In this Article:
- What is the Huntress archetype and how can it influence personal growth?
- How you can tap into the Huntress’ inner strength during life’s challenges.
- What does it mean to live a life empowered by your personal vision?
- How can visualizing the Huntress help you transform your life?
- Effective strategies for embodying the Huntress within.
Finding The Inner Strength of the Huntress
by Mara Branscombe.
We have all experienced those passages in life that feel dry, foggy, lackluster. We feel lost, without purpose or direction. When we experience loss, hardship, a mid-life reckoning or major life change, it can feel like a dark night of the soul.
At these times you cannot see through the trees. You may barely get out of bed, let alone care for yourself or others. You lack any motivation to change.
Can you remember a time in your life when you felt powerless or like your self-esteem had been crushed? What eventually allowed you to crawl out of this state?
The Inner Strength of the Huntress
Visualize the Huntress archetype before you. If you were to see her face, her clothing, her essence, what does that look and feel like? Visualizing the Huntress in this way, as part of your everyday support team, will be deeply supportive for the rest of your life.
As you build stamina in your life, you are generating the inner strength of the Huntress. She is here to encourage you to be wildly you. You now have permission to live, breathe, feel, express, and connect with your most radical, authentic nature. She arrives when you begin to doubt yourself, when fear takes over and begins to rule your decisions.
The Huntress holds the dynamic power to set the boundaries you need to thrive in all areas of your life. And she reminds you that your boundaries need to shift as you evolve your body of work and meet what matters most to you in this cycle of life. At times she needs to soften to rejuvenate. Other times she is here to push you forward into the great unknown. She guides you to attune to mystery, magic, and divine timing.
No longer fear
how your vision, purpose, and activation
evolves throughout your life.
You get to live out your life—
not for anyone else, not to please,
or prove, or play it safe.
Take the big life questions like
“who am I?” and listen.
Receive the stirrings, the whispers,
the awakenings at 3:00 a.m.
Gather the resources and
activate this information
like the Huntress
honoring her soul vision
inside this great mystery of life.
The Huntress Invitation: Mindful Activation for Clear Vision
The Huntress invitation is to be in ongoing conversation with your inner dialogue and your environment. To become present to which daily fires you are tending. Observe when you are feeding lower energies of greed, guilt, or righteousness.
Can you expand your listening skills to be truly present? Rather than listening only to figure out your response, enter the world of the one you are listening to and elevate them with your presence. This way of listening requires patience and the willingness to put your own agenda aside.
The practice of presence and steadiness allows for greater clarity, connection, and balance in your relationship to self and others. It is most challenging when you are under stress, trying to get kids off to school, attempting to stay open to your partner’s process, and when grief or life’s great challenges are before us.
Acknowlege, Breathe, Soften and Let Go of Judgments
At some point in your life, you may have learned strategies from others that keep you from engaging on a deeper level. In this way you avoid intimacy. Observe when you tune out, and when a repetitive thought pattern takes over.
This is a three-step process:
First, acknowledge that you are no longer present—awareness is everything.
Second, take a deep breath.
Third, soften and let go of any judgements you have, whether of yourself or others. Now you begin again with an awakened presence.
This is a practice that you will do over and over again, each time deepening your personal process and expanding your awareness. Whatever your chosen life path is, doing this will naturally improve the quality of what you put out into the world. Be it creativity, activism, leadership, business, or justice—your persona will exude compassion as an active listener, an engaged, kind, and respectful individual.
As the one thing we can count on in life is change, we can continue to hold the flame of our personal evolution.
Meditation: Feeding Your Sacred Fire
Visualize a large outdoor fire before you. This is a ceremonial fire where all your beloved soul friends and family are gathered. They are here in your honor; you are loved and supported. Your soul family is also here to honor your gifts and talents, the ways in which you contribute to the world—not necessarily related to your productivity or your career.
This is a deeper ritual where your soul is given permission to be wholly expressed. There is no need to hide behind a role or to fear being abandoned, rejected, or shamed. This circle of community is here to hold you up and unconditionally support your visions.
Instead of seeing what is not working or what you aren’t doing, see all the things that are working in your life. Feed this sacred fire with the Huntress vision that empowers you at the core of your being to live the life you are worthy of.
When We Ignore the Inner Huntress
If the Huntress is ignored, ungrounded, and living in chaos, she will collapse and feel defeated. Anger, shame, and fear will shoot arrows of hardship and resentment into those she loves. She will veer off the natural trajectory of her life.
Yet the wake-up call of the Huntress comes in the precise moment where we lose faith and ignore those deep inner stirrings. Can you imagine meeting those stirrings with curiosity and compassion? How would this look and feel for you personally?
Transforming Negativity Into Positivity
Weaving in a daily gratitude practice is generative of transforming negativity into positivity. Meeting your inner ecosystem through journaling, conversation with trusted friends, and conscious mind–body practices bridge from lack to wholeness. You can transform your state quickly when you show up daily. Committing to what personally lights you up is key.
When you can no longer access joy or wonder, that is the Huntress calling you to come home to recalibrate. This is the time to gather your tools, name your resources, and practice compassion, goodness, and right actions.
Your daily self-care boosts mind–body radiance. Catching the Huntress visions will come like glimmers of what is ready to birth through you and expand out into the world. The sacred hunt comes alive.
One direct way to listen, feed, and express the Huntress within is to ask this simple question: “Does this path expand me, or make me complacent in my own life?”
Answer the call to be fully present
on this soul-reviving journey.
Each cycle, experience, thought, feeling, and action
is part of your universal metamorphosis.
No longer fear the dark of the mundane,
look up to see the shimmery night sky.
You are of ancient composition.
Be a child of the earth,
witness her miraculous ways.
Ignite your torch and let it guide you into the world.
Love is the nectar inside the vision of the Huntress.
The Huntress Matrix
The Huntress holds the wisdom to evolve into your ensouled destiny. Sculptor, artist, mother, daughter, hunter, gatherer, lover, sister, activist, spirited friend—this path of service rides the tender and the tough in all of life’s energy.
At any given moment, the Huntress is willing to dive into the unknown and to acknowledge fear. She intuits the path of action that feeds her deepest purpose. Finding those sacred mirrors in which she can be vulnerable and share her deepest fears and greatest visions is the bravest work she can do.
Honoring the big questions Who am I? Why am I here now? Where is the most valuable place to put my focus? How can I align to evolve into the karmic unfolding of self and greet the planetary shifts already in motion?
With inquiry and a connected body–mind system, her awakened sensory alertness guides her towards right action, goodness for all, and truth. The Huntress can see through the eyes of the artist, touch with the hands of a healer, and source filaments of the sacred while living with an awakened presence to all experiences.
She can perceive and move energy within pain and struggle in herself and others, using this as an alchemical force to attain freedom. She understands that to get free from the narrative of the past is the greatest healing.
Staying present and steady inside the battles with self, the Huntress listens. Her quiver, arrows, and bow are at the ready. The owl is her protectress, encouraging false beliefs to fall away so her true nature may shine. Her vision extends over the whole landscape—she sees the big picture and understands where her healing energy is most needed.
No longer does she go onto the battlefield to prove herself right or to please others. Rather, her humble, fierce yet crystal-clear nature trusts that by gathering her resources, she will receive the wisdom needed to speak her truth, to stand tall for what she believes in. Trusting her inner spark, she no longer needs to hide or quiet her intelligence in fear of being rejected.
The embodied Huntress gathers the kindred souls that see her true power and accept her for who she is, not for who she is not. Her sun-kissed arrow goes directly where she wants it to go. Her sword is a torch that encourages us to be wild, unbound, creative, messy, direct, and compassionate. Her craft is to channel her words, thoughts, emotions, and creations to evoke free will and justice inside the physical and spiritual planes.
Connect with her daily, breathe your prayers into your inner Huntress. She is ready to listen, support, and co-create with you on your current journey.
The sequence of life’s karmic unfolding
becomes the fuel
to feed your personal evolution.
A choreographed dream flashes before you:
tools are given,
resources are gathered,
missions are explained.
With opulent synchronicity the support team
arrives on your doorstep.
No longer can you ignore the call.
Divine timing is on your side.
The Huntress ignites, moonstones stream from her mouth,
her unapologetic presence quickens within you.
Feed the fire of your visions,
this in turn becomes the lifeline
that shapes your soul purpose.
Make art, build structures, grow food, guide others,
love with unbreakable devotion.
Permission is granted to enliven this earth
with your wildest creations.
No longer covet your skills or fear the judges,
or loneliness, or failure.
Pour your faith into freeing the dragons that hold you back.
In the quiet of the dark’s stillness,
what is it that matters to you most?
What longs to be expressed through you?
Quiver to bow, arrows of your destined life’s work
can no longer wait.
Now is the time, this one precious,
empowered and impassioned life awaits you!
Copyright ©2023. All Rights Reserved.
Adapted with permission from the publisher,
Findhorn Press, an imprint of Inner Traditions Intl.
Article Source
BOOK: Sage, Huntress, Lover, Queen
Sage, Huntress, Lover, Queen: Access Your Power and Creativity through Sacred Female Archetypes
by Mara Branscombe.
Journey through the archetypal wisdom of the divine feminine to reclaim your authentic self and to follow your soul’s longing. Embodiment teacher Mara Branscombe takes an intriguing look at the seven feminine archetypes that prevail in the modern psyche—Maiden, Mother, Sage, Huntress, Lover, Mystic, and Queen—and traces their continuing influence throughout different stages of our life, sometimes dormant, sometimes prominent.
As she explores each archetype’s beneficial qualities, its connections to the physical-emotional-mental body, and its shadow aspects, Mara highlights the positive impact these models can have if we embrace them and live them consciously. Step-by-step creative practices, guided visualizations, mind-body rituals, and soulful poetry allow you to embody each archetype, inviting in the light aspects as well as integrating the shadow.
Click here for more info and/or to order this paperback book. Also available as an audiobook and as a Kindle edition.
About the Author
Mara Branscombe is a yoga and meditation teacher, writer, mother, artist, ceremonialist, and spirit coach, who finds great joy in leading others along the path of self-transformation. She is passionate about weaving the art of mindfulness, self-care, mind-body practices, and earth-based rituals into her offerings.
Visit her website at MaraBranscombe.com
Article Recap:
The Huntress archetype embodies dynamic power and inner strength, guiding individuals through personal and spiritual evolution. She encourages the establishment of necessary boundaries for thriving and adjusting them as life evolves. Through visualization and engagement with the Huntress, individuals gain the courage to express their most radical, authentic selves, turning life’s challenges into empowering visions for the future. The Huntress’ presence fosters a deeper connection to personal and universal metamorphosis.
