of unconditional love. A woman’s job is important because it is the energy of women living from deeply feminine, life-sustaining values that will turn our unbalanced world around.
Flower Child
Vessel of Love
Messenger of the Cosmos
Blessing this life
This earth
with healing heart
Connecting
Spirit-souls
together
Reactivating the
power of Goddess
consciousness
and expanding love
exponentially
Thank you for serving
So high a calling.
Mona Reeves
Magdalene of the Infinite Light
What Women Have to Say About The Priestess Process (from the most recent to 6 years ago when the process began!)
“The Priestess Process has allowed me to deepen my connection to the Goddess within and become a more fully embodied woman. As I experience the many aspects of the Divine Feminine, I am able to connect more authentically with others in work and play. There is a Great Mystery at work in this Process. Thank you, Anyaa, for bringing this work to Minnesota.”
Deb Irestone
Certified Hypnotherapist
Wife and Mother of 3
“Anyaa McAndrew’s teachings of the Priestess Process and the Magdalene Process speak to the wonder of the feminine within each woman. The processes are spread out over several months which facilitates a commitment and a dedication not found in shorter workshops. Once I engaged in the processes, I become the divine feminine in training at first then embodied my birthright of the divine feminine with dignity, compassion, true self love and sisterhood. I was never one to have many girl friends and was always more comfortable with men. These process have changed my life views in a wonderful way and I have many women in my life now I regard as dear sisters. Anyaa’s teaching and mentoring brought a blessed balance to my life. I recommend these processes to females who want to heal old wounds in a gentle arena, embody their own divine abilities and know without a doubt their importance to their families and loved ones but also to their neighbors, their work arenas and in the Universe. ”
Rev. High Priestess Joana ShinKara Morris,
Crystal Star Magdalene, Spiritual Counselor
& Shamanic Practitioner, KC, MO.
“I encourage any woman who feels incomplete in her body and world to consider this amazingly sweet and powerful journey into herself. Being a healer myself, I have done many processes and on a strictly personal note, this has served me better at this time of my life than any other I have done. I am pleased and elated to call myself a high priestess and welcome all women into this circle of being who we were meant to be.”
Bobbie Martin
“Anyaa, Just wanted to send you a note to let you know how much I enjoyed the Emergence on Sunday. The drumming and communion were wonderful additions. Thank you for the work that you do. The Priestess that emerged were beautiful and powerful and reminded me of what I stepped into when I embarked on this path. You do facilitate powerful change and I wanted to take a moment to honor you and let you know how much I appreciate you and the work you do.â€
Continue reading “What Women Have to Say About the Priestess Process with Anyaa”
The human experience in a female body comes with a particular overlay as we move out of patriarchal times. Not only do we tend to repress & deny our essence qualities simply because of cultural conditioning, as women, we also tend to experience internal sexism towards our own gender. For example, “normal†cultural conditioning might say “never questions authority, “ while patriarchal conditioning will say “male authority has more validityâ€. Mary Pipher, Ph.D, in her book “Reviving Ophelia†talks about how this works in early adolescence, calling it “rigorous training for the female role or “false–self training.†She says “at this time girls are expected to sacrifice the parts of t themselves that our culture considers masculine on the altar of social acceptability and to shrink their souls down to a petite size. The rules are: be attractive, be a lady, be unselfish and of service, make relationships work and be competent without complaint. She calls America a “girl-destroying place†because there is so much encouragement from all aspects of the culture to sacrifice the true self.
The result of this indoctrination into niceness and lack of authenticity is that the real self gets pushed into the realms of the shadow and will eventually be acted out or projected onto others. As Alice Miller says “it is what we cannot see that makes us sick.†Former Rhodes scholar Rachel Simmons spent three years traveling around the country talking to America’s grade school & high school girls and found that one of the results is an epidemic of “bullying “, or girls using relationship as a weapon to victimize other girls. In her book “Odd Girl Out†Simmons emphasizes that girls & women do not have equal access to feeling and expressing their anger.