In Her Image Quotes

“In many cultures, the eyes of the Goddess were sacred. They had the power to stare down and mesmerize, as in the case of the Medusa, or to draw toward, to fascinate and compel. One archaeologist, after seeing dozens of figures in which the eyes repeatedly appeared over symbols of water, speculated that ancient people believed that at the center of the world, where the primal waters flow, are the Goddess's eyes. Imagine Her gaze in the center of the Self, where the life flow begins... What would it mean to be seen by Her? What of ourselves would we see reflected? We are taught not to really look at ourselves or each other.  We are taught to look through the eyes of men.  We are taught to measure our images, our minds our bodies in terms of whether and how much they will be ‘pleasing’ to the other.  "What would it mean to be seen by Her? What of ourselves would we see reflected?”
― Kathie Carlson, In Her Image: The Unhealed Daughter's Search for Her Mother

“The unhealed daughter is searching for her Mother, a Mother whose magnitude fills every corner of her soul. By recognizing that the object of her hunger is much greater than what can possibly be provided by our personal mothers, we can pry the unhealed child loose from her fixation on one human being and teach her to spread out her needs. Becoming open to receiving Mother through more than one source enables a fuller range of healing for her wounds. We must teach the unhealed child to turn toward other women, toward nature, art, meditation, fantasy, and dreams to experience that greater whole. Even to imagine the Great Mother is to create a space for Her, a 'home' within us She can once again return to. We must actively cultivate our capacity for image. We must take the unhealed child beyond her insistence that everything be 'good' and help her make meaning of what is experienced as 'bad'—to honor the mixture of radiance and darkness that the Mother, both human and Goddess, embraces. Being held by this Mother, we may find ourselves able to perceive and receive the healing She brings that extends to our mothers as well, who are also Her needy daughters.
Ultimately, the Goddess stands behind our personal mother experiences and carries us all.”
― Kathie Carlson, In Her Image: The Unhealed Daughter's Search for Her Mother

“Before the shrinking of the Feminine was the Goddess—and all that is split in our own lives was in harmony in Hers. She was profoundly in Her body. Her body itself was sacred. In the Old Religion, body and spirit were one. She was seen as substantial, as essentially embodied. Her thighs, Her Belly, Her breasts were generous, Her physical strength apparent. We miss the beauty of such an image, we who have been taught to measure ourselves endlessly. Too fat, too thin, too flat, too wrinkled. Our bodies are never good, and in themselves. We must deny our naturalness to see beauty.

What we learn to reject was once holy. What we learn to hide behind closed doors was once celebrated in the open. Blood was sacred to the Goddess—menstrual blood. Some of Her images were painted red between the legs. What some of us and many of our mothers learned to see as 'the curse' was once seen as the Blessing, women's particular creative magic. The blood that flows of itself and not from a wounding was thought to be the very source of life. One early creation tale stated than when the Mother created man and woman, She made them from a mixture of Her menstrual blood and clay. Moreover, every woman carried some of the Goddess's sacred substance and participated in Her ability to create life.”
― Kathie Carlson, In Her Image: The Unhealed Daughter's Search for Her Mother

“To look at the Goddess is to remember ourselves, to imagine ourselves whole.”
― Kathie Carlson, In Her Image: The Unhealed Daughter's Search for Her Mother

“The task of truly coming to terms with our mothers and our experiences of them is twofold. On the one hand, we need to see and forgive their humanness. And perhaps we too must be forgiven the impossible expectations we heap upon their heads. There is an urgent need, a human need, for us to come to accept that our mothers are like ourselves, just as limited, unsure at times, and the products of their own histories and culture just as we are. To grant our mothers a personal self and to grasp that self does not exist for us, that 'mother' is only a part of their lives, not the center and not the whole, is to take the first step of differentiating the personal from the transpersonal and to give the personal its proper weight. We may not agree with or even like the women our mothers actually are but, to truly relate to them, we must grant them individuality and their birthright of human limitation.”
― Kathie Carlson, In Her Image: The Unhealed Daughter's Search for Her Mother

“The Great Mother is more terrible, more powerful, and more expansively benevolent than the 'smaller' mothers who raised us. Our mothers are merely human beings, not as 'great' or vast or powerful as the Mother of the legends, the images, the worship of ancient times. Nevertheless, our personal mothers carry aspects of the Goddess, and identifying these aspects helps us understand what we have already experience, both positively and negatively. It also helps us begin to grasp what we still need in order to come closer to a wholeness of the feminine.”
― Kathie Carlson, In Her Image: The Unhealed Daughter's Search for Her Mother

“The myths and imagery of the Goddess provide us with rich material with which to symbolically re-fertilize our lives. As Goddess, She is mirror to the feminine Self and addresses the hunger in every woman for connection with that Self. Seen as Mother, however, She can lead us down additional paths of meaning. Seeing Her as the Great Mother can help us put our personal mothers in perspective, expand our vision of 'maternal' behaviors, and broaden the concept of being nurtured to include input from many different kinds of women. It may also bring deep reassurance and self-understanding to women who are mothers or who wish to be and who seek to discover how to cope with and how to comprehend what it means to carry an archetype.”
― Kathie Carlson, In Her Image: The Unhealed Daughter's Search for Her Mother

“The widespread vision of Her as a Triple Goddess also expressed the cycle of birth-death-rebirth. The original God-in-Three-Persons, the Goddess was believed to manifest both successively and simultaneously as Maiden, Mother, and Crone. As Maiden, She guarded and expressed the beginnings of life and its early development; in this aspect She was seen as a young girl or the Kore. Her Mother aspect referred not necessarily to the biological condition of having a child but connoted the fruition of life, its maturity, in this aspect, She was seen as a mature woman. As Crone, She was seen as most powerful of all, for it was the Crone, representing the aging and end of life, who made the link between life and death; in this aspect, She appeared as an old woman or skeletal hag.
But the destruction of life brought about by the Crone was also an initiation into Her most profound mystery: that, out of death, She would create new life. Thus were the Crone and the Maiden inextricably linked and the cycle repeated and ongoing. In Her triple form, the Goddess, also bestowed a meaningfulness and even sanctity to each phase of a woman's life. Unlike our culture, which values only a woman's youthfulness, earlier cultures valued the aging woman. In the vision of the Old Religion, it was the Crone who carried the most wisdom and power.”
― Kathie Carlson, In Her Image: The Unhealed Daughter's Search for Her Mother

“It is hard to be brief when speaking of the Goddess's sexuality. In our culture, the Divinity has gender but not sexuality, what is sexual is opposed to what is spiritual. In the Old Religion, this split that we are taught from early childhood did not exist. Merlin Stone, in her book When God Was a Woman, writes, 'In the worship of the female Deity, sex was Her gift to humanity. It was sacred... the act of sex was considered to be... so holy and precious that it was enacted within the house of the Creatress of heaven, earth and all life.'

It wasn't just the sexual act that was holy. Her genitals were sacred and were connected with a joyous self-celebration.”
― Kathie Carlson, In Her Image: The Unhealed Daughter's Search for Her Mother