Hal and Sidra Stone refer to the inner goddess by her mythical Greek name ‘Aphrodite’ and describe ways to dialogue with her. They also recognise that as part of the balance between all energies there is an inner ‘Aphrodite’self in some males as well. However, the inner Aphrodite energy in men is not the same as that of the Inner Goddess.

Rachel Swift in ‘Women’s Pleasure’ suggests that part of the Goddess’s mystery lies in the fact that woman is one of the few species to experience female orgasm and perhaps the only species capable of serial or multiple female orgasms. At the dawn of civilization this would have added to her power over the male and suggests a reason why males came to fear the sexual side of the Inner Goddess.

The history of the inner goddess, at least since the fall of the Celtic and Mayan civilisations, certainly shows suppression by males. Mary Jane Sherfey in ‘The Nature and Evolution of Female Sexuality’ takes this idea further hypothesising that female sexual ans spritual superiority was originally the norm in tribal societies. This was seen by men as a direct threat to their ascendancy as the more powerful of the species and as society developed, every aspect of female power, including the Goddess was seen as a disruptive influence and ruthlessly suppressed. Perhaps the saddest outcome from this is the typically patriarchal belief that if a female has a different spiritual energy to that of a male, there must be something ‘not right’ about it. Yet it stands to reason that a woman having so many other different energies might also find her spiritual energy, and her connection with a Higher Self includes some additional strengths that males do not possess.

However, if a female’s spiritual or Goddess powers proved greater than a male’s, in the past, the standard male answer was to declare those spiritual powers ‘bad’ or ‘evil’ and to force her, instead to embrace the male’s spirituality. Refusal to do this, in many cases, meant death.

The Inner Patriarch is the primary self concerned with the disowning of the Inner Goddess, and after some 10,000 years it has been more than successful in this task. Dr. Sidra Stone, in ‘The Shadow King’ talks of the many ways an Inner Patriarch can set about stifling signs of goddess energy, early in the life of a young girl and ensuring that it never develops. She explains how, if the girl’s mother has an active inner patriarch, then it too will help with the work. Before long the girl’s own inner patriarch is born, ready to work from within, helping her to disown her Goddess, using fear, shame and guilt, the Goddess’s greatest enemies and ready, when she has children of her own, to pass the same negative judgements about the Goddess on to the next generation.

But while the Inner patriarch may have controlled the Goddess, he has never succeeded in fully suppressing her. She may have been exiled but she has never lost her power. Many people feel that the next few years surrounding the millennium will mark the return of the Inner Goddess to her true position of power in the world.  I for one will welcome that and stand ready to dance with her, embrace her and worship her, as is her due.