Called by the Goddess: Transgender Visions of the Divine Feminine
The Lakota Winkte are called by Double Woman. To receive her in a vision sends them spiraling down the path of initiation, to the ritual of the Basket and the Bow. A fire is lit around them, and in the burning bush, they must quickly choose one of the tools presented: basket or bow, feminine or masculine. Whichever they choose dictates their life path, as well as gender role.
This vision, sacred and unique, can be found across the earth, and in many different transgender communities. The North Indian Jogappa are called by the Goddess, Yellamma. This is not always what a parent wants to hear. However, when an elder priest comes to explain the significance of this vision, the family has the chance to see it in a new light: the calling is sacred and such a blessing to the community.
And it is not to be ignored!
For to ignore it would be to ignore the divine will of the Goddess,
And to risk sickness.
*
Many Jogappas said they joined the community when they realized the goddess had entered them: this possession manifests in forms such as jadey (matted hair)… shaking and shivering on certain days of the month, expression of feminine mannerisms, and appearance of the goddess in their dreams.¹
Transgender initiates from across cultures, then, seem to be experiencing the feminine archetype in similar ways — through the unconscious transmission of the Goddess. She may or may not be associated with the moon, but she is a strong cross-cultural presence.
Yellama, Double Woman, and Inanna — three goddesses from different cultures and centuries — each carry a similar cultural meaning to their initiates. They come in technicolor visions and dreams, to communicate the need for gender transgression, and sometimes medicine.
In Borneo, boys destined to become manang bali may dream of becoming women. They may dream of being summoned by the God of medicine, Menjaya Raja Manang, or the healer Goddess Ini Andan.³ Here again, we see the themes of gender transgression and medicine intertwined!
These visions must be strong enough that they overcome the strict binaries of traditional gender roles. The visions must be so clear that initiates do not simply choose to ignore them! The call to medicine is so important; to ignore it could put any society, as well as an individual, in grave danger.
One Chukchi shaman recounts how when he was young before becoming a shaman, he was afflicted with a strange illness. Eventually a spirit appeared to him and ordered him to put on a woman’s dress, after which he got better and became a shaman.⁴
Vision gives a cultural and religious sanction to gender transgressive behavior,⁵ but I believe it does far more than that.
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In Hominy Creek, March of last year, I had a visitation from the Goddess. I wasn’t planning on it. I was sitting down on a bench, simply cataloguing fears — things I was attached to, things I was afraid of, things I wanted to let go of.
Then, I surrendered them — my fears, ego, and desire. The offerings got bigger and bigger until I surrendered up my life and song, my two greatest attachments.
Suddenly my vision started to blossom in a space between waking life and closed-eye dream. I heard a booming voice say:
“I am the Goddess.”
“I am the Goddess and I am the Earth,” she said. And she took on my form — I saw myself facing me, dressed in long red linen and eyeliner with a most serene smile. And she said,
“I am the Goddess and I am the Earth.
And I am you.”
Suddenly, I opened my mouth and flowers burst forth. They grew outwards, curling around my vision, blanketing the Earth. I saw the Earth spin on its axis for a million years. I saw all the past and future weaved, with me sitting in between them as grass danced and flowers waved.
I am the Goddess and I am the Earth.
I will never forget those lines, or the experience. It was sacred. And it has informed me of so much — who I am, and what I am doing here.
We can only offer our interpretations of visions, but for me, the unification of singing and flowers was a calling for medicine and healing.
Flowers coming out of my mouth, I can’t help but interpret as song, as the blossoming beauty of singing one’s truth in harmony with the Earth. And in that image, song is fused with flowers. It is the fusion of song and plant medicine which I now see as my calling — a calling quite different from that of many others.
Because the transgender healer is such a rare archetype, it stands that its participants would need specific directives. After all, it is a call to break with social mores, both in terms of gender norms and traditional occupation. A strong directive, then, is needed from the other side, in order to provide us embodied certainty and clarity of mission. Who we are, and why we are different.
The Goddess archetype, and her visitation, gives us a directive to break from the social constraints of society — under no uncertain terms, we must follow her healing vision.
I cannot explain what happened to me in any mainstream scientific terms. Perhaps it is better that way. The person I think of is Jung, who expressed that “myths are psychological truths.”
I don’t believe anyone else could have seen what I saw — I don’t believe the vision was meant for anyone else. A vision is a sacred thing, meant only for the one who sees it. It is an expression of one’s deepest self, a bubbling up of one’s deepest self from the unconscious wellspring of the mind. And visions are here to remind us of who we are.
So the Goddess, then, comes in states of surrender. Maybe that is why initiates to transgender rituals tend to fast and pray. The Goddess comes when we relinquish fear, ego, vanity, and the self. She comes to those in need.
I believe anyone can access the Goddess. She is an archetype, but she is also a living spirit.
She is in the Earth, in the flowers, in a song.
She is in you.
And she has a message of healing, if only we would take the time to pause, listen and surrender.
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She is waiting.
And she is you.
Listen — she is coming!
Listen, she has something to say!
She is coming in vision!
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Love,
Delia
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[1] Aneka Institute, Bangalore. (2014). Jogappa: Gender, Identity, and the Politics of Exclusion. https://in.boell.org/sites/default/files/jogappa_gender_identity_and_the_politics_of_exclusion.pdf
[2] Torres, Kimberly, “Resurrecting Inanna: lament, gender, transgression” (2012). HIM 1990–2015. 1307. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/honorstheses1990-2015/1307
[3] Conner, Randy P.; Sparks, David Hatfield; Sparks, Mariya (1998). “Manang Bali”. Cassell’s Encyclopedia of Queer Myth, Symbol and Spirit. p. 225.
[4] The Shaman Transformed: Transgenderism in Siberian Shamanism. (2012). Sacred Hoop Magazine, (77). https://www.sacredhoop.org/Articles/SHAMAN-TRANSFORMED.pdf
[5] Williams, W. L. (1995). The Berdache tradition: Excerpted from Walter L. Williams’ the spirit and the flesh. essay.
