She Never Left

How Your Ancient Feminine Wisdom Has Been Flowing Through Your Bloodline for Thousands of Years, And Why Patriarchy Could Never Erase Her

Did you know that there is an ancient feminine wisdom wired into your DNA, held in your mitochondria, which has been passed down from mother to daughter, generation after generation, for thousands of years?

A living thread that connects you, right now, to the Ancient Mothers of your maternal bloodline.

And your father carries this same ancient feminine wisdom within his mitochondria too, inherited from his mother, and her mother, and her mother before her, stretching back through time to the Ancient Mothers of his maternal bloodline.

So it is as if we are all being held by these Ancient Mothers, through the golden threads of the feminine – like a web of light – holding us, loving us, and sustaining us from deep within.

In this article, I want to share with you how this ancient feminine wisdom continues to guide you from within, despite the efforts of patriarchy to distort, vilify, and silence her.

I’ll also take you back to a time when a far more ancient world existed – one in which the Goddess was honoured and revered. But before we journey there, let us first look at what your mitochondria are actually doing within your body.

Your Mitochondria Support Your Wellbeing

Mitochondria are present in nearly every human cell, functioning as the “powerhouse” that produces energy. This means that every breath you take, every heartbeat, every spark of inspiration or thought you have – it all relies on your mitochondrial energy.

Your wellbeing is completely dependent on your mitochondria, as they shape how you feel, how you age, how resilient your body is to stress, and how quickly your body finds its way back to wholeness.

The Sacred Science Behind the Magic

The reason as to why your mitochondria are so important to your health is because they are involved in many vital processes within your body.

• They help manage your calcium levels, which are essential for your brain, heart and muscles, as calcium acts as a messenger throughout the body.

• They are involved in hormone production, including oestrogen and progesterone.

• They play a key role in your immune system, helping to detect when something is wrong, such as an infection, and in doing so, your immune system is activated.

• They also recognise when a cell is damaged or infected beyond repair, and when this happens, they send signals that initiate the cell’s self-destruction. Although this might sound alarming, it is actually incredibly wise, as it prevents cancer, controls inflammation, and very effectively clears away unhealthy cells, so that new cells can be born in their place.

As we look at this, we can see that your mitochondria do not just produce energy, but also act as messengers, regulators, and guardians of your body’s wellbeing – very much like a Wise Mother who protects, guides and tends to all living beings within her care.

You Are Wired to Embrace Both Darkness and Light

This inner Wise Mother responds to the natural elements of earth, water, air, and fire, and to the eternal cycles of darkness and light. She knows that the more you live in sync with the seasons – where you embrace the powerful medicine of both the sacred darkness and the magical light – the healthier you will be.

This is because your body is wired to receive the medicine from both the darkness and the light through the pineal gland (the remnant of your third eye).

When your pineal gland registers darkness, it produces melatonin, which recharges your brain, boosts your immune system, strengthens your heart, and improves your memory. Your body heals itself during the night, and the ageing process is slowed. This is the healing medicine from the Dark Mothers (lunar goddesses).

And when your pineal gland registers sunlight, it strengthens your bones, reduces inflammation in your body, uplifts your mood, and supports a sense of calm and focus. This is the healing medicine from the Light Mothers (solar goddesses).

The Shamanic Wisdom Traditions Already Knew This

I believe one of the reasons so many of our ancient shamanic wisdom traditions honoured the passage of time, by following the movement of the sun, was so that they could live in sync with the eternal changes of the seasons.

They especially honoured the moment when the light is born in the middle of the darkness – the winter solstice – the darkest time of the year when the light begins to return. And they honoured the summer solstice too, the season when the light is at its fullest.

We know how deeply important this was to them, because we can see that many of the sacred stone altars, such as Stonehenge in England, Machu Picchu in Peru, and Newgrange in Ireland, are monuments perfectly aligned with the movement of the sun at the time of the solstices.

The stones at Stonehenge, which dates back roughly 5000 years, are set up to frame both the midwinter sunset and the midsummer sunrise.

And although 5000 years seems like a very long time ago, shamanism itself is far older. It is the oldest spiritual practice in the world, predating all religions. Some sources say it is more than 10,000 years old, others say it is more than 45,000 years old.

The word shaman seems to stem from the Tungus tribe in Siberia, meaning one who knows. But those who serve as the ‘shaman’ for their people were called different things depending on their culture. In the Sami culture (the indigenous people of northern Sweden, Norway, Finland and Russia), they are called noaidis; in the Norse tradition they were often women called völvas, or valas; and among the Peruvian Q’ero people, they are called paqos.

Although shamanism has evolved in a variety of ways across the world, a deep thread runs through most traditions: they are feminine-based wisdom traditions, honouring their connection with Mother Earth, seeing her as the Sacred Mother who births, sustains, and renews all life.

Many of the older cultures were also matrilineal, rooted deeply in the wisdom from the earth, as archaeologist Marija Gimbutas discovered in her extraordinary research. She named this culture ‘Old Europe’ – a civilisation that existed before the rise of the Bronze Age warrior cultures, and which centred their lives around the wheel of life and its cyclical turning. This was a culture that were rooted in the wisdom found in the feminine and the earth, where the Goddess was celebrated.

How Patriarchy Distorted the Feminine

So the feminine was honoured and revered for thousands of years, and then, slowly, something shifted. The feminine became suppressed, vilified, feared, and seen as sinful.

This distortion unfolded over a long period of time and from many different directions. But a clear illustration of this distortion comes from one of the early Church Fathers, Tertullian, who wrote that a woman is the devil’s gateway – the one through whom sin enters the world, just as Eve tempted Adam. Here, the feminine body itself was cast as a doorway through which evil enters, and she was no longer seen as sacred. Instead, she was something to be feared and controlled.

Despite this, some women were still able to practice their feminine wisdom, as healers, midwives, herbalists, mystics, oracles and seers.

But because these wise women could communicate directly with the Divine, the church saw them as a threat to their authority. To silence them, the ancient wisdom living inside female bodies was distorted into something bad, something that needed to be contained and punished – and as the witch trials swept across Europe, this ancient feminine wisdom was pushed underground, as it was no longer safe to practice.

And yet, she was never truly lost. Because although this wisdom was buried deep in the underworld, in the mythical landscape of our soul – hidden beneath layers of fear, grief, trauma, and a collective numbness that caused us to fall asleep to our own feminine powers – this golden river of feminine wisdom kept on flowing.

Passed down from mother to daughter, this golden spark of our feminine magic could never be extinguished. It was always kept safe, deep within our bodies, just waiting for a time when we would journey into the underworld to ignite the spark of our feminine magic again.

The Golden Thread

And isn’t this amazing, that within our bodies lives an ancient feminine ancestral wisdom, inherited from our mother, and from her mother before her, going back thousands of years? A feminine wisdom that is like a golden thread of the maternal line, reaching back through the generations to the Ancient Mothers themselves.

This is the DNA of your mitochondria – the Wise Mothers who support you from within, giving you the energy and vitality you need to be here, in life.

We are all held by the golden threads of the Ancient Mothers, deep within our bodies. Despite every suppression, vilification, and attempt to sever women from their own feminine powers, this ancient wisdom continued to be passed on, from the mother’s egg, like a seed of light.

I find that so incredibly beautiful, that within the egg of the mother – the egg that symbolises creation itself – the golden spark of our feminine magic was passed on, through the bloodline, for thousands of years.

This golden spark is what Norse mythology calls the iviðja – the Witch-Within-Wood – that golden light of feminine magic that forever flows deep within our core. She is the shimmering spark of creation filled with the magic that is the light of your soul (in Norse mythology, the soul is feminine, whilst the mind is masculine).

As we remember that SHE is GOOD – that this ancient source of feminine magic is GOOD – the old spell placed upon the feminine by patriarchy begins to break – and we RISE, in our power, becoming the oracles, seers, healers, and mystics we were always meant to be.

And as we do that, we begin to weave a new world into being – one that honours the fullness of life in all her forms: the darkness and the light, the human and the divine, the feminine and the masculine – so we can once again live in sacred reverence to the Mother who gave us all life.