5 Particular Qualities that Make a Modern Day Priestess

It’s hard to define the qualities that make a modern day priestess: is it someone who leads ceremony? Who spends hours a day in ritual? Is it something you get after studying a long time – like a you get a BA after an arts decree, and that recognition is the thing – or is it something more ineffable? 

How can you tell who is really a priestess… and who is someone who just took a course and got a certificate? 

Well, with priestessing we aren’t looking for a checklist of things a person has said or done: we are looking for an energetic, an integration, a vibe. Priestessing is about being, not doing, and it needs to be something so potent that it is recognisable by others. 

But I would say that a Priestess is someone who embodies the way of the goddess. 

Someone who is devoted to their path, or craft, or art. 

Who can change people with their presence alone. 

Who lives their life guided by the Goddess. 

Who is committed to living as a Holy Vessel.

That’s a lot of stuff: what does all that mean? 

1. Embodying the way of the goddess.

This means that they are committed to living the values of the Goddess in their lives: they follow a core set of moral values that they make choices by and live their lives by.

A priestess lives her life in the paradigm of the goddess – not in the everyday paradigm of our saturnine, patriarchal world. She values circle over hierarchy, people over profit, connection over capitalism. She is conscious and cares about the earth. 

It’s not an easy way to be, and they don’t do it perfectly – especially since we still have to live within the crappy outdated system. It’s a lifelong learning.
 

2. Someone devoted to their path, craft or art.

Priestesses are all about love, and devotion is all about tending something out of love. A priestess has gotta have a cause, a source of devotion.

Maybe it is the goddess: maybe she is obsessed with Aphrodite and spends time honouring her most days.

Maybe she is a dancer and she’s committed to being beauty in the world – she loves dance.

Maybe it’s a cause – maybe she wants every woman to discover the magic of their clitoris, and she’s utterly devoted to making that happen.

Or maybe it’s her family, totally committed to raising excellent human beings for the benefit of the world. 

Devotion really is love in action… so a priestess has to be actively loving and tending something. You can’t do armchair devotion. 

It doesn’t have to be all about the literal goddess…. but it’s usually something linked to her.  

3. Who lives their life guided by the Goddess

No matter what we are up to, the Goddess has a say.

Are you gonna quit your job? I dunno, I’m gonna spend some time in meditation with the Goddess and see what she says.

Should I leave my boyfriend and become a goat farmer? Let’s check in with Goddess.

What colour should we paint the hallway? Hmmm, what’s Aphrodite’s advice on this topic?

Note that this is living a life GUIDED by goddess, not a life OUTSOURCED to the goddess. We still have free will (it’s really important as a priestess) and we still get to have our human desires and annoyances and all that stuff.

A priestess is committed to connection with the Goddess, listening for her guidance, and following her intuition

4. Who can change people by their presence alone.

This is one of the weirder ones: since being a priestess is such an energetic thing, and it’s an alignment with spiritual power and divinity and the way of the goddess… a priestess can shift people by their presence alone. 

This isn’t nessacerily dramatic: people don’t see you then fall to the ground in a spiritual ecstasy, completely cured of their desire for cigarettes. 

It’s more that being around you activates something and pulls them into a different frequency. 

This is really weird and very hard to judge in yourself – you kinda need outside priestess eyes on it. And of course, everyone does this in a way already: the priestess just does it in an expanded, enhanced way, moving folks towards spiritual frequencies rather than, say, the crappy dad who controls the vibe of the whole house with his energy when he is in a bad mood. 

5. Who is committed to living as a holy vessel.

Part of the path of a priestess is to be a holy person and recognise the holy divine presence of the Goddess within you as much as possible, letting her SHINE.

This means lots of practices devoted to consecration of your vessel as a holy body: lots of stepping aside of the ego to make space for something else: lots of meditation and spiritual practices to cultivate the energy of the divine within and around you. Ceremonial ritual stuff, mostly.

And lots of time spent in the presence of the Goddess so her energy rubs off on you.

Of course it means doing all the other stuff we mentioned before: living in devotion, communion with goddess, being virtuous and living the values of the goddess (sex positive! Love the earth! Everything is connected! Nature is sacred! Etc).

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So you see, the title of Priestess is not so much about making sure you do x hours of spiritual practice a day. It’s not in what you DO, it’s in what you ARE and how your energy affects others. 

It’s a being-ness thing – it’s hard to judge on our own. We can’t always see ourselves for what we truly are.

It’s about the QUALITIES that make a modern day priestess.

And it’s something we grow into. At the start of our priestess journey – say just after we have been initiated as part of a training – we all are just beginners at all these arts. After years of continuing to practice and cultivate them – sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously – you gain mastery and become someone who is very CLEARLY a priestess. 

You don’t have to look priestessy, you don’t have to have a priestessy job, and you don’t have to wear long flowing dresses á la moi –  you just need to hold that priestess energy and embodiment. 

You can activate someone with your presence while wearing doc martins, being devoted to your vegetable garden, and living your values of self care, earth-consciousness and circling. 

Your devotion doesn’t have to be to a particular goddess (although you will always be deeply devoted to the divine): it can be to dance, to art, to a skill or a person or a cause. 

The thing that marks you as Priestess is your energy, your presence, and how you embody and live your devotion. 

Let me know: what are you devoted to?