Activating the Aries Wild Woman

by Cayelin K Castell

May the circle remain unbroken
May the Earth always be whole
May the truth always be spoken
May the Wild Woman live in my soul

I am living
I am free
Wild Woman, Wild Woman
I am thee…

This article has some technical info for those who appreciate that. It also has a lot of non-technical information that is immediately useful right now. See this Fun Venus in Aries Article on What Does The Aries Wild Woman Really Want

First Some Background on the Venus Cycle
There are five 19 month cycles of Venus that occur over 8 years forming a pentagram in the sky. See image below. At any given time there are 5 main archetypes of the feminine that are featured and only one of them is close to the Spring Equinox. This is important as we will find out later.

The sign (season) Venus is in when she rises as Morning Star is the archetype of the feminine playing out on the world stage for the entire 19 month cycle. In our Venus Alchemy (Evening Star Aries begins March 8) classes we have been referring to her as the Meta Goddess.

On March 31, 2017 retrograde Venus rose around 1 degree of Aries very close to where the Sun is at Spring Equinox meaning the Meta Goddess on the world stage until October 31, 2018 is the Wild Warrior Woman – a.k.a. Aries.

Most Importantly this is the last time in our lifetime Venus is activating the Wild Warrior Woman, because in eight years on March 25, 2025 Venus Rises as Morning Star at 29 Pisces and will continue to do that every eight years for the next 104 years. It was April 28, 1921 when we had the First Morning Star Rise 1921 in Aries (28 Aries) and March 31, 2017 when we had the last Morning Star Rise in Aries for a total of 13 Aries Cycles in the last 104 years. The next Aries Cycle begins in 2172.

The Sumerians and Babylonians Honored Venus as Inanna or Ishtar
When Venus rose as Morning Star closest to the Spring Equinox the ancient Sumerians and Babylonians ceremonially re-enacted the Inanna or Ishtar story. These stories describe the exact path Venus takes through the sky over 19 months before she again rises as Morning Star, restarting the entire process. These mythic stories provide a wonderful framework for engaging any Venus Cycle especially when you turn a multiple of 8 within that 19 month time. (Age 8, 16, 24, 32, 40, 48, 56, 64, 72, 80, 88, 96)

Additionally, this Venus Cycle is connected to Newgrange where Venus rises about 20 minutes before the Sun every eight years, lighting the passage and then passage grows dark and is relit by the Sun. This happened in 2009 and 2017 and will happen again in 2025. Find out more in this video:

The Venus Cycle and Ceremonial Magic
Tami and I each personally experienced how working ceremonially with your 8 year Venus return is life-changing. Since we have been leading these online Venus Groups we have seen first hand how life changing it is for everyone who ceremonially engages with Venus magnified by the power of the Group.

We have also personally experienced and witnessed how powerful this cycle is for those who have Venus (Rising, Moon, Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, Nodes, or Midheaven) in the sign of the Meta Goddess, in this case Aries. Find out if you are coming into a personal Venus Return HERE.

Many love this cycle and process so much they have been with us for the last two Venus Cycles and are already signed-up to be with us again for this Aries Cycle. We are encouraging everyone interested in the Divine Feminine Revolution happening now to consider joining us even if you are not in a personal Venus Return as this is the Cycle the Sumerians and Babylonians celebrated as a culture, so this cycle most closely matches the Inanna story. Details are HERE

The Aries Wild Woman Note: This article explores the Wild Woman that lives within everyone. Yes, men too. The Wild Woman has many expressions beyond the Aries Wild Woman, because ultimately all versions of the divine feminine are meant to be wild by nature, and here we are specifically exploring Aries Wild Woman Archetype.

Aries Wild Woman From the Shamanic Astrology Perspective.
It was in the mid-1990’s when Daniel Giamario founder of the Shamanic Astrology Paradigm began his research into the Venus Synodic Cycle. At that time the main insights came from the ancient cultures that worked with this cycle.

Over the years we have found many ways to powerfully work with the 8-year Venus Cycle reclaiming and reconnecting to many of the most important aspects of who we are. For many working with the Venus Cycle ceremonially is life changing. Again we would love to have you join us for this sacred journey if this speaks to you. Details are here.

In Shamanic Astrology the Wild Woman Archetype is most represented by Aries, though it is certainly not limited to Aries. Signs are seasonal and Aries is linked to the Spring Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere when new life is growing fast and in the Southern Hemisphere it is the season of Fall when the energies are changing fast to prepare for winter.

Traditionally, Aries is the archetype that is seen as the first expression of the self giving us clues as to why this Venus Cycle was the one the Sumerians and Babylonians worked with as a culture. At that time the March Equinox was rising near the Galactic Cross at the Galactic Edge representing an important Turning of the Ages around 6500 years ago.

When healthy and not repressed, the Aries archetype for women is a wild and free energy, the fierce warrior amazon who is committed to furthering the causes she most believes are worthy of her time and attention especially if they are about promoting justice and sacred balance.

For those who have strong Aries on their natal chart (Moon, Angles, Venus, Sun, etc) regardless if you are a man or a woman this Venus Cycle is personal for you. Those with strong Aries are learning about trust, courage and spontaneous innocence. This is about Trusting what you know in a given moment and having the courage to innocently act on it (this is virtuous action that is about restoring the cosmic balance). This is the type of action that is not calculated and overly planned, but rather spontaneous and in the moment.

The Aries Feminine expression is intended to come from a strong, individuated sense of self that also desires to have the freedom to be and do what she most desires to be and do. If there are no challenges to this – she will fiercely protect her freedom and the freedom of those around her including protecting our Beloved Mother Earth.

She is fiercely loyal to her perspective and to her community as she either searches for what actions to take, or knows what actions to take and then takes them. She is about restoring the cosmic balance. She is learning about independence, freedom, commitment to a worthy cause, and how to be spontaneous in the moment.

She is learning how to be whole unto herself. She does not need help to know who she is, especially when she was a worthy cause to put her energy towards. She is youthful, curious, adventurous, and playful desiring to have the freedom she needs to express her independence and strength. Essential the youthful exuberance of Aries contains within it all the ways of being wild and free .

Activating the Wild Woman through Intention and Invocation
Venus is on a journey to further activate this fierce, courageous, powerful and strong aspect of the Feminine. She knows what she wants and she doesn’t like to be told what to do. She is ready to right any wrongs while protecting her family, her community and the Earth.

This expression of the Feminine is valid and needed, though it has been repressed and denied for thousands of years. Our planet needs her Wild Woman strength and commitment now more than ever. This is not about fighting against others, it is about standing for what is just and true. It is about protecting those who can not protect themselves, including the children, the elderly, the handicapped, and most especially the Earth.

Invoking the Aries Wild Woman
Below are some suggested invocations to get you started. Plus we will share many other powerful practices as we engage the Aries Meta Goddess on her Ascent Journey with the first class in March of 2018. Details are here

Sample Invocations
I am wild, free, independent, playful, determined, and committed to furthering worthy causes that are helping to restore Cosmic Balance.

Wild Woman within, teach me more about who I am, and how I can have more fun, while also courageously standing for justice, fairness, equality for everyone and genuine respect for others.

It is Done, It is So, and So it IS…Blessed Be!

Here are some Questions to Ponder.
What would it take for me to fully know my Life’s Mission and Purpose and have the courage to step up in powerful new ways? What is my next best bold step that will further enliven the Wild Woman within me?

Defining Wild
The dictionary definition closest to the way Wild is being used in this context is: an unrestrained life or state; growing or living in a natural state.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes has a much broader definition of Wild in her book Women Who Run With The Wolves. It is interesting to note this book was first published when the author was in her age 48 Venus Return. It hit the bestseller list in 1993 during the Venus in Aries Synodic Cycle representing an outward manifestation of the Aries Meta Goddess who is the most wolf like of all the archetypes. This book has helped to restore conscious awareness around the fiery, unpredictable, spontaneous expression of the Wild Woman.

Clarissa describes the feminine wild nature as follows:

Within every woman there is a wild and natural creature, a powerful force, filled with good instincts, passionate creativity, and ageless knowing. Her name is Wild Woman, but she is an endangered species. \n\nThough the gifts of wildish nature come to us at birth, society’s attempt to”civilize” us into rigid roles has plundered this treasure and muffled the deep life-giving messages of our own souls. Without Wild Woman, we become over domesticated, fearful, uncreative, trapped…

The Wild Wolf Nature Healthy wolves and healthy women share certain psychic characteristics: keen sensing, playful spirit, and a heightened capacity for devotion. Wolves and women are relational by nature, inquiring, possessed of great endurance and strength. They are deeply intuitive, intensely concerned with their young, their mate and their pack. They are experienced in adapting to constantly changing circumstances; they are fiercely stalwart and very brave.\n\nA healthy woman is much like a wolf: robust, chock-full, strong life force, life-giving, territorially aware, inventive, loyal, roving. Yet, separation from the wildish nature causes a woman\’s personality to become meager, thin, ghostly, spectral. \n\nWe are not meant to be puny with frail hair and an inability to leap up, an inability to chase, to birth, to create a life. When women\’s lives are in stasis, ennui, it is always time for the wildish woman to emerge; it is time for the creating function of the psyche to flood the delta.

How does the Wild Woman affect us? With Wild Woman as ally, as leader, model, teacher, we see, not through two eyes, but through the eyes of intuition, which is many-eyed. When we assert intuition, we are therefore like the starry night: we gaze at the world through a thousand eyes. The Wild Woman carries the bundles for healing; she carries the medicine for all things. She carries stories and dreams and words and songs and signs and symbols.

She is both vehicle and destination. To adjoin the instinctual nature does not mean to come undone, change everything from left to right, from black to white, to move the east to west, to act crazy or out of control. It does not mean to lose one’s primary socialization’s, or to become less human. It means quite the opposite.

The wild nature has vast integrity to it. It means to establish territory, to find one’s pack, to be in one’s body with certainty and pride regardless of the body’s gifts and limitations, to speak and act on one’s behalf, to be aware, alert, to draw on the innate feminine powers of intuition and sensing, to come into one’s cycles, to find what one belongs to, to rise with dignity, to retain as much consciousness as we can.

The archetype of the Wild Woman and all that stands behind her is patroness to all painters, writers, sculptors, dancers, thinkers, prayermakers, seekers, finders–for they are all busy with the work of invention, and that is the Wild Woman’s main occupation. As in all art, she resides in the guts not in the head. She can track and run and summon and repel. She can sense, camouflage, and love deeply. She is intuitive, typical, and informative. She is utterly essential to women’s mental and soul health.

So what is the Wild Woman? From the viewpoint of archetypal psychology as well as from the storytelling tradition, she is the female soul. Yet she is more, she is the source of the feminine. She is all that is of instinct, of the worlds both seen and hidden – she is the basis. We each receive from her a glowing cell which contains all the instincts and knowings needed for our lives.

She is Life/Death/Life force, she is the incubator. She is intuition, she is far-seer, she is deep listener, she is loyal heart. She encourages humans to remain multilingual; fluent in the languages of dreams, passion, and poetry. She whispers from night dreams, she leaves behind on the terrain of a woman’s soul a course hair and muddy footprints. These fill women with longing to find her, free her, and love her.

She is ideas, feelings, urges, and memory. She has been lost and half forgotten for a long, long time. She is the source, the light, the night, the dark, and daybreak. She is the smell of good mulch and the back leg of the fox. The birds tell us secrets belong to her. She is the voice that says, “This way, this way.

She is the one who thunders after injustice. She is the one who turns like a great wheel. She is the maker of cycles. She is the one we leave home to look for. She is the one we come home to. She is the mucky root of all women. She is the thing that keep us going when we think we’re done for. She is the incubator of raw little ideas and deals. She is the mind that thinks us, we are the thoughts that she thinks.

Where is she present? Where can you feel her, where can you find her? She walks the deserts, woods, oceans, cities, in the barrios, and in castles. She lives among queens, among campesinas, in the boardroom, in the factory, in the prison, in the mountain of solitude. She lives in the ghetto, at the university, and in the streets. She leaves footprints for us to try on for size. She leaves footprints wherever there is one woman who is fertile soil.

Where does Wild Woman live? At the bottom of the well, in the headwaters, in the ether before time. She lives in the tear and in the ocean. She lives in the cambria of trees, pinging it as it grows. She is from the future and from the beginning of time. She lives in the past and is summoned by us. She is in the present and keeps a chair at our table, stands behind us in line, and drives ahead of us on the road. She is in the future and walks backward in time to find us now.

She lives in the rustling stalks of dying autumn corn, she lives where the dead come to be kissed and the living send their prayers. She lives in the place where language is made. She lives on poetry and percussion and singing. She lives on quarter notes and grace notes, and in a cantata, in a sestina, and in the blues. She is the moment just before inspiration bursts upon us. She lives in a faraway place that breaks through to our world…

…Our existence parallels hers…The fact that we are bereft in her absence, that we long and yearn when we are separated from her; these are the manifestations that she has passed this way.

PS…It is fascinating to note that just about 2 months into the Aries MetaGoddess journey on the 2nd of June 2017 the movie Wonder Woman was released as a powerful expression of this Feminine Archetype on the World Stage. In November of 2017 the Justice League with Wonder Woman as part of the team was also released. Justice is a favorite Aries cause!