Tigrayan Women: Underscoring the Urgency for the Healing of the Divine Feminine

This morning, as I opened the Washington Post, I was confronted with a staggering article about the more than 100,000 women who endured rape during the two-year civil war in Ethiopia's northern Tigray region. The pain of countless women who bore children as a result of these assaults is a silent agony, often compounded by the heart-wrenching reality of being ostracized by their own families. This narrative strikes at the core of my being, underscoring the urgency for the healing of the Divine Feminine in our world.

According to the Washington Post:

“During the war, all sides committed rapes, human rights groups and victims report, but the most sustained and organized violence was committed against Tigrayan women, who said they were raped by Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers and by militiamen from Ethiopia’s Amhara region.”

The entrenched patriarchal system and the pervasive culture of rape must cease immediately. Starhawk, a global justice activist and author of “The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess discusses the connection between war and sexual violence: "Rape is not some anomaly of war," she says. "It's integral to how men were conditioned to give up their own autonomy, their own power, their own decisions about life and death, to follow orders and become soldiers. How did the military condition men to stay in place?" she asks. "They split ideas of men and women." Women were defined as cowardly, "the most shameful thing a man could be," she says. To be a good soldier, you have to cut off a lot of your ability to feel ... If you no longer can feel your body, if your whole value for the world is as a weapon serving other men's ends, it's a lot easier to use your penis as a weapon. I don't think it's good for men or women."

We stand at a crossroads where we must collectively denounce the exisitng sturctures of power, recognizing that the restoration of balance between masculine and feminine energies is not a choice but a necessity. The Divine Feminine embodies strength, compassion, and resilience—the antidote to a world ensnared by all kinds of patriarchal dominance, where the feminine has been separated from the masculine, where the sexual has been separated from the sacred.

According to the Washington Post article:

“A survey of more than 5,000 women of reproductive age in Tigray, reported in July in the medical journal BMJ Global Health, found that nearly 8 percent said they had been raped. Of them, more than two-thirds said they were gang raped, and a quarter said they were raped on multiple occasions. That figure is likely to be an undercount, because of stigma and because some areas where violence was highest — such as in Shila’s hometown — are inaccessible, with Eritrean soldiers still occupying them. (Ethiopia and Eritrea have denied that their soldiers committed widespread rapes.)

According to the government-run Women’s Bureau, more than half the women who reached a string of hospital rape centers were pregnant.

Medical staffers, counselors, nuns and priests said in interviews that most men rejected wives who had been raped — especially those who had children as a result. “In most cases, the man leaves if she has a child,” said Abel Gebreyohannes, a counselor working with rape victims. “Some families also won’t accept the woman. So she keeps it secret.”

In the face of these harrowing stories, the imperative for change reverberates within me. The patriarchal structures perpetuating such atrocities demand dismantling, and the pervasive culture of rape must be eradicated from the roots. These women, burdened not only by the trauma of war but also by the aftermath of bearing children conceived through violence, deserve more than silent suffering and societal abandonment.

In our collective journey toward healing, I invite you to light a candle with me and send out a prayer to the 100,000 Tigrayan women survivors of sexual violence and rape. It's imperative that we amplify the voices of those silenced by injustice.

At the Diwata Project, we declare that all sexual violence is violence perpetuated upon the sacred divine feminine. The urgency lies not just in this awareness but in a committed and sustained effort to build a future where the reverence for the sacred feminine is restored and stories of violence and subjugation become relics of the past.

As I absorb the weight of this reality, I'm propelled to declare that the healing of the Divine Feminine is not just urgent; it's an essential catalyst for a world that aspires to compassion, equity, and justice. This is not just a call to action; it is a plea for our collective survival. Without the resurgence of the Divine Feminine, the very fabric of our existence is frayed, and we risk a perilous path towards annihilation and extinction. The time for change is now, and the call for healing echoes urgently across the collective consciousness.

The Diwata Project

“Reclaiming the Divine Feminine, One Myth, One Woman at a Time”