Goddesses in Older Women Quotes

“A younger you might have responded impulsively by letting your emotions carry you away without much thought or consideration. Those same emotions may arise, but a maturity (often having to do with being responsible for others) stops you from acting on them. You know that whatever you decide to do here matters. It is time to call on Hecate to help you see the larger picture, to stay at the crossroad until it is clear to you which path to take.”
― Jean Shinoda Bolen, Goddesses in Older Women:: Archetypes in Women Over Fifty

“but until a feminist consciousness emerges, it is easy to be blind to misogyny and its far-reaching implications”
― Jean Shinoda Bolen, Goddesses in Older Women:: Archetypes in Women Over Fifty

“The price we pay is the path not taken, that which we give up.”
― Jean Shinoda Bolen, Goddesses in Older Women:: Archetypes in Women Over Fifty

“Obviously, insights gained from gnosis are rarely welcomed as topics of conversation at social gatherings. To break the silence and speak about what you know to be your spiritual reality, or tell another about a numinous experience or your philosophical insights or take up a religious vocation becomes possible for many women only when they are over fifty and have found friends with spiritual depth.”
― Jean Shinoda Bolen, Goddesses in Older Women:: Archetypes in Women Over Fifty

“To be a choicemaker in the third phase means that what you choose to do or be must correspond with what is true for you at a soul level.”
― Jean Shinoda Bolen, Goddesses in Older Women:: Archetypes in Women Over Fifty

“The goddesses of mirth have an earthy perspective that is a commentary on reality; a wise humor that is not mean or demeaning to others. Humor without wisdom and compassion is often sadistic and cruel, a means of feeling superior at someone else’s expense. The intellectual and verbal talent that gives rise to a rapier wit in the company of equals is also not the same as mirth.”
― Jean Shinoda Bolen, Goddesses in Older Women:: Archetypes in Women Over Fifty

“Synchronicity has been defined, tongue-in-cheek, as “God acting anonymously,” which nonetheless alludes to an awe that can accompany an especially uncanny and significant synchronicity. Maybe we should think of it as “Sophia acting anonymously,” when we know through the synchronicity that there is no adequate explanation for how this could happen other than that we are part of an interconnected spiritual universe that has just shown us that we matter.”
― Jean Shinoda Bolen, Goddesses in Older Women:: Archetypes in Women Over Fifty

“But curiously, even if there is no word for goddess and monotheism denies the possibility, there appears to be a goddess in the Old Testament’s Book of Proverbs. She was Chokmah in Hebrew, became Sophia in Greek, and then the abstract and neuter word “wisdom” in English. Sophia as “wisdom” in the Revised Standard Version of the Bible speaks in the first person. Her description of herself and manner of speaking are that of a divine feminine being. Her attributes are those of a goddess of wisdom. She says: “I have counsel and sound wisdom, I have insight, I have strength,”
― Jean Shinoda Bolen, Goddesses in Older Women:: Archetypes in Women Over Fifty

“there is no word in Hebrew for “goddess,” so the word cannot appear in the Old Testament.”
― Jean Shinoda Bolen, Goddesses in Older Women:: Archetypes in Women Over Fifty

“halves of a spiritual whole; each completed the other. She realized that “feminism catches fire when it draws upon its inherent spirituality”
― Jean Shinoda Bolen, Goddesses in Older Women:: Archetypes in Women Over Fifty

“What we know through a connection with the Self is divine wisdom.”
― Jean Shinoda Bolen, Goddesses in Older Women:: Archetypes in Women Over Fifty

“A person (or ego) with a connection to the Self has a sense that what she is doing with her life is meaningful. This can only be known subjectively, it is soul knowledge.”
― Jean Shinoda Bolen, Goddesses in Older Women:: Archetypes in Women Over Fifty

“Objective knowledge can be learned through teachers, books, or observation of something outside of ourselves. Gnostic or noetic (an alternative spelling) knowledge is what is revealed to us or intuitively perceived as spiritually true. I think of gnosis as what we “gknow” at a soul level, it’s what we know “in our bones.”
― Jean Shinoda Bolen, Goddesses in Older Women:: Archetypes in Women Over Fifty

“To be a green and juicy crone comes from having lived long enough to be deeply rooted in wholehearted involvements, of living a personally meaningful life, however unique, feminist, or traditional it may appear to others. It has to do with knowing who we are inside and believing that what we are doing is a true reflection or expression of our genuine self. It is having what Margaret Mead called PMZ, or postmenopausal zest for the life you have.”
― Jean Shinoda Bolen, Goddesses in Older Women:: Archetypes in Women Over Fifty