Dear Instagram,

You have recently banned the hashtag #goddess without any explanation, while the hashtag #god remains intact with over 90 million searchable uses.

I am not quite certain you know what this word #goddess, and more precisely its suppression/omission, really means to my sisters, to humanity, to this Earth—particularly at this critical time, as humanity stands poised at on the knife’s edge between redemption and self-destruction.

The feminine aspect of the divine, aka #goddess, holds a space of unconditional love for all beings, healthy feminine sexuality and identity, healthy and empowered motherhood—and Her wisdom and love births and runs through every living thing. She is the soil from which the garden of life grows. Life simply cannot thrive when She is suppressed; it withers in sadness and confusion.

In fact, the word #goddess—and the vast, creative feminine power it represents—has already been banned by quite a few “mass media” organizations before you: namely, every single patriarchal religion for the last few thousand years. For millennia, magical women and adherents of the sacred feminine—devotees of the #goddess, the Earth and Her deep wisdom—have been hunted, shamed, tortured, maligned, raped, coerced, reviled, and murdered into all but extinction. Thousands of years of bloodshed; thousands of years of banning #goddess.

As Dr. Phil would say: So how is that workin’ for you?

Well, during this period of imbalanced masculine hegemony and feminine suppression, the entire world has experienced untold, unprecedented violence, rape, and suffering. There has been endless war, degradation of the Earth, mass poverty and starvatio, extinction of most animal and plant species, mass human exploitation, perversion of the food supply, unchecked lust and greed. By attempting to suppress the #goddess and keep her out of her true power, these hegemonic forces have wreaked widespread destruction across the entire planet, and the lust for control and possession has brought us to the point of self-extinction.

If we, as a species, really want to continue banning #goddess, we might as well ban #ourselves as well. It really amounts to the very same thing.

And now, just as we are finally finding our courage and footing to embody the #goddess again, and navigate what that really means for all of us, you have decided to take this critical, empowering term of expression off Instagram, which is a primary means of representing ourselves and coming together as #goddess, again. To my many beautiful sisters, this feels like such a painful re-infliction of past wounds, when those who dared express their reverence for #goddess were punished severely. It feels like a huge step backward into the dark miasma of the old ways.

Do you really suppose that banning #goddess will help you keep lewd, illicit and pornographic images off Instagram, which seems to be your only possible excuse for why this hashtag has been banned? It will not help. Users seeking such content will merely shift to a new hashtag and continue to post what they like, so long as there is an unhealed, rapacious appetite for objectified images of women.

On the other hand, the true meaning of #goddess offers a means of actually healing the unhealed root of the content that you profess a desire to control. The #goddess, in her true power, holds space for the healed sacred masculine, for true divine union, and for the end of the exploitation, possession, objectification and soul-theft of women. Remembering how to honor Earth, to show reverence for the #goddess and Her creative life-giving power, is the key to redeeming our world.

So, when you ban #goddess in a disturbing repetition of so many destructive soul-wounds, you eliminate a vital means of self-expression for women rising in their power, a means of living and claiming our truth as an embodiment of that very #goddess that would heal us all, and connecting with true sisters in their own paths of remembering.

We need to live and understand ourselves as #goddess, and be represented and seen in Her many glorious aspects. We need to understand who we are, as Her. That is because, unlike the masculine #god most of us have been taught about (the hashtag for which is, again, not banned)—who is often depicted as residing on some lofty cloud in the sky and surveying humanity from afar—the #goddess inheres within our very bodies. In our hearts, our wombs, our touch, our smile; the way we hold our children; the way we love the Earth; the way we honor. She is the nurturing compassion; the sensual love; the creative darkness; the wild redeemer. She is divinity moving and dancing in the physical plane. And the world needs to remember Her again—here and now, shining in full resplendent truth—no holds barred, no shame or subjugation. If we are to survive.

More and more of us remember: We are Her. Let us be free, at last, to be. We have a world to heal; let us heal it.

#bringbackthegoddess

(Instagram sisters: please use #bringbackthegoddess to let Instagram know you care, and keep being the #goddess that you are! You are seen, heard, and loved! Thank you!)

~

Relephant Read:

Venus—Goddess of Love & War—In Retrograde: July 25th–Sept 8th.

~

Author: Sara Sophia Eisenman

Editor: Travis May

Image: Author’s Own