Author of Steamy Romance & Goddess Facilitator: Books, Divine Library & Services
Al-Uzza
I love to explore the Divine Feminine and write about Goddesses. For a list of those, click on the link: Goddesses. In order to become more balanced within ourselves and, through that, to bring greater balance and harmony to the world around us, we must find greater balance between the masculine and feminine energies within ourselves that each one of us possesses, regardless of physical gender or any other ways of self-identification.
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The Pre-Islamic Triple Goddess
In Ancient times, people knew that the divine was perfect harmony and balance. Thus, the personification of it had male and female aspects, two halves that make a whole. On top of that, each of those two energies had a triple aspect. For the male energy, it was the Youth, the Father and the Sage. Equally, the female part has the three very distinct, yet inseparable parts of the Maiden, the Mother and the Crone.
In pre-Islamic times, the God Allah was known to have three daughters, the triple aspect of the divine feminine. Their names are Al-Uzza (Venus, the Virgin), Allat (Sun, the Mother) and Menat (Crescent Moon, the Crone). Each has her very distinct characteristics and properties, and yet, they are one and the same, three aspects of the Goddess, the feminine aspect of the divine.
It is interesting to note that the Al-Uzza pyramidion with its serpents has the colours white, red and black, representing the Virgin, the Mother and the Crone. At the same time, the pyramidia (uppermost pyramid-shaped stone of a pyramid) of the pyramids in Egypt had the same colours, white, red and black.
The Venus of Life & Death
Al-Uzza is the Goddess of the morning and evening star, also known as Venus. There was a stone cube near Mecca which was part of her cult and was being worshipped as sacred, as it was associated with her. In the Quran, she is mentioned as one of the Goddesses people worshipped. Her temple and statue were later destroyed by one of Mohammed’s men in 630 CE.
Al-Uzza is a beautiful woman. She was worshipped as the Goddess of Love, as well as of Death. Her energy is that of new beginnings. Whenever a new phase in life is heralded, whenever there is a new cycle starting, a new project commencing, it is Al-Uzza’s energy that brings in the new. However, to bring in the new, the old has to die, so the Crone, through death, can once again be reborn as the maiden. And thus, Al-Uzza is both, death of the old and birth of the new.
Al-Uzza is the Goddess of change. She is the virgin aspect of the Goddess, which refers to the purity of spirit, and is not meant in the modern understanding of a person who has not yet had physical sexual intercourse. She is the bringer of change, as well as the opener of secret doors. In maze meditations, where you visualise coming into rooms with several closed doors and having to choose one to open, her energy is apparent.
Change means that something new is coming, something unfamiliar. You don’t yet know what it will bring you, but when you are bold enough to step through the portal that brings about this change, you will discover new secrets and uncover new truths for yourself. This is a very powerful energy and has nothing in common with the timid girl we are used to associating with the word virgin. A beginning is a powerful transformer and the death of the old that goes with it causes part of you to die and a new part to resurrect as you.
Not a Timid Girl
Al-Uzza, whose name means the Mighty One, or Might of God, holds power over life and death and she does it in the purest form, devoid of any egotistical aspirations and power struggles. Her sacred stone is the Baetyl or Black Meteorite and the black stone at Mecca is certainly one of the many leftovers of the ancient worship of the Moon Goddess that was powerfully dominant in that region before the advent of Islam, another one being the sickle moon with the morning or evening star as the symbol of the religion itself. You can’t really get more obvious than that.
Al-Uzza, being the youngest of the three sisters, is the Goddess of fresh perspectives, but also of power and war. Moreover, in Southern Arabia, she was revered as Goddess of Healing. In her form of Goddess of Death, she is also related to the Mesopotamian Ereshkigal, Queen Goddess of the Underworld.
When I connected with her energies in order to better understand and feel this Goddess, she came to me as a beautiful young woman of brown skin and dark, wavy hair. She was pure in spirit, just as her maiden aspect symbolises, yet there were a quiet power and reassurance about her that made me think of a lioness at once. In fact, Lion is her animal familiar, as well as Camel.
Al-Uzza danced with a sword in front of me, explaining to me through telepathic communication that she was the one who was cutting away the old rigorously and without mercy. She said, the transition is not always an easy one, but it will give rise to a new version of me, meaning that this also applies universally for all who work with her energy and connect to her powers.
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In my romance novel Balcony Above the Sea, the female main protagonist Keturah is trying to keep everything under control because she is afraid of the unfamiliar when she first lands in Bulgaria, a thus far unknown country to her. She hadn’t even realised before that they even used the Cyrillic alphabet, rather than the Latin one. In order to overcompensate for her insecurity, she is talking over the driver who picks her up without even listening and consequently, gets a lot of things completely wrong, which leads to some embarrassment and unnecessary misunderstandings.
It is only when she realises her mistake and pauses to take a deep breath, open up and not only listen but embrace the new information, that a rapport between the two is established that actually aids her in finding her bearings in her new environment and meeting with kindness where she had previously only supposed to be someone ready to pounce on her weaknesses if she betrayed any. Thus, Keturah embraces the energies of Al-Uzza in her own life experience after initial resistance and comes to see the benefits of her own surrender to the powers of this formidable Goddess.
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Surrender
Al-Uzza said when you surrender to the sword and bare your neck to it, at which point I saw myself kneeling with my head stretched forward, as if in anticipation of having my head cut off, but it didn’t feel cruel, violent or frightening in the least, I want to point out, as this is a symbolic vision, not a literal one, you will be reborn as a grander version of yourself, as you can then access deeper parts of yourself that have thus far lain hidden and buried under the cloak of illusion and denial.
Al-Uzza invites you to embrace change and surrender to it, rather than resist and fight it, which will lead to much unnecessary suffering. However, even if the lessons are learned through suffering, she doesn’t judge you, but lead you through the maze of warring emotions, of shadows of shame and guilt to emerge in acceptance, compassion and greater self-assurance. In this, she cleanses your being from unnecessary dead weight and debris that has held you dimmed and shackled down.
You may not feel ready for the changes Al-Uzza brings into your life and the upheavals that often go with it, but once you surrender to them, you will understand how you were actually readier than you gave yourself credit for in the first place, only because we, as humans, tend to cling a little too much to the familiar and all that is within our comfort zone. Al-Uzza will drag you out of that rut, by the hair, if necessary. But she does so lovingly and gives you all the tools to emerge stronger and more empowered than ever before. Her advice is to trust and surrender to the process, be gentle with yourself throughout and do all that is necessary to support yourself in your journey without regard to others’ outside expectations.
The Goddess urges you to put yourself first for once and do whatever is necessary to go through this process in the most gentle and loving way with yourself as best as you can. This will aid you in integrating the new energies and acquired wisdom much more quickly and on a deeper level than you would trying to rush through it and being more superficial about it.
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