Feminine Archetypes: What Mythology Teaches Us About Womanhood | Ep 20

January 06, 2025

What did the stories you grew up with teach you a woman was allowed to be? This episode explores feminine archetypes and mythology as ways to question inherited expectations—and discover more room for curiosity, emotional depth, creativity, and boundaries.

Ready to reconnect with the woman you are beyond those expectations? Start with the free Feminine Reset.

Alanna Kaivalya, Ph.D., brings her background in Mythological Studies and Depth Psychology to symbolic interpretations of Ariadne and the Minotaur, Hathor, Diana, and familiar ideals of womanhood. These are her retellings and psychological readings of myth, offered as ways to examine your own experience.

In this episode:

How myth can give language to an internal experience.
What familiar princess stories suggest about waiting, being chosen, and personal agency.
How Alanna reads Ariadne’s journey into the labyrinth as an encounter with the unconscious.
What feminine wisdom and the right to say no contribute to a fuller understanding of womanhood.

Go deeper:

Explore four more goddess archetypes: Athena, Vesta, Juno, and Ceres

Listen next:

Timestamps:

00:00 Women in mythology
01:10 What mythology means
04:51 Femininity and the princess story
07:19 Ariadne and the Minotaur
10:35 The labyrinth and the unconscious
13:47 Ariadne’s thread and curiosity
15:49 Hathor and feminine wisdom
17:38 Diana and the right to say no
18:23 The narrow ideal of womanhood
20:55 Revisiting the stories you grew up with

About Alanna:

Alanna Kaivalya, Ph.D., holds a doctorate in Mythological Studies and Depth Psychology. She is the author of The Way of the Satisfied Woman and creator of The Satisfied Method™. Her work brings feminine psychology and mythological insight to women’s lives, relationships, and personal development.

Follow The Satisfied Woman wherever you listen, and share this episode with a woman who needs it.

The recording mentions an earlier resource. For the current free starting point, use the Feminine Reset linked above.

Episode Transcript

when we think about mythology or the stories of Heroes we often think about the men in those roles but truth be told there is quite a lot of mythological history for the feminine as well in today's podcast I want to go over a couple of my most favorite feminine myths and what they might say to us as modern women welcome to the satisfied woman podcast I'm your host Alana kyala this podcast is dedicated to helping women lean into their femininity and ReDiscover the power of their feminine gifts we take a look at what it means to be a modern woman and how we can live A Satisfied life on our own terms visit the Hub atthe satisfied woman.com and just for my podcast listeners I've created a special page where you can access a free satisfied starter kit head over to to the satisfied woman.com slower me to get started with your free starter kit right away all right for those of you who don't know me or my background let me tell you a little bit about why I want to present some mythological fun facts for you today I have spent more than two decades in the study of Mythology now most people when I tell them that I study mythology they think about Greek myths which honestly is really reductive and yes the Greek myths very much Center masculine and masculine traits but any mythology around the world has both masculine and feminine fun stories and traits within them number one and number two any historical religion or spiritual practice can be thought of as a mythology a mythology is simply the stories or belief systems that make up our understanding of the world mythology helps us to cope with things that are unknown and explain to us as humans the things that we can't explain so our religions are also a mythology they're a belief system structure now the great modern mythologist Joseph Campbell used to love defining mythology as other people's religions because it's easy to look at someone else's religion and you know recognize the stories in them and call them a myth it can be very difficult for us to step outside of our own belief system and recognize it as a mythology another big detriment to mythology is that in our modern culture the term myth has come to mean false or something perhaps not worthy of believing in this is very much a modern construct with the arisal of our deep belief in science now before I got a PhD in mythology I got a Bachelor's degree in physics so I'm all for science the scientific method I love research as much as the next academic but there are truths that can't actually be qualified there are beliefs that can't be poured into a beaker and there are equations that in the end of our life will never balance so what do we do with those now psychologically we craft stories or myths or belief systems in order to help us navigate and make sense of our world that doesn't make them untrue it makes them internally true psychologically true even if we can't write them down on paper put an equal sign with them and balance that equation so myth has incredible power it's soothing and directive and instructive for the psyche it helps us to understand things that we otherwise don't understand and it points to powerful internal truths that are common for all of us as humans so hopefully that little mythological overview gives you a good understanding of myth and also my deep love of it I also spent two decades delving deeply into spiritual practices Eastern practices and the mythology of historical and current religious and spiritual practices and that background is where I started to see the the masculine and The Feminine and how they interact with one another how they differentiate from one another how they complement one another and how today we really have a distorted view truly of both the masculine and The Feminine but as a feminine woman of course my interest is mostly in the feminine I started teaching about femininity many many years ago it was one of the most popular topics I taught um before I even wrote my book and there seems to be a lot of confusion around what the feminine is so in modern culture feminine is thought to be passive subservient to smile and be pretty to always listen to and follow the masculine femininity is softness it's weakness it's meekness and it's often taking a backseat to the masculine so if we think about modern myth iCal stories like perhaps Sleeping Beauty which you know I grew up as a child of the 80s I definitely grew up with Disney mythology um powerfully embedded into my psyche and probably like many young girls around that age and even still Desiring to have that princess outcome where we are stuck in the castle we have no agency and in fact Sleeping Beauty she's just put to sleep not only does she have any agency she doesn't even have any Consciousness and the only thing to pull her out of that deep unconscious state of course is the kiss of the masculine now it's a it's a lovely story and I'm not knocking Sleeping Beauty Aurora is wonderful and I've got her back in every way shape and form but that is not all femininity is and these myths that minimize the power of the feminine have not done a service to those of us who've grown up in this culture and still believe the feminine is weaker and less than the masculine so let me give you a couple of examples of myth um myths that Center on the feminine and share the power and insight they give to our own femininity I write about them in my book for those of you watching on YouTube I know I do this podcast as an audio for those who like that format but if you like the watching of it I always post them on YouTube as well so um I'm holding up my beautiful book and it is beautiful my Publishers did a great job designing it and it's called The Way of the satisfied woman and of course with my background in religion spirituality mythology academic research um psychology and women's empowerment you know that's what led me here but mythology is the power to teach us and give us ideas on where we can still go so one of my favorite myths that I write about in the book is the myth of aradne so AR Adney is a Greek myth and she is is uh a character in the story of the Minotaur so if you remember or even if you don't I'll recap it for you the Minotaur is a bull likee creature okay he usually is depicted as standing on two legs perhaps a little bit devilish looking definitely big and imposing the Minotaur isn't an intelligent creature he's not working things out logically he's just crashing around and waking havoc and the perception of the Minotaur from those outside of his home base which is a very complicated maze is that the minur is a danger and needs to be overcome and defeated now even to get to the center of the maze where the Minotaur lives is nonsensical you'll make a turn that turn will change the center is always moving there's no clear-cut path to the center again there's no logic or Reason in this world of the Minotaur there really is only fear and from the masculine side from the patriarchal side the desire to oppress defeat and dominate now the Minotaur lives in somebody's Kingdom King Minos and uh you know arani's supposed boyfriend decides he needs to be the champion and the hero by going into the Maze and killing the minitar now the minitar I mentioned is usually depicted as a bull like creature so he's got those two horns and historically mythologically speaking the bull has always represented the friend of the feminine now it's a beautiful image the bull that horn shape of the bull represents a crescent moon our lunar neighbor the Moon is always associated with the feminine the moon changes waxes and wains every month as do we as feminine women unsurprisingly our menstrual cycles tend to coincide with the moon's phases the moon never Remains the Same it's always in flux as are we biologically like it or not we have hormonal shifts and changes that actually influence our attitudes and our emotions and our operations in the world it influences what we prioritize day in and day out I remember growing up um my father used to always say a woman's prerogative is to change her mind now of course he said it disparagingly as if changing one's mind is not desired or even a bad thing when truly the changing of one's mind in response to conditions is appropriate and often really good why would we remain the same when the only constant in the universe is change so this bull figure is often associated with femininity we also see this in Egyptian mythology with the myth of hathor hathor is a feminine goddess whose icon is The Bu so the Minotaur this perceived dangerous creature inside of this maze is representative of our own unconscious our psyche has a couple of distinct Parts it has the conscious mind the unconscious mind and the supraconscious mind the Supra conscious mind is that part of us that is connected to the collective when we just know things that weren't necessarily taught to us when we can access higher wisdom that's superc Consciousness our conscious mind is our ego that's the masculine portion of the psyche it's the day-to-day Direction uh decision making outward moving energy and the unconscious is inherently feminine and that's where our emotions and our internal nature is stored and housed the things that come up from within us the things that might surprise us the things that are locked in from Early Childhood that we continue to live out as

adults in this myth the maze is our unconscious it's this nonsensical twisting inter turning that houses so much richness if only we could access it now we access it every night in our dreams and our dreams are often presented to us as myths dreams don't make sense they aren't linear they come to us in symbols mythology is always born out of someone's dream landscape there is truth in dreams and there is truth in the unconscious and boy oh boy we do so much better when we're at peace with it and when we find it the masculine when the unconscious rears its ugly head or the Minotaur rears its ugly head wants to just push it down wants to dominate it and defeat it but good luck with with that for all of us who have ever tried to repress our emotions you know about the hydraulic nature of the unconscious which is that the more you try to push it down the more it spring lows itself and Pops back up repression doesn't work so the more ariadne's supposed boyfriend tries to go into the maze he gets lost he tries to kill the Minotaur and it instead defeats him he cannot beat it the minur is a wild wild creature who is the source of our greatest discomfort and our greatest

triggers as the mythologist Joseph Campbell would say the cave you fear to enter holds the treasure that you seek just like the mythologies of the Dragon protecting the gold what what is a dragon going to do with gold really it has nothing to do with gold but but it's this shiny object and it just wants to protect it when we are able to slay or befriend that Dragon we get access to that gold it is those deep psychological truths when we befriend them become the source of our greatest strength and wisdom now the feminine knows this so AR Adney is part of the myth she basically one-ups all her masculine counterparts and instead of wandering around the maze just trying to go in that forward linear Direction like the masculine does to get to the center she wanders in a really circuitous way but she leaves behind her a thread so she starts at the entrance of the maze with a spool of thread and every turn she takes she's unwinding This Thread so she's got a way to get back home she's unafraid of the exploration of this dangerous maze because she knows she can always return smart that feminine and once inside when she finally gets to the center she approaches the minur not with anger domination or the desire to slay but rather with curiosity humility and the desire to be friend and the Minotaur in that way Becomes Her asset Becomes Her tool it becomes her resource she is empowered and emboldened by it because instead of it trying to attack her and defeat her and wak havoc on the the the kingdom it's now essentially her pet her willing accomplice in life so the feminine isn't afraid of a little beasty Wy nasty minitar feminine is interested and intrigued the feminine is curious curiosity is inherently feminine winding Securus roots are inherently feminine in understanding and befriending our emotional illogical internal unconscious nature is inherently feminine and this is the only way that the Minotaur is subdued but essentially calmed and it's by the feminine our lovely arot now I mentioned in terms of feminine representations in that bull iconography the hathor counterpart in Egyptian mythology now Egyptian mythology is Rich with Incredible feminine goddesses there's sekmet the lion goddess there's Isis the queen goddess with the big wings who sits on her throne and there's hathor who is the high priestess haor with her bull iconography is in charge of all the astrology of the Skies the wisdom of the cosmos but also the wisdom of all things mysterious and mythological she understands the nature of the universe because she understands the internal workings of her own mind haor has the um incredible Priestess training school in Egypt it's in dendera by the way I've been there it's an incredible place if you have the opportunity to go I highly recommend it and in this wisdom School in this mystery school where she teaches not things that are mysterious as in unknown Mysteries are simply the uh the wisdom of our spirituality which were at that time known now we don't know what they are because they didn't write them down these were oral Traditions that were passed down and hathor's school of mysteries was open only to women they held the mystical ethereal and mythological knowledge of the day they supported that transformational depth work that has always been going on throughout Millennia but was sacred to the feminine in the times of Egyptian culture so we have these powerful and there there are more right I also love Diana the huntress who suffers no fools particularly the masculine when she spies a masculine um spying on her as she's changing near the river she turns all of her animal friends into wolves who hunt him down and kill him you will not take from me me what I am not willing to offer freely think about that in terms of today's culture if we were able to say to the masculine you will not take or demand from the feminine what we are not in a position to willingly give freely it's a powerful lesson Diana of course is um from Greek and Roman tradition we don't really have powerful feminine goddesses in current Traditions I'm they they do exist but the dominant ones in the west our most powerful feminine goddess of the West really that we all I think are familiar with is Mary but Mary has been deeply sanitized and she's virginal and you know not a lot of us as modern women can fully relate to that experience of a virginal lady who has a virgin birth and is you know not participating in the world um that's a high standard to achieve and very likely unrealistic for a modern day woman it's not that Mary doesn't have power she does I mean she's the mother of God this is a powerful status to uphold but what I'm saying is it's not necessarily overly relational we can aspire to it we can honor it we definitely honor her incredible power and her beauty but some of the other mythologies of goddesses have a little richness to them have a little grit and depth which is how we experience life life is is complicated life isn't all Sparkles rainbows and butterflies and even though as the feminine we are taught and encouraged to just be pretty to just smile to just accommodate to not ask questions to not be too emotional to be very contained sanitized and sterilized that just isn't our life experience and we need myths and feminine examples that reflect the life that we're living which is a messy complicated life we are going to make mistakes we are going to sometimes not smile cuz goodness forbid we are definitely going to speak our mind and I encourage us doing it more we are the disruptors historically it is the women who have been the catalysts for change think of the incredible power of Jona AR think of the incredible Legacy of the witches burned at the stake those calling for change because of an intuitive guidance that's said it was necessary we need more of that those are high empowered feminine qualities and we find them in some of our historical myths so myth telling is one of my most favorite activities and so I will bring more mythology to the podcast but let this opener wet your whistle and have you thinking about different ways to look at the feminine and different examples of the feminine in the past and one thing to consider consider will be the feminine archetypes that you grow up with what were the narratives and stories as you were a child growing up that taught you about what the feminine was and are they true do we need to uphold them do they serve us or can we rewrite them or even move them forward it's a good question some of them are perfect as they are and some of them don't fit with our experience of life and a good myology a good mythology will always evolve with the people who are living with it so my fellow satisfied women if we would like to evolve as satisfied women and prioritize our femininity and highlight our satisfaction then let's start questioning let's start calling forth our feminine empowerment and live the path of the satisfied woman thank you thank you so much for joining me on this podcast it is always a pleasure to share these insights into femininity with you for more resources for online courses for links to go get my book for a free starter kit head over to my website the satisfied woman.com and especially for my podcast listeners go get the goodies I've set up for you over at the satisfied woman.com empowerme and until next time dear listener stay satisfied

Feminine Archetypes: What Mythology Teaches Us About Womanhood | Ep 20

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