Is it a handbag or a portable cauldron?

Divine Feminine, Shopping Habits, Materialism, and Longing.

Women love bags, boxes, containers, sacks, and pouches. The phrase “too much baggage” gives excuses for those avoidant of commitment to run away.  There is truth to that, one who does not ever empty out fills up her womb with emotional baggage util the energetic zipper breaks and the well pours out. Perhaps it’s a way to cope with an empty world void of processing, talking about, connecting with emotions brought forth through life’s trials and tribulations that are avoided, denied and swallowed up in consumption.

But I think there is much more than the initial observation shines light on, after all, a woman won’t leave the house without her bag, she has things she needs to carry with her, things to hold on to and nurture. There’s a primal urge that drives this, an archetypal underbelly.

If you google “handbags” on YouTube, you’ll find millions of videos and popular influencers sharing advice on all the new bags and their features. Brands give bags to be promoted as the next big thing and the lure of feeling special, carrying something “luxurious” or maintaining a following trumps all integrity around the viability of being able to vouch for something personally used and enjoyed. The sustainable agenda taints real sustainability and the desire to keep up with the Jones’s has transitioned to keeping up with the glamorous lifestyle personified on a tiny box on a tiny screen on tiny people that we don’t know and will never meet.

Obviously, there are always exceptions to everything, but you get the point.

These handbag videos are fascinating, how can someone spend 30 minutes talking about the lining of a bag, and I like aspects of bags and fashion, but I can think of many other ways I’d rather spend my time. How is this even a thing? Besides, I want to touch, feel, and experience the tactile, beyond a screen. Unboxing videos were the rage for a while too, look what I bought? Look what’s in my bag? Can you guess how much will fit inside, as if filling up more is proof of “something” to be coveted?

This whole thing really bothered me as I thought to myself how out of control the consumerist fast fashion culture has become. So much attention is given to something so superficial when higher minded ideals, enjoyable hobbies, being in nature, creative pursuits, books to get lost in, and a million other ways to “spend” time waits for discovery.

I thought to myself, there has to be something deeper going on here, what is the symbolism behind this? I haven’t “researched” anything, just reflected and contemplated this idea and how it has been present in my own life.

What if some aspects of the ever-expanding consumerist culture are not about addiction, nor greed, nor numbing out, but a subconscious battle against lifetimes of walls closing in around us. The waiting for things that never come, hoping for things that aren’t going to change anything unless we do and a lot of worry about what isn’t.

The undercurrent of desire to feel expansive, to feel free inside, free of the ever-evolving restrictions, rules, regulations, censorship, political correctness, and selfishness.  

What if it’s the collective unconsciousness driving women, exhausted from the rat wheel they are on, to find a way to hold onto something as symbol of their value, their worth. A representation imbued as a place holder for a womb unaware that it is seeking Divinity through sacred union, sensuality, beauty, feeling everything (even though the world says you must always pretend to be ok and feel good). The Divine Feminine finding connection with Mother Sophia, not to replace the Divine Masculine but to mesh, to bring harmony through polarity. All this about a handbag…a container…a cauldron? Yes.

The dynamics between men and women are an important part of this equation.

The toxic alpha masculine wants to control, have ownership, a submissive relationship.  At the same time society has emasculated men for their healthy masculine traits and portrayed them as bumbling idiots in media. 

Meanwhile, the woke feminist woman is not just anti-man but anti-woman. This Toxic feminine pretends not to need men, the wounded projection stemming from the sacred rage of feeling like she must do it all, be it all, and it’s exhausting.

Both need the other, maybe the symbolism of the handbag can bring light to help heal some of the brokenness in the same way the Japanese art of kintsugi, mends broken bowls (containers) with gold. 

Simply put, the feminine needs a container and wants to be enveloped inside the strength of the masculine who can hold her tightly, not to stifle her but to give rise to feeling safe enough to be filled up from the inside out, to feel fulfilled while empty, to feel free to be both the wholly wild and gracefully restrained woman. She needs a container because she is one.

To thrive, the feminine energy must create, to make things beautiful, to be reigned in, to feel safe, to emote.  The divine feminine needs the power and limitation held as she also holds the potential inside her.

In my own life I can see how I shop less when I’m nourished in other ways, when there is connection and safety. It’s my responsibility to recognize this and find other ways to occupy the container or practice sitting in the emptiness. I remember growing up before the days of amazon, where we only embarked on occasional shopping trips as more of an adventure than a habit. It’s harder now when so much is at your fingertips, the temptations and distractions of all the shiny things, the bag you have now is not good enough, look over here at this one!

I think back to my grandmother stashing a little cash in a shoebox pretending my grandpa didn’t know it was there, and though it wasn’t often, when we did go shopping, it was always for shoes. Now I have a photo of her standing barefoot in a field and I wonder, maybe she liked to buy shoes because she could, because that wasn’t always available to her. Maybe it was a symbol of safety, shoes are after all another container, a place for the foundation of our very being to slide into in order to walk upon firmer ground with a steadier gait.

Why do we desire what we desire? Why do we buy what we buy? Why do we spend money, time and energy the way we do? It doesn’t matter how conscious you are, the fabric of our lives and the influences of others shapes us and creates subtleties and nuance that feel familiar, nostalgic. To this day I think of my grandmother’s laughter when I buy a pair of shoes, how much joy it brought her to take me to buy a pair, how I felt walking in them…a little more confidence because a little bit of that memory, that love, is forever part of that symbolism.

Jokes in the 90’s played out around old men who used to sit in mall lobby’s bored, not realizing the value of them holding that space, as she vulnerably undressed in tiny rooms (containers) to try on clothes representing potentially new versions of herself.   Even the strangest and seemingly superficial things often carry clues into the dynamics of our lives playing out.

Fast forward to a time where Louis Vuitton has become the invisible man in the fantasy of the longing of that healthy masculine container to be held.  I say that tongue and cheek, it’s not about the Label after all, it’s about the labia, it’s about the gateway to being seen beyond the surface, the value in what’s carried on the inside… deep inside.

There is a balance missing, a lack of discipline, a container expanding and never being reigned, paired with feeling too reigned in and unable to be fully expressive.  Loss of freedom tightens so the noose can’t complain. The chains we wear as necklaces and dangling bag straps.

Are these coping mechanisms for connections severed in the digital underworld of data harvesting and marketing of the objectified maiden…hope in a handbag?

The fashion of paperclip necklaces, a literal representation of the ghostly chains sometimes felt inside this wild world. Just wear it with style, a smile, and keep filling up more bags to keep playing the game. There’s a melancholy tone inside the joy of unboxing, of filling the bag, of frivolity. The fear of wanting what you in in the material plane because you think you don’t deserve it mixed with the knowing you don’t need it and want to be more mindful…. all choices weigh the paradox of being too empty or too full, comfortable or uncomfortable, having or waiting, risk or safety.

But what if it’s about longing, not in a desperate sense, but to find moments of awe again and again?

What if it’s about belonging, not to in a way to fit in, but an expression of what lives within?

What if she’s not filling that bag with lipstick, but words unspoken.

What if she’s not filling that bag with a nail file, but dreams that are broken.

What if she’s not filling that bag with pennies, but wishes waiting to be opened.

What if she’s not filling that bag with credit cards, but just wants credit for her effort that’s never spoken.

Maybe that package on the doorstep isn’t just a night cream, but an invitation to relax and daydream.

Maybe that package on the doorstep isn’t just a new outfit, but an opportunity to face her fears of being seen.

Maybe that package on the doorstep isn’t just a splurge on a new watch, but a reminder to take time, to turn off the screen.

The flip side of all of this is the manipulation and deception by advertising that plays on vulnerability and weaknesses and feeds the beast that really doesn’t need another bag or box, but threads ideas inside her head.

I’m also not justifying bad behavior, spending what you don’t have or numbing out through real consumerist addiction, but an invitation to zoom out and see there is always more to the story.

Life is a canvas to be painted every day, everyone is an artist for their life. So, women, instead of making up all the reasons why you should or shouldn’t buy something, thinking it’s too much, that you should wait until it’s on sale, that’s a waste, that’s not in style or it’s so cute, how about we take off the superficial mask and start connecting through this and beyond this.  Better choices arise through appreciating what we have and imbuing our possessions with gratitude for how they come int our life, why, and the symbolism behind them.

Maybe this article will birth a form of container alchemy where the cracks in the womb are woven in golden threads, inner space is made whole and all the stories are told, instead of drying up inside a black hole.

So often it’s not the thing we want, it’s something else entirely…the feeling behind it.

Even in the fad of minimalism where they tell you to trash those inherited trinkets, they deny that the box left behind in a sparse cold near empty room reveals the container naked and crying to be colored again.

Containers contain captured moments of creation in both the metaphysical and physical properties of our humanness. Thus, in essence, the bag itself is a mobile cauldron filled with potions that create moments, paint pictures, solve problems and hold currency waiting to be expended. Why else would it be something we always carry…. because it represents caring…. what is she going to pull out of that bag, box, package, sack, hat…. What’s in there?

Women don’t really want to fill a bag, they want to feel a life, they want to feel safe, they want to make things ok, they want to be ok.  It’s no accident that feel and fill sound the same.

No matter the stage of life, all women carry a womb, a portal, a sacred entry into a void thirsting to dance, to play, to write, to laugh, to sing, to paint, to bring forth, to create, to invigorate the world with something to love, to enhance the experience during our time here. Real manifestation is born through the wisdom in the womb, its magnetic pull, paired with the outer action of the masculine electrical and primal pulse to build, to make something… the labor of the inner and outer harmonizing the birthing pains together. After all men have tool bags too…. a container for “hammers” and “screws.” Another unlikely coincidence, if you know what I mean, ha-ha.

In this isolated world, it’s more obvious than ever that we actually need one another in order to be individuated souls…the paradox in polarity is funny that way, it’s extravagant in its lucidity and profundity.

I see her as I am her, continuously seeking the sensual venture into a poetic life, not a perfect one.

Adventure, a creative exploration, trying on clothes, filling a bag, and embarking upon a canvas of expression, painting a picture. The innocence of a naked frame longing to be seen in her wildness, her innocence, her inner beauty, her wholeness, her silliness, her wackiness, her surrender into the dance between her inner child and her wild woman.

We all need to learn how to sit in the emptiness at times, to let the invisible begin to stir inside, to invite in the swirling power of the nothingness becoming something. The Divine feminine longing to be held by the power of the Divine masculine in such a way to flourish freely inside the container that will always desire to be filled, where restraint builds tension, the explosiveness of possibilities with uniting fronts depends upon both the softness and hardness of being wholly full and holy hollow…the Whole Hole, the blank canvas, the fertile womb, the hollow hallow ground,

We fill safes with treasures that matter to us.
We fill cauldrons with magical ingredients.
We fill bags with things we need in the practical sense and what we long for in its metaphysical counterpart.

And in all the emptiness and filling up, emptiness and filling up, emptiness and filling up, don’t forget to mix the paint colors and stir the cauldron, for stagnation is the nemesis of both.

May your thoughts be provoked and your handbag carry what is real…remember to feel…remember that it’s not about the outer container but what its attributes conceal.

With love,

Angela Morris
The Irrational Sage
angelamorris.com