To every woman who has created and nurtured life in human form, I show my utmost gratitude for you this Mother’s Day. This world would cease to exist without you. My deepest prayer for you all is that you see the magnitude and significance of your role in motherhood, and that you are honored and treated as such.

For this week’s Sunday’s with Spirit, I want to take the time to honor motherhood and take it a step further into honoring matriarchal principles through the lens of Great Mother Aset (Isis).

*Names in parentheses are the Greek names given to the Kemetic deities*

Aset

Aset is a complex, Kemetic deity who governs fertility, magic, funerary rights, and protection. As a magician she is able to take on many forms; however, the most notable would be her depiction as a woman with a throne as her headdress for her namesake as, “Lady of the Throne.”

Aset’s role as a great sorceress came as an anecdote for Ra’s (the sun god) intense, scorching power that droughts the very lands he created. Ra was given a secret name, one that grants him the immeasurable levels of power he wields. Aset knew this, and needed to find a way to obtain this secret name for herself so she could send Ra back to the heavens and restore life to the land.

In response, Aset makes a serpent from his saliva and some dirt that would inject poison into Ra. As expected, Ra makes his rounds on earth, the serpent strikes, and it fills him with poison.

Aset meets with Ra, letting him know she could rid him of the poison if he revealed his secret name to her. Ra obliges, and Aset carries out her promise to send Ra to the skies and restore life on Earth.

The Lesson

Ra’s energy is that of the sun: intense, scorching, hot, and drying. The sun gives life to almost every living thing and hardly anything can exist without him. The planets revolve around him. Without his light and heat, humans couldn’t survive. Our food wouldn’t exist. He’s definitely a big deal. 

Now, imagine the actual sun roaming the earth. Instead of him being ~93 million miles away, he’s walking amongst us (this is scientifically illogical, but follow the lesson here). 

It took Aset’s magic and consideration for more than herself to tame Ra’s energy. I speculate that the poison from the serpent was pure, divine feminine energy. For any uncontrolled masculine, of course the serpent’s venom would be poisonous towards containers it was never meant to be held by.  You see, Aset’s position as the throne reminds us that regardless of who is in the seat of power, the seat itself never changes. 

To me, this is what it means to embody the principles of the matriarch and how women have always played a significant role in sustaining life, balance, and equality in all people. The same magic wielded by Aset is the same energy that exists within all who embrace the divine feminine.

In the story, Ra was self-centered (no judgment, just observation) to the point that his proximity to what he created was killing it. Aset’s possession of the sacred name was not to destroy Ra, rather, temper him. The matriarchy is one way we, as a society, put the divine feminine back in her rightful place. 

The Matriarchy

See, people often frown at the idea of women being at the forefront because they feel we’ll govern the same way the patriarch has done and is simply not the case. You see, Aset could have taken that name and brought ruin to the land the way Ra had done and she didn’t. It was by this same magic her and son, Heru (Horus), were able to locate the dismembered pieces of her brother-husband, Ausar (Osiris) and resurrect him.

The matriarchy as a whole does not seek to punish with greed or remove benefits from women, children, the elderly, and the disabled the way patriarchy has done. Look to the earliest histories about how matriarchy has faired in the past (The Great Cosmic Mother is a great resource).

In its highest form, matriarchy comes to heal, build, nurture, and create community-focused infrastructures that benefits all. Not just the top 1%. Femininity, by design, comes to embody and unite where masculinity serves to sever and separate. Both have their place, and too much of anything isn’t good for anyone.

Final Thoughts 

On this Mother’s Day, my hope is that we honor mothers and all women as the portal from which life comes from. I’m sure everyone has their own views of what a true matriarchal society would look like, and I hope you leave this article seeing it as more than just women in charge. There’s an innate, divine feminine energy we all carry that considers more than just ourselves. 

Women are more than the baby-making machines society reduces us to. Without mothers, we don’t get to see the embodiment of God when she gives birth while completing their final exam online or when she creates delicious meals from scraps now coined as ‘delicacies.’ Matriarchy is the container that holds the Spirit and life force that creates tribes and kingdoms for generations to come. Hope this helps.