ELIZABETH ELLAMES

My understanding of the Divine Feminine has evolved beyond the idea of a female deity, goddess or symbolic representation of womanhood. Through my own work, I have come to understand the feminine as a way of relating to life that includes receptivity, intuition, gestation, nurturing, relationship and the capacity to give form to what has been received.

What has become particularly important to me is distinguishing receptivity from passivity. To receive deeply requires presence, sensitivity and discernment.

It asks us to remain open long enough for something to reveal itself before immediately deciding what it means or what we should do with it.

This is one of the reasons I understand the feminine as a generative principle. Something is received, held, integrated and eventually given form. I see this process not only in creativity and birth, but also in consciousness, wisdom, healing and the evolution of our understanding.

For me, this provides an important context for the ancient association between the feminine, the Mother, creation and wisdom. The feminine represents a way of participating in life rather than standing outside it and attempting to control it.

Asherah and the Memory of the Mother

My exploration of Asherah has taken me beyond the question of whether we can reconstruct one historical understanding of her. What interests me more deeply is what the memory of Asherah represents within our spiritual imagination.

I understand Asherah as carrying the memory of the Mother as a sacred and generative principle. The Mother in this context is not confined to biological motherhood. She represents the capacity to hold, nourish, sustain, generate and give form to life.

I believe something important is lost when this dimension of the sacred is removed from our understanding of creation. Life can increasingly become something to control, possess or extract from rather than something, which we are in relationship with.

Restoring the Mother to our spiritual imagination therefore has significance beyond historical reconstruction. For me, it invites a different relationship with life, one that recognises participation, responsibility, reciprocity and the intelligence of the living world.

This is significant within my own teachings because the return of the Divine Feminine is not simply about reclaiming something that was historically suppressed. It is about evolving our relationship with life itself.

Shekinah and Divine Presence

The Shekinah adds another dimension to this understanding. Within Jewish theological and mystical traditions, Shekinah is associated with the dwelling or indwelling Presence of God, with later mystical traditions developing increasingly feminine associations around this Divine Presence.

What has particularly stayed with me is the idea that Divine Presence can dwell within creation rather than existing only beyond it.

This has influenced the way I understand spiritual awareness. I no longer think of spirituality simply as reaching toward something outside ourselves. I have come to see it as developing our capacity to recognise Presence through consciousness, embodiment, relationship and our encounter with the living world.

Shekinah speaks to the intimacy of the sacred. It offers a way of understanding Divine Presence as something we may learn to perceive within what is already here, rather than something we must continually seek somewhere else.

The Holy Spirit and the Movement of Spirit

The Holy Spirit has become an increasingly important part of my life and understanding because my relationship with Spirit has not remained purely conceptual.

Throughout my spiritual work, particularly during prayer, meditation, deep inner work, and significant gatherings, I have experienced a tangible change in a space’s atmosphere. On some occasions, I have witnessed what appeared to me as a visible, mist-like haze entering or moving through a room or sacred space.

I can’t scientifically explain what that phenomenon is, and I don’t claim that every mist, atmospheric change or unusual visual experience should be identified as the Holy Spirit. I believe it is important to maintain that distinction. At the same time, I do not believe an experience should automatically be dismissed simply because I can’t yet explain it.

I have learned to hold these experiences with both openness and discernment. I can acknowledge what I have witnessed without pretending to know more than I do, while still allowing those experiences to inform my understanding of Spirit.

I understand the Holy Spirit as the living movement of Divine Presence. There are experiences in which something seems to move through consciousness rather than simply being understood intellectually. At times, an insight, opening, release or profound recognition can carry a quality that feels greater than individual will.

This is one of the reasons the Holy Spirit has become so important to my understanding of the sacred feminine and of consciousness. Receptivity allows us to receive, while Spirit introduces movement into what has been received.

Spirit, Breath and Presence

The ancient language surrounding Spirit adds another layer to this understanding. The Hebrew ruach can refer to breath, wind or spirit, while the Greek pneuma carries related associations with breath, wind and spirit.

I find this particularly meaningful because breath is both physical and symbolic. It moves through the body, sustains life and connects us directly with the atmosphere around us. The ancient association between breath, wind and Spirit suggests a conception of Spirit as something dynamic and living rather than simply an idea held intellectually.

This resonates with my own experience. When I speak about the Holy Spirit, I am not only speaking about a theological proposition. I am speaking about my experience of a presence that can sometimes seem to move through a person, a relationship or a space, particularly when consciousness is opening into a different quality of awareness.

Sophia and the Wisdom of Relationship

Sophia brings wisdom into this framework. I understand Sophia as something much more profound than knowledge or accumulated information. Sophia represents wisdom that has been integrated into consciousness and can therefore influence how we perceive, relate and live.

This is why Sophia has become so important within my understanding of the Divine Feminine. She provides a bridge between knowing and being. Knowledge can remain external, whereas wisdom enters our way of seeing and changes our relationship with experience.

When I place Sophia alongside Shekinah, Asherah and the Holy Spirit, I do not see four names for one identical concept. They arise from different traditions and carry different meanings. What I see instead is a conversation between distinct expressions of something I have been exploring throughout my work: the relationship between Wisdom, Presence, the generative Mother principle and the movement of Spirit.

This is where the Divine Feminine becomes much larger than an archetype. It becomes a way of understanding how higher consciousness can receive, integrate, create and participate in something greater than the isolated self.

Plasma as a Contemporary Point of Inquiry

This is where my interest in plasma enters the conversation. I want to be very clear about how I hold this within my teachings. Plasma is a scientifically recognised state of matter, while Sophia, Shekinah, Asherah and the Holy Spirit belong to spiritual, theological and metaphysical frameworks. I do not regard plasma as another name for Spirit, nor am I suggesting that science has established that plasma is somehow Divine.

What interests me is the question that plasma opens. Plasma consists of charged particles that can move freely and respond to electromagnetic forces, and it is widespread throughout the universe. This provides an intriguing physical reference point when I consider the ancient language of breath, wind, fire, light and Spirit, all of which describe something dynamic, animating and difficult to contain. And let’s not forget that Plasma makes up about 55% of our body’s total blood volume.

I’m not suggesting that ancient spiritual traditions were unknowingly describing plasma in modern scientific terms. Rather, I notice an interesting correspondence in the human attempt to understand forms of existence that move, interact and influence their environment without necessarily presenting themselves as solid objects.

This becomes particularly meaningful for me because of my own experiences of Spirit. When I have witnessed the mist-like phenomenon I have described, I have naturally wondered about its physical and spiritual dimensions. I don’t know what I witnessed, and I am not prepared to label it as plasma simply because plasma provides an interesting possibility. What I am willing to do is allow the experience to generate better questions.

Could there be physical processes occurring within an environment that contribute to experiences we currently describe primarily through spiritual language? 

Could consciousness interact with its environment in ways that we don’t yet fully understand? 

Could our future understanding of matter, energy and electromagnetic phenomena give us additional language for experiences that human beings have traditionally described through concepts such as Spirit, Presence or subtle energy?

These remain questions for me, not conclusions.

This is also where Dana Kippel’s work has become relevant to my inquiry. Her exploration of what she describes as intelligent plasma takes the concept beyond its established scientific definition and considers whether plasma might have a relationship with intelligence or consciousness. 

I regard that as a metaphysical proposition rather than established science, but I find the question interesting because it challenges the assumption that consciousness and matter must necessarily be treated as completely separate domains.

Perhaps, plasma therefore sits at the meeting point between scientific observation and spiritual inquiry. This gives me a contemporary physical phenomenon I can use to look at questions that have already emerged through my spiritual experience: how higher consciousness interacts with its environment, whether matter and awareness are as separate as we have assumed, and whether there are dimensions of reality that require us to expand the language we currently use to describe them.

The important distinction for me is that plasma does not prove the Holy Spirit, validate the Divine Feminine or explain the Shekinah. It provides another doorway into the exploration.

Higher Consciousness and the Living Environment

My own observations have led me to think differently about the relationship between consciousness and environment. A significant shift in awareness is rarely limited to an intellectual decision. Our bodies respond, our emotions move, our perception changes and our relationships can be affected.  Something we previously understood intellectually may suddenly become something we know through experience.

I have also noticed, particularly in collective prayer, meditation, and sacred gatherings, that a space’s atmosphere can sometimes seem to change alongside what is happening within the people present. This is where my experiences of the mist-like phenomenon belong within the larger body of knowledge I am developing. I don’t need to define it prematurely to take the experience seriously. I can remain curious about its nature while recognising the significance it has had within my own spiritual experience.

This is an important principle. I choose to leave room for mystery without abandoning discernment. I don’t believe everything unusual is necessarily spiritual, but I don’t believe we should dismiss an experience simply because we don’t yet have an adequate explanation for it. Sometimes the most responsible reaction is to stay observant and keep the question open.

The Sacred Mirroring Spiral

This understanding connects naturally with the Sacred Mirroring Spiral within the Living Attributes Codex. The Spiral describes the way consciousness evolves through experience and relationship. We encounter something, receive it, respond to it, recognise something about ourselves, make a choice and integrate what we’ve learned. We may then encounter a similar theme again, but from a different level of awareness.

This is why I understand evolution as spiral rather than linear. We can return to the same emotional pattern, relationship, fear, question or life circumstance without actually returning as the same consciousness.

The Spiral also gives me a way of understanding my relationship with these questions. My spiritual experiences haven’t given me a single final answer; they continue to open new levels of inquiry. What I once understood symbolically, I may later experience directly; what I once experienced intuitively, I may later find myself questioning from another perspective.

The mirror therefore does not simply show me what I know. It also shows me where my understanding is still evolving. Within this framework, the Holy Spirit represents a dimension of Divine Presence that can’t always be reduced to personal intention. There have been experiences in which I’ve felt something greater than my own conscious will participating in what was unfolding, and those experiences have influenced the way I understand surrender, receptivity and spiritual discernment.

From Control to Participation

One of the deeper levels within the Living Attributes Codex is the shift from control toward participation. I have come to see that control can place us psychologically outside the experience, as though life were something we could arrange entirely according to individual will. Participation asks us to recognise that we are already involved in the relationships, environments and circumstances through which our lives unfold.

This is also why I believe the restoration of the Divine Feminine is about much more than women reclaiming power. It is about restoring relational intelligence: the capacity to receive, listen, nurture, create, respond and recognise that our actions occur within a larger interconnected web of relationship.

The masculine capacities for focus, definition, structure, direction and action remain essential. So do the feminine capacities for receptivity, sensing, gestation, nurturing, relationship and integration. I don’t see the evolution of consciousness as requiring one to replace the other.

I see it as an opportunity to bring these qualities into a more conscious relationship: balance.

The Holy Spirit introduces something further because not everything of spiritual significance can be produced through personal will. There are moments when the appropriate response is not to force an outcome but to listen, receive, discern and participate in what is unfolding.

This is also where my understanding of plasma adds another dimension. If our physical environment is more dynamic and interactive than we ordinarily recognise, then perhaps participation is not only a spiritual principle. It may also describe something fundamental about our embodied existence.

The Living Feminine

For me, the arrival of Christos Sophia is not simply a return to an ancient goddess or an attempt to reconstruct an earlier spiritual system. It represents the re-emergence of a way of knowing in which wisdom, relationship, embodiment and spiritual awareness can once again exist in conversation.

Asherah carries the memory of the Mother and the generative principle. Shekinah offers a language for Divine Presence dwelling within creation. Sophia represents a higher wisdom that can be embodied and lived. The Holy Spirit speaks to the living presence and movement of Spirit that I have encountered through my own experience.

Plasma provides a contemporary physical phenomenon that invites me to remain curious about matter, energy, environment and consciousness. And if our blood is made up of 55% plasma, perhaps the atmosphere around us is also infused with 55% conscious plasma, which is definitely something to ponder.

When I hold these ideas together, I don’t see them as proving one another. I see them as different ways of approaching a question that has become increasingly important within my work: how do consciousness, Spirit, embodiment and the physical world participate in one another?

This is what the Divine Feminine means within the Living Attributes Codex. It’s not simply a feminine image of God, nor is it a reversal of masculine spirituality. It is a way of recognising qualities of consciousness that have been undervalued, separated or misunderstood, and bringing them back into relationship with wisdom, Spirit and embodied life.

The deeper question for me is therefore not simply whether we believe in the Divine Feminine, whether we can prove the nature of a spiritual phenomenon, or whether plasma can somehow be given a spiritual identity. It is more about how consciously we participate in the relationship between Consciousness, Spirit, Matter and Creation.

This is where sacred knowledge becomes lived knowledge. Christos Sophia becomes the light and love of higher wisdom that can be embodied; the Mother becomes a living principle of generation and nourishment; Shekinah becomes a way of recognising Divine Presence; the Holy Spirit becomes a living reality that I remain open to witnessing and experiencing; and plasma becomes a physical phenomenon through which I can continue asking questions about the nature of consciousness and the universe in which we exist.

It is an evolving inquiry, informed by what I have studied, what I have experienced and what I continue to observe. For me, that is the integrity of spiritual practice. We don’t need to turn mystery into certainty to enter into relationship with it.

We can remain grounded in what we know, honest about what we do not know, and still dare to explore what may be possible.

Heart to Heart, Elizabeth