Angry Goddesses: The archetypal energy of Anger

Hello and welcome. This is Padma Menon from moving archetypes. In this video I'm going to explore the archetypal expression of anger, we're going to meet some pretty spectacular angry goddesses and deities. And I also wanted to share some examples from my own life, and work about how anger manifests in an archetypal way, in our everyday lives. Before I continue, please don't forget to like, subscribe and share your comments. And if you liked this video, don't forget to share it with others who may also enjoy the theme.

Anger is a contentious emotion. In our usual stories about anger, it is almost always a bad thing. It leads to violence and destruction. And a lot of the time we are asked to delete our anger to manage our anger or to overcome it completely. Indeed, we have this belief that without anger, we would all be better, better off. And on one level, that is absolutely true. And this is where I want to clarify, as I sometimes do, that, in these approaches, in these videos, we are not looking at it through a psychological lens. But we are considering it through an archetypal wisdom, which includes imagination, creativity, and the Deity, which is a very different thing to a psychological lens. The psychological lens and approach, of course, is extremely important. And we all go to it whenever we need it. But here, it is a different approach.

So one of the things I suggest to people when they are in my programs, or when they're listening to my talks, I invite people to drop into their bodies, and into their hearts rather than trying to understand it with the mind and analyze it. So I'm going to invite you to listen with your heart and listen with your body. And with your imagination, try and a heartfelt imagination, not a mental imagination, but the sense or real sense of my exploration, because I am also being led through that body movement through how my body is meandering through this exploration. So I invite you to try and hold that and I think that might bring you more of revelation about this wisdom tradition than trying to approach it analytically with your minds back to anger.

Anger, as I said before, is something that is quite challenging. And I have found that whenever we explore anger, whether it is in my programs or even when I have come to anger in my own personal life, it has been a very challenging encounter, especially as a woman, I have felt that anger is not something that I must hold. Women are supposed to be pleasing and peacemakers and people who model how to not have conflicts. We have this idea of Earth as Gaia, this very tolerant and patient and all accepting mother. And we carry this towards I think towards our attitude and expectations of women in terms of expressing their anger. So this has been something very personal in my life.

And I'm sure it is to most of you who are watching this video in the archetypal tradition, which is the Rasa philosophy from India. We approach all emotions in quite a different way than we do usually. Rasa philosophy is one of the most sophisticated explorations of an archetypal approach to emotions and in this architecture of rasa such as it is, it is a multi-dimensional architecture. And in this there are two levels of this emotional movement. So, for example, with anger, we have anger which is what is called a permanent level. And by permanent we mean a level where it is fixed, it is defined, it is narrated, we know what it is, for example, in psychological narratives, we most of all, we mostly know, what is anger, we know how it, how it expresses how it behaves, we know what the consequences might be, we know some ways which we think we must manage and we also hold certain values about whether anger is good or bad. So, this is that fixed level.

But underneath that, if you drop down that descending is that primordial level of anger which is then called rasa, and rasa is where the anger is connected to its elemental expression. So, it becomes the express the anger or the ferocity of a volcanic eruption of a huge thunderstorm of a very stormy sea. And the other dimension of this primordial expression is that it is connected to a day at a divinity or a deity. And anger then becomes rage.

I think about it as that descending from emotion to sensation. So, we descend from the emotion of anger to the sensation of rage, and Deity of Rage is Rudra. The name Rudra is the name is the word from which the very name of rage in Sanskrit, which is Raudra. It happens to be one of my favorite archetypal expressions. Rudra is neither human nor animal. In fact, one of the most amazing images of Rudra is the sculpture, this ancient sculpture, where there is this combination of animal and vegetation, vegetable life, plant life, and animal life brought together and arranged in the form of a human body. And there is this incredible connection to elements to nature, in this portrayal of Rudra.

Rudra is connected to the storm. Rudra is a storm energy. But Rudra is also connected to the howling of the wolves. Rudra is a loner, living outside the realms of community and organized societies, like for example, outside the village. Rudra inhabits the forest, the wilderness where the wolves howled, where the wind just blows through these forests and trees, where there is this incredible and spectacular violence of a thunderstorm or a fire. Rudra is also associated with these huge conflagrations of fires of eruptions. So I hope you can begin to sense this elemental, explosive energy of Rudra.

And yet Rudra is revered in ancient hymns as the healer, the protector, the warrior, the poet, the sinner. So there's this incredible combination of power, vitality, energy,movement, poetry, and poignancy in this one expression, and this Rudra expression is said to be vital to energizing action. So Rudra is like the energy that infuses our actions.

If we move into another archetype, and this is the archetype of Earth, I just said that we usually in our times, now we consider Earth more in the Gaia archetype, where she is this all accepting tolerating mother, which is what we expect mothers to be. And I think that's why we like most of our goddesses to be mother goddesses. But in Indian astrology, the Earth is what is called an old Gra, Kochi type and okra means ferocity and it is connected to the same domain of rage, the ferocity and we speak about the Moulton core of the Earth, the fire under the waters. So when we invoke the archetype of water, we never forget that the under the water is the fire. So recently there was a volcanic eruption under the sea somewhere near Japan, I'm told. So you see that there is this, this explosive possibility always lurking, even underneath the waters. And this fire. This heat is what creates movement of the Earth's tectonic plates, it creates movement. And sometimes there are these explosive events, which change everything, it changes the geology. And of course, it changes life itself. And it brings about this radical transformation.

So heat is necessary, even at the level of the earth, for movement to power and infuse movement, transformation, and change. And in an archetypal approach, the suggestion is that our consciousness, our body, our experiences, are no different to that of everything around us. Indeed, we learn about ourselves, our consciousness, and who we are, from nature from earth, from the wild animals from the trees from the plants, they all hold this teaching relationship to us. Very important in an archetypal invocation is what is called an enthronement. And an enthronement means we consider something divine, something that has that that can teach us that we are prepared to learn. So the teacher the teaching relationship, nature, as teacher, diviners teacher, is incredibly important in an archetypal invocation, and it has two dimensions to it. One is, of course, the nature can teach. And the second thing is our preparedness to receive teaching, are we prepared to learn and that learning means we have to divest everything that we know, so we have to divest this permanent narratives, that permanent level stories and narratives, when we descend, we relinquish that. And we descend into this rasa realm, where we are then in this multi-dimensional constellation? And so long as we have the humility to learn, we will receive incredibly rich wisdom and revelations.

What about the angry goddesses? This is my favorite part also of the exploration of anger.

Most ancient goddesses were portrayed as what is called now war goddesses. But, but in my view, they are pointing to this ferocity, rage that elemental energy of Rudra world, rather than the fact that they were martial law they were wanting to have inflict violent oppositional wars. So you've got goddesses that are often portrayed holding Tigers by the scruff by the scruff of their neck with both arms or you've got goddesses whose bodies are part is a part Tiger bodies. And what these goddesses signal is this, this courage, ferocity, energy, vitality, and strength that is needed to express this elemental connection, our connection with our the wild in us what is elemental or primordial in us, it takes courage, it takes ferocity, and perhaps that is a martial quality, that quality of a warrior courage.

So you've got the ancient archetypal Archer, across so many different cultures. You've the central shamanic archetype of the archer, poet, dancer, is healer is very prevalent across many archetypal traditions. I feel that over time, at least if I look at it from the Indian cultural perspective, you have these goddesses then becoming more what they're called now as war goddesses, which instrumentalized their ferocity or their rage. So it became that this raging ferocity had a particular purpose and it was the purpose was to defeat evil so we had this duality of good and evil, and the benign goddess expresses herself as this enraged ferocious goddess like Kali or Durga, who then manifests to destroy the enemies of the gods. So here, ferocity and rage is given a purpose, it is now constrained by a particular purpose. It's not elemental anymore. But it is almost as if you are allowed to be ferocious. If there is a purpose, and if somebody has, if the deities of the gods have asked you to, to express yourself in this way, you're fulfilling, you're servicing a larger purpose, a more divine purpose of the deities. And then there is also the domestication of this range.

So in some stories, for example, the stories around Kali, her rage, which is often where she perceives that there's a betrayal by her consort Shiva, it becomes almost shrewish, it becomes as if Kali is behaving inappropriately and uncontrollably. And it's not dignified, it's not a divine quality. And Shiva is then needed to control Kali and to bring her back into that into the domestic the balance and stability of the domestic sphere. Kali is almost said to be ashamed of her rage. And sometimes there are even stories where the fact that her tongue is out is because she is, you know, biting her tongue out of shame.

I do find this real diminishing of that elemental energy, wisdom, and beautiful poetry. And that connection that we are offered in the more primordial invocations of the deities such as Rudra, and the early war goddess goddesses. That connections we have towards that wild beauty of nature, and how we are a part of it and that we are not even in our villages, we don't have to separate ourselves from the wild. I believe that this way of domesticating rage, and by saying that it is something to be ashamed of, and something to be controlled. It really diminishes those opportunities, especially in an archetypal invocation.

As a woman growing up in a culture where women's anger, women's expression, women's passion, they are problematic. I have personally felt how expressing my rage, my anger, my passion, my ferocity is almost a dangerous thing. I know that things have changed a lot. I was born and raised in India, and I know things have changed a lot in India. And I'm really happy to see this.

But I still feel that not only in India, I live in Australia now, and it is not that different. When I work with women in my programs from all over the world, it is always the same thing. We are afraid of anger and rage, we think it is not appropriate. It's almost like we don't want to claim our energy and our vitality. And there is this passivity that we accept this this necessity to please and the necessity to always be the resolver of conflict, which then gives us a certain affirmation and celebration and the reward by the village or the community in which we live.

By the way, I am not saying at all that to explore once rage and anger is to then be conflictual and be oppositional. This is where I said that we must relinquish that linear duality of good and bad and vengefulness to revenge against when we consider the archetypal invocations. So let me just give you two examples. One is an again an archetypal example of how this movement of anger and ferocity happens. And then another one is from my own life, and work.

So starting with the archetypal example, it's once again the story of the archetypal warrior Arjuna and his teacher who is the Deity Krishna. This is a story that I go to because it is so powerful and illustrative of that the nature of this archetypal inquiry in such a rich way that I very often use the story to illustrate many different aspects of an archetypal invocation. So for those who don't know this story, it is from the seminal poem, the song of the Lord, the Bhagavad Gita, where the archetypal warrior Arjuna, is facing, very important battle. It's a life changing battle with his own family, and he is in the presence of his teacher, the Deity Krishna. And he finds just at the, just at the beginning of the battle, he finds that he has lost his courage, his ferocity, the fire in him, and he is on his knees, and he is confused. He doesn't know what to do. And in fact, he thinks that he must flee.

Then Krishna begins to explore Arjuna’s experience of his sensation, he locates it in the primordial so when Arjuna has been betrayed by his family, and this is what has resulted in the war. So betrayal is a very important part of anger, we feel anger, and there's always betrayal present, I spoke more about betrayal in a video I did recently on suffering, so I won't go into it too much here. But you may be interested to check out this video after this one, and it will give you more, I think it will complement this video and it will give you a bit more of the cosmos of betrayal.

But we know that anger always flares up always birth in the presence of betrayal. And betrayal is often a very difficult thing for us to encounter. And to accept its reality because it destroys so many of our assumptions about the absoluteness of reality, especially when it comes to these, what I call these line betrayals, these intimate betrayals were the connections, of line connections of lovers of siblings of children of parents, that it is so difficult to even acknowledge it's a betrayal, because it breaks those very deep narratives we have about the loyalty of blood, the connection of blood, the the loyalty and faithfulness of love, all these expectations that we have, which are so which form the foundation of our narratives are of ourselves, and reality of the family, those relationships are so foundational to our stories about reality, that very often, it's almost impossible to actually see that there is a betrayal going on in those intimate sphere.

So that's what Arjuna is facing, while he's not facing in the beginning, because he can't acknowledge the fullness of the betrayal, that is that is happening and the fact that the nearest and dearest in his family are now lined up against him. So he speaks about the right and the wrong the morality of war and peace and he is ready to exit. So what Krishna does is Krishna moves that that emotion from that narrated level, down into that primordial level. Krishna invites an inquiry into his primordial ality to the larger movements of life and death of coming into form and dissolving of our Joonas own authenticity, where he reconnects him to the fires within Arjuna. Because Arjuna is a ferocious warrior. He is this Archer and so he reconnects with his own authenticity, the fires within him that courage which is connected that ferocity is not only connected to his courage, determination, but it is also connected to the energy he needs to act.

Krishna says action is necessary when we come into body when we manifest materially action is a necessity of this manifestation and Krishna says, Even I have to act says Krishna. He says, even though I am a Deity, I am divine in this material form, even I must act. So, action is not a choice it is absolutely necessary and what infuses this action that will make it in harmony with what is elemental what is primordial, what is harmonious at the level of earth, not just at the level of our self-interest, which is that narrative level, but at the level of Earth, that that bigger divine level is this energy, this energy that is unleashed when we reconnect with the reality of betrayal with the that, that hanger, dropping that anger into that primordiality of rage in the presence of the Divine, so here we have Krishna, who is there and guiding and holding this exploration.

So again, there's this enthronement. Arjuna is willing to be taught to learn from Krishna. So this enthronement is so important, we cannot I say it again, we cannot go into an archetypal exploration without devotion and enthronement and preparedness to learn. So all of these dynamics brings Arjuna to reclaiming his ferocity, his his courage, and then he's prepared to fight again. So the whole song or the poem is not a manifesto of, of the importance of, of war or battle at all. It is about this movement of reconnection to one's energy, heat, that vitality, that passion, and we just connected to the courage and then it is connected to that energy to express ourselves.

Let me give you an example from my personal life, which might be grounded a little bit more, because sometimes, Deities and archetypal warriors might seem quite distant from our everyday experiences. Some years ago in my own life, I found myself in a difficult situation. I had two young children, and I was in a relationship that had the dynamics of coercive control. And for those who have been in these situations, you know that this is a very complex dynamic. I found that over time, I found that I lost my energy. I literally felt that my limbs were paralyzed, I had this heaviness within me. If you look at my photos from that time, there is no light behind my eyes anymore. There was this listlessness, and heaviness in my body, I felt I didn't have the energy to do anything to express to be.

And I walked about like an automaton. And I was doing things but it was not an expressive doing. It was an automatic doing of the things that I needed to do to take to run the household. But what was interesting is somehow, even though there was a lot of opposition, I continued my dancing. And even though I knew nothing of this exploration at that time, in fact, it was those experiences that really birthed this particular dimension of my work. But somehow, maybe because the Deities were guiding, the universe was guiding, and maybe it was something inherent in this archetypal dance I've always been doing. But I was doing work.

I was I was living in the Netherlands at the time, and I was creating work I found myself creating work about Rudra about Kali, even though this wasn't planned. But in doing this work, I began to find energy. I began to find creativity, devotion, passion, and most importantly, energy and expressive energy through my own body. And I found that what it did was then energize me to connect to form alliances and alleviate my isolation because part of the coercive control dynamic is that you get very isolated. And that is the intention of this dynamic is to cut you off from connections and to isolate you. I found that somehow this was igniting connections, maybe because I had the light behind my eyes again, and I had this energy again, and I was carrying this in my consciousness.

And through these alliances, I was able to find safety to find a pathway to find a way out of this situation. Nothing out there could have told me what that pathway was going to be it had, it was no roadmap, no template, could have actually told me that this was my pathway. Out of the situation, it emerged, it sort of emerged from the consciousness around me this beautiful emergence, like sparkles of, of light that just emerged, and I just followed it and found my way out. And I can tell you that when I was following it, there was not a lot of support around me simply because it did not align with the rights and wrongs and, and the templates that are around me that permanent level, it wasn't aligning with that. But I trusted, the Divine, I trusted, that primordial that heat it me that courage, that ferocity, I trusted that recognition of betrayal that was happening in all dimensions, you know, where I was betraying myself where I was betraying the truth. And in betraying that truth, I was betraying the people that were depending on me. So there was betrayal that so many levels, it wasn't only the betrayal happening to me, which is also true, but also the betrayal that I was doing to myself, not recognizing the reality, as Arjuna was doing in his own story, that he was betraying himself by saying, I'm going to exit, simply because he wasn't prepared to recognize what was going on in front of him. So I think betrayal is like this chain event, it leads to several different kinds of the one betrayal leads to several different kinds of betrayal, including the betrayal of herself. So that is a story from my life.

And I've found that when I work with women in my programs, and we come to this exploration of Rudra. In fact, I, in one of the programs with a woman, when we were exploring Rudra, it was a very challenging exploration for her. Now she, people come to the program, and they choose the particular archetype that calls to them. So I'm not suggesting it, they are responding to that inner call. And when she proposed that she was going to explore Rudra, she had no idea why. And also, she had no idea that it was going to be a transformative, challenging experience, because she was a very gentle soul.

But a lot of that gentleness was connected to ascertain this, this kind of relinquishing of, of energy, relinquishing of one's own authenticity, which is what we saw in Arjuna, which is what I shared from my own life. And it was this pleasing aspect. Somehow, we are more accepted. We have a place, especially as women, when we are not ferocious when we don't carry that fire behind our eyes when we can, Aquarius and please, people around us, and that is what she had been doing. And when she found that in the exploration of Rudra, she had this visceral intimation when there was this kind of domination happening, whether it was in the dynamics of domination, whether it was in her work, whether it was in a spiritual practice, but she began to sense it's not it is not even the mental level, but from a bodily level, that sensation of these dynamics of domination. And I think that is the power of these body led traditions.

Again, those who have been, as I have in the dynamics of course of control or in, in dynamics like narcissism, which is sometimes very closely associated with Gods of control. There is this disconnect between what is being said and the action that bodily action, which is so disturbing and almost dystopian, because it really, we begin to doubt our own experiences of reality, when you're around these dynamics a lot and reconnecting with that, the ferocity and the courage to actually recognize betrayal, or to recognize where that seed of anger is birthing in us and what that what that anger is revealing about the dynamics of our environment, and then being able to locate that in a primordial inquiry in an with the devotional aspect, so that we don't bring it it is not about vengeance, it is not about conflict, it is not about attacking somebody in that linear way. Now, that is where we are at this at this permanent level. And there is absolute reality in that, because at the narrated level, anger does lead to violence to revenge and so there is a very different awareness and management that is required.

But when we come to the more creative ritual, ceremonial, devotional explorations, we are relocating it in at that Earth level, how do we act in harmony with sensation with Earth, with a way that is harmonious at that level of divinity, and sensation. And it is, very often it is not linear at all, as I said to you about my own life. It is not that you go and do something against a person. But there is a transformation or a movement that liberates which is very unexpected, always surprising, and always a revelation. So it again, it's not that I could say, well, now I have a template for every time I feel a betrayal, I can do the same thing. It doesn't work like that. It is about reigniting the inquiry. And that's why it's a revelation. It can't be a revelation, if it's permanent. It is a revelation, because it is always, in the moment always in respond to this to the particular dynamics of that particular moment of reality, who we are in that moment of reality, and not who we were at some other point. And therefore we just apply the same template. It doesn't work like that, at that level of primordial ality. I hope that this exploration of anger and its primordial sensation of rage and the poetry, the Divinity, the energy and vitality may be helpful to you, in your own inquiry. I just want to end by just saying again, how important energy that heat that passion is for us to be able to express ourselves to express that authenticity, that poetic expression, which is as Krishna says, so necessary, because in Krishna is onwards again, the Divine is a poet, and it is through our energetic poetic expression, that we connect with that divine intelligence and then we can be assured that our expression is in harmony with nature, and it joins the poetry of the volcanoes of the stormy seas of the thunderstorm of a prowling lion and of our own authenticity.