Lisa [00:00:00]:

In most myths and stories, the heroine must descend into the underworld to meet the dark queen, the shadowy figure who holds the keys to her true power. And today, I am taking you there. Many of us have banished this part of ourselves, trading her fire for the safe palatable energy of the pleasing princess. But when the stakes are high, when it comes to advocating for your desires, making more money, protecting your safety, preserving your self esteem, or stepping into your full potential. It's the dark queen you need. In this episode, I'll show you why reclaiming her is essential in how to wear your revealing crown with pride. Let's dive in. Welcome to the Goddess School podcast, where Eastern wisdom meets Western mysticism.

Lisa [00:00:52]:

I'm your host, Lisa Marie Rankine, author, teacher, and Ayurvedic wellness coach here to help you reclaim your feminine superpowers, and I am so glad you're here. Listen, women are magical. They are intuitive, creative, wise, and magnetic. However, in today's fast paced world, these gifts often get buried under a more masculine way of life. Together, we'll awaken those powers. In each episode, I'll take you through sacred teachings like Ayurveda, shadow work, and the mysteries of archetypes and rituals so you can live with more clarity, synchronicity, and joy in all realms of life, like relationships, health, money, and more. So let's dive in so you can make the most of your one mythic life, the veil is parting. Let's begin.

Lisa [00:01:45]:

Hello. Hello, beautiful souls, and welcome back to The God of School podcast. So I'm very excited about today's topic, which is the dark queen and why you need to be okay being the villain. And I know for many women, that is probably one of your worst fears. First, before we dive into the dark wing, I want to offer a new perspective on self help and self improvement. Both of those terms imply that something is wrong with you, that there's this self that needs to be fixed. Now, this is both untrue and it's also unhelpful. From a Jungian perspective, and I know that many of my listeners are young lovers like me, that's Carl Jung, the self is both the center point and the circumference of your psyche.

Lisa [00:02:38]:

It is the totality of who you are. The problems occur when we just identify with a small slice of that circle. You can think of that as your ego, your identity, who you believe yourself to be and how you present to the world. That's like thinking you are just a slice of a pie when you're really the entire pie. So imagine this, Imagine that rather than spending time trying to fix your slice, just that little slice of the pie, you focused more on becoming more of you, considering what other qualities, characteristics, and powers are just waiting to emerge. Imagine that the antidote to your struggles are just beyond the slice that you've identified with. We can think of that as your conscious mind. So for example, the inner child doesn't need to be healed.

Lisa [00:03:34]:

Children are needy. They require attention, care, oversight, reassurance. That's that's what children require. The inner critic doesn't need to be silenced. Critics like to judge. They like to write scathing reviews. So rather than focus on these parts of ourselves, imagine bringing online the divine mother, sovereign queen, confident sage. Wouldn't that be a more empowering approach? Here's where things get interesting.

Lisa [00:04:05]:

Anything that is not part of your conscious mind, that's the slice your ego that you identify with, is part of your unconscious. So that's really the rest of the pie. This means that the qualities and characteristics that don't align with your ego, again, who you think you are, who you claim to be, gets repressed or suppressed in your unconscious, also known as your shadow. For many women, the dark queen. So the archetype of the dark queen gets repressed. And that's what we're going to talk about today because I believe the dark queen is essential to living a creative and mythic life. So who is the dark queen anyways? The dark queen is the one that you love to hate. She's Cersei Lannister from Game of Thrones, Amarantha from A Court of Thorns and Roses, Miranda Priestly from The Devil Wears Prada, Ereshkigal from The Myth of Inanna.

Lisa [00:05:04]:

She's vindictive, manipulative, ruthless, shameless, often very sexual, and she can be full of wrath. Now you might be thinking, why why would I want any of those qualities? The reason is because sometimes you need them to advocate for your desires, to make more money, to protect your health, your safety, and most importantly, to step into your full potential. Now, if you go back to episode eight of the God of School podcast, I had a really fantastic conversation with union analyst, Lisa Marciano. We discussed her book, the vital spark and the vital spark you can really think about is how to reconnect with that dark queen energy. Now she calls these energies, outlaw energies. They were disagreeableness, shrewdness, trickster energy, desire, sexuality, rage, authority, and ruthlessness. And if you don't have access to them, she tells us, you risk losing your spark. That's your vital life force.

Lisa [00:06:10]:

So we need to be able to connect with the dark green. And yet so many of us have buried these energies, these qualities. We've traded them in for the agreeable ones. You know, we go along to get along. We might undercharge for services. We say yes when we mean no, and we tiptoe around our own truth to make others more comfortable. And listen, I get it. Nice serves us in some ways.

Lisa [00:06:38]:

I feel like I've gotten pretty far in life by being nice and being agreeable. It can keep us safe and it can get us to a point, but it only gets us so far. There's actually a glass ceiling on NICE, and this is true whether it comes to your career. There's only so far that you're gonna climb up the corporate ladder. If you're depending on NICE as your only strategy, there's definitely gonna be times where you're gonna have to be more assertive and disagreeable, maybe even ruthless in your relationships. If you're just going along to get along and not really asking for what you need, creativity and your soul's expansion. Often, if we are on this personal growth or spiritual development path, it's almost as if we believe that we can reach this state of perfection or goodness, but that's really not the point. As Carl Young has said, I'd rather be whole than good.

Lisa [00:07:33]:

We're really here to discover all aspects of ourselves so we can live fully, wildly, mythically. We see in most myths and stories as well, that the heroine must face the dark queen to unlock her full power. So I'm going to give you a few examples here. In A Court of Thorns and Roses. So we are currently reading the series in my divine feminine mystery school, enlivened, which is really fantastic. I've been obsessed with romantic. I'm going to actually do another episode on romantic because I believe that this portal into fiction into other realms also opens up all of these possibilities and spaces within us. But I digress.

Lisa [00:08:17]:

In a court of thorns and roses, the main female character, Feyre, faces all of these horrific trials under the mountain. We can think of that as the underworld too at the mercy of the dark queen, Amarantha. But though Pharah's body is fragile, her spirit is fierce. And through her battle with Amarantha, that's when Pharah finds her strength. She truly finds what she is capable of, and she ultimately transforms into someone who is even more powerful. Or consider Inanna. So she is the Sumerian goddess of heaven and earth. And in her myth, she descends to the underworld to visit her sister, Ereshkigal.

Lisa [00:08:59]:

Now this was a very strange decision considering only the dead visit the underworld. And as Inanna passes through the seven gates to get to the underworld, she is stripped of all of her finery, so all of her beautiful gowns and jewelries. We can think of this as like the protective layer, the persona, the identity of how we show ourselves to the world. So when she finally gets to the bottom to meet her sister, Arashkigal kills her with a death stare and carelessly hangs her up on a meat hook. But Inanna had a plan. Her servant knew to revive her after three days, and she returned to the upper realm stronger and wiser than ever because she was able to face the dark queen. So those shadow aspects of herself. So she was able to reclaim all of those qualities.

Lisa [00:09:49]:

So when she returned, when she ascended from the underworld, she had even more power than ever before. And even Persephone, the maiden, the beautiful goddess of spring, left the pretty flowers in her doting mother to rule as the queen of the underworld for half the year. So we can look at these ancient myths as well as these modern stories and see that often the heroine is going to be asked to meet the dark queen in essence to reclaim her full power, her full sovereignty. Now, unfortunately for many women, and I could even say myself included, although I'm gonna talk a little bit about my journey with the dark queen in just a moment, our obsession with being well liked, with being agreeable has exiled the dark green. But start to imagine what your life could look like if you reclaimed your anger, your assertiveness, and yeah, even your ruthlessness in some situations. So I wanted to share a practice whom I have learned from one of my teachers, Doctor. Kelly Brogan. She writes about this in her book, Reclaimed Woman, which we also read in Enlivened.

Lisa [00:11:01]:

She has a practice called wearing the villain crown. And I like to think that this practice can help you reclaim your inner dark queen. So think of a time where someone said something to you and you really found it mean or insulting, and it really rubbed you the wrong way. Maybe they called you selfish or manipulative, entitled, cold, narcissistic, high maintenance. Someone maybe told you get off your high horse and, you know, you kind of got that pit in your stomach. So think about a time someone called you one of those names. Now, instead of defending yourself, instead of explaining why that person is wrong and you are right, see if you can simply just try it on. Could you be selfish, manipulative, entitled? Could there be some truth in it? And what if, what if you were? And what if that was okay? So sit with that feeling, and doctor Brogan calls that putting on your villain crown.

Lisa [00:12:05]:

Can you wear the villain crown with pride? Not to hurt others, but to stop hurting yourself by prioritizing others' comfort over your own. Now, I am not saying to unleash your dark queen. Whenever someone cuts you off in traffic, it is not about reacting. It's about wielding. It's learning how to wield our power. So what if you could wield this dark energy with discernment? Because if you don't learn how to do it, one of two things could happen. The first, you might just live a placid, mediocre life, always pleasing, accommodating, and wondering what's missing, and spoiler alert, what's missing is you in your full power, or you could become like Daenerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones. She started as the sweet liberator until she snapped and burned the whole city down because suppressed emotions are always gonna find a way out and not usually in the healthiest ways.

Lisa [00:13:06]:

And that's also part of reclaiming the entire pie. When we reclaim all of these different parts, all of these qualities and energies, we are aware of them. We can wield them as opposed to they come out when we're triggered and we just let them run the show. I wanna tell you a little bit about my relationship with the dark queen as a teenager. And in my early twenties, I had zero problems tapping into my dark green energy. I can actually look back at that time and I'm almost, I almost feel a little bad about it. I was a handful. If I disagreed with you, you would know about it.

Lisa [00:13:43]:

Not only that, but I really took pride in my cutting words. I always had to have the last word. I had a sharp wit, quick tongue. And in high school, even though I probably only weighed about a hundred pounds and could not fight my way out of a paper bag, I always had to have the last word. I always had to have that last snarky comment. I never backed down from a fight, no matter how perilous. Needless to say, I was actually punched in the face a few times. I know probably hard to believe because I think I'm often present as pretty sweet, but even though I was punched in the face a few times, I would never submit.

Lisa [00:14:19]:

I felt no remorse. If I broke up with someone out of the blue, I would ditch friends for a guy almost every single time. I once even dated a roommate's love interest. And in my defense, she wasn't very nice and he, he just liked me better. I let my whims take me wherever they pleased. I cycled through men, jobs, and apartments, like, with the seasons. So, yeah, looking back, you know, I had, a lot of dark queen energy and it didn't really wield it with discernment. It was just sort of this kind of, like, undiluted chaotic power.

Lisa [00:14:50]:

But then something shifted in my mid to late twenties. Sure. I started cultivating more kindness and more discernment. That wasn't all. Somewhere along the way, my dark queen got locked away and she was replaced by the pleasing princess. I was kind, humble, sweet, agreeable, boring. And I suspect this was a very intentional persona I crafted to be more palatable to men, to society, and to the people around me. Of course, it never really worked, probably because the pleasing princess is annoying, but the bigger issue is the dark queen went underground, under the mountain, into the underworld.

Lisa [00:15:30]:

Call it what you may, she was gone. And at times when I needed her most, I couldn't even access her. Like during my divorce, when I wanted to take the high road and gave away more than my share, a one-sided business partnership that I got involved with, and I never even contested because I wanted to avoid confrontation, a conflict with my father where I bit my tongue and as a result had extended the feud. In a romantic relationship, I stayed in long past the expiration date because, you know, I kept saying he had some good qualities though. I can't necessarily remember what those were. And here's the truth. I shunned my dark queen in favor of the pleasing princess. But as a result, I found that didn't really serve me, especially in moments when there was a lot on the line, like my money, my health, and my self esteem.

Lisa [00:16:22]:

Now recently, I've really been feeling like I've started to enter my dark queen era. And yeah, it might have something to do with perimenopause, but it's been a while since I've been able to point out someone's glaring shortcomings, told them exactly what I thought explained where, how, and why they could have done better. And you know what? It's honestly, it's a little bit liberating. I'm no longer going along just to get along, and I feel perfectly fine rocking the boat. It's like I got myself and my power back. So I don't know. I'm starting to think Maybe estrogen is overrated. I really want for you listeners is to start thinking about the dark queen as these energies that you might have suppressed and know when they come up, we're learning how to wield them.

Lisa [00:17:11]:

That's where our power is. So the dark queen isn't here to destroy you. She's not something that you need to fix or hail. She wants to crown you. She's your initiation. So if you're feeling the stirrings to really start to own your dark queen, let's not stop. I have a few ways where I can help you meet your dark queen and rediscover some of these aspects of yourself that you're really going to need in different situations and just creating the life that you really want. First, you can get into my divine feminine mystery school, enlivened, where we explore different archetypes and also the sense of self expansion.

Lisa [00:17:51]:

So we have access to everything within us, not just that slice that we identify, but all of these qualities and powers and gods and goddess that live within us. Or you can check out my son's stack, This Enchanted Life. In there, I have a dark queen, active imagination, and I also have some journal prompts to help you connect with your inner dark queen. And remember, you're gonna need to be the villain in someone else's story to be the hero of your own, and it's okay. Until next time, beautiful one. Thanks for tuning in to The Goddess School podcast. I hope today's episode inspired you to reclaim your feminine magic. Now don't forget to subscribe to the show.

Lisa [00:18:35]:

And if you've enjoyed the podcast, please leave us a review on Apple. If you wanna dive deeper into divine feminine archetypes and reconnect with your power, check out my book, The Goddess Solution. It's packed with ancient goddess wisdom for the modern woman. You can find the book on Amazon, and the link is in the show notes. And if you are ready to embrace these practices alongside a global sisterhood, I invite you to join my Divine Feminine Mystery School, Enlivened. It's a supportive space to embody these teachings with a fantastic community of like minded women. You'll find the link in the show notes. Remember, the Goddess isn't a deity outside of you.

Lisa [00:19:12]:

She's an aspect of your highest self. You are the Goddess. Until next time, my friend.