The Human Cohesion Project — 27 Sep 2022
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The second night of Navaratri invites us to invoke an aspect of the feminine called Brahmacharini. While the first day asks us to draw down the new aspects of our consciousness that have evolved in recent times and are ready to come into form through the invocation of Shailaputri, the energy of Brahmacharini pushes us further into the psychic journey of the nine nights. The ‘night’ is perhaps not as much a signifier of the dark/scary, as it is of the unknown — a space of discovery of potential that has not yet been tapped into. Of course, it is also essential to bear in mind that in a patriarchal context, festivities related to the feminine are often relegated to the night, to underline its label of being dark, scary and undesirable in a hypermasculine society.
The Brahmacharini is the individuated feminine. When consciousness is born, its child state often identifies with the collective, not out of choice, but out of innate connection and dependence on the larger whole — and we also experience this in the human life journey. The stage of adolescence and early adulthood provides an opportunity to come into our own, and move from dependence to a recognition of interdependence. Of course, a lot of our social systems do not quite encourage this process, a large part of the human collective does not quite psychologically individuate at all.
The Brahmacharini is depicted as walking bare feet and unencumbered, and worshipped for calm and peace. The colours invoked to connect with this energy are green, and sometimes orange — the colours of the chakras above and below the solar plexus that is activated on the first day. In other words, one nurtures the child consciousness and brings it up with the energies of the heart and the womb, to bring it into a space of adulthood.
How is your Brahmacharini shaping up? How does she belong in the collective?
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