Becoming The Queen Archetype: Embodying Sovereign Feminine Power | S1 Ep.19

What if divine feminine power stopped being a performance and became a presence you live in your body every day? We dive into the Queen archetype—the mature feminine who knows her worth, builds strong containers, and gives from fullness—not as a destination but as a daily practice. From the first apology for a missed release to a grounded re-entry after illness, we trace the real-life threshold from maiden to mother to queen and name the grief, resistance, and relief along the way.

We explore why sovereignty starts in the body through somatic therapy principles: your nervous system must feel safe enough to access pleasure, presence, and creativity. That’s radical in a culture that demands feminine bodies perform, produce, and stay small—especially for black and brown, queer, disabled, and fat bodies. Through a Jungian lens, we frame the queen as an archetype of self-possession, order, and generativity, and we connect the dots with a Virgo lunar eclipse that invites practical magic, ritual, and integration. You’ll hear how the performed maiden must die so a freer queen can rise, and why this cycle repeats in a spiral rather than a straight line.

Then we get practical. We map how sexuality, creativity, and leadership transform when you stop chasing approval and start sourcing desire from within. You’ll learn holistic body-first practices: mirror work to find beauty now, adornment to express inner royalty, movement that celebrates capacity, and the art of receiving compliments without deflection. We show you how to claim desire clearly, build enough safety to honor your no, create supportive containers, and rest before burnout. A short guided practice closes the loop, anchoring sovereignty with breath, sensation, and choice so you leave rooted, present, and resourced.

If this conversation sparks something true in you, follow the show, share it with a friend who’s crossing a similar threshold, and leave a review with the practice you’re taking forward. Your words help others find this work and step into their own inner throne.

Transcript

Welcome & Illness Update

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to Priestess Initiations, the Goddess Coven. I'm Casey Dunn, educator, priestess, and professional somatic therapist. In April 2025, I went through a Priestess Initiation of Old and launched the Priestess Initiations podcast six months later. Whatever brought you here today, I invite you to drop into the spiral with me. Let's begin. Welcome to Priestess Initiations. I'm Casey. So first, I want to apologize for missing you last week. If you're listening to this later, last week, um, no episode dropped. Because last Monday, my partner and I both got sick with COVID. And it hit me really hard. I had no voice and I didn't have any episodes pre-recorded. Um, moving forward, I've got a plan for that outlined in the second surprise episode you're getting this week, my first spontaneous transmission episode. So tune in to that to learn what those are all about. But last week, before we got sick, Matt and I were supposed to talk about the king archetype, what it means to embody mature masculine energy, to witness without controlling, to be sovereign and in partnership. So please don't worry, that episode is still coming, but today we're talking about the queen. Because you can't have sacred partnership without both being sovereign. You can't have king and queen if one person is still playing princess waiting to be saved, or maiden defending her independence at all costs. The queen is something else entirely. She's not the maiden who performs her power to get external validation. She's not the mother who gives away everything until she's depleted. And these are kind of immature forms of maiden and mother when I'm talking about that. I'm talking about an immature form or the shadow of maiden or mother. The queen is sovereign, embodied, self-sourced. And the journey from maiden to queen through the mother threshold, it goes through the mother threshold, is one of the most profound initiations you can go through. And I want to be clear: this episode is not about motherhood. It's not even primarily about literal mothers. It's about the archetype of queen as the mature feminine. The woman who knows her worth, who sources her desire from within, who builds and holds and creates, not because she has to prove anything, but because she chooses to. And if you're in your 30s, 40s, or beyond, and something feels like it's dying in you, old patterns, old ways of being, old versions of yourself that used to work but don't anymore, you might be in this initiation right now. And I want to be clear about two things. The first is that I'm speaking from the threshold. I'm not standing on the other side of this initiation telling you I've mastered queen energy. I haven't. Some days I feel sovereign, grounded, self-sourced. Other days I slip back into seeking external validation, performing, trying to prove my worth. We all do. This is a constant process, a constant returning. And it's a journey, an ongoing practice, not a destination. And the second thing I want to be clear about is a little piece of Hecate wisdom, which is that you are already whole. All of us have access, regardless of our physical body age, to the maiden archetype, to the mother archetype, and to the crone archetype. And Hecate is the guide for that. She holds all three. She reminds us we're whole onto ourselves. And I'll talk about her more in this week's spontaneous transmission. So today, let's talk about what it means to become queen. And before we dive in, let's talk about what's happening in the sky. And it feels really aligned because for me, queen is earth energy. Think queen of pentacles in the tarot as the ultimate queen. And yesterday, Tuesday, March 3rd, at 4:38 a.m. mountain time, we had a full moon lunar eclipse in Virgo at 12 degrees. This eclipse completes the eclipse season we've been in since mid-February. And Virgo is about practical service, daily rituals, embodied wisdom. It's about releasing perfectionism and integrating spiritual vision into tangible form, which is exactly what the queen archetype does. The maiden lives in potential, in what could be. And the queen lives in what is. She takes the vision and makes it real. She brings it into form, into the body, into daily practice. This eclipse in Virgo says stop waiting to be perfect. Stop waiting until you figured it all out. Build with what you have. Embody the wisdom now. Serve from where you are. That's queen energy. The maiden waits for permission, the queen grants it to herself. So this week, as we emerge from eclipse season, we're talking about how you become her, how you claim the throne, how you step into sovereignty. So what is the queen archetype? Let me be clear, I'm not talking about literal queens, royalty, or monarchies. I'm talking about an archetype, a pattern of mature feminine energy that exists across cultures, across time. And the queen is not the same as the mother, though they're related. The mother is the archetype of nurturing, of tending, of giving life and sustaining it. She builds the nest, she feeds, she cares. But the mother can give too much. She can lose herself in service and she can burn out. The queen is the mother who learned sovereignty. The queen she knows her worth. She doesn't need external validation to feel valuable. She sources her power from within, not waiting for someone else to give it to her. She builds and holds. And what I mean by that is she creates structures, boundaries, containers, and she holds them. She gives from fullness, not depletion. And in order to do that, you have to know when to say no. The queen is embodied. She's present in her body, she trusts her body's wisdom, and she chooses. This feels really important. She intentionally, consciously chooses her life, her relationships, her pleasure. The queen is what happens when the maiden grows up and doesn't lose her fire in the process. She's grounded like the mother, but sovereign. She gives, but not to the point of self-erasure. She loves, but doesn't need to be loved to know she's worthy. And here's what's hard: you can't skip to the queen. You have to go through the maiden, you have to descend, you have to face what the mother asks of you. The tending, the patience, the groundedness, the capacity to hold and build. But you also have to integrate the maiden's wildness, her pleasure, her refusal to be tamed. The queen is both wild and grounded, sovereign and relational, powerful and soft. And getting there, that's the initiation. And the initiation is getting there again and again and again in the spiral. Before we go further, I just want to ground this in psychology for a moment. Carl Jung, who I've mentioned before, he wrote about archetypes as universal patterns in the collective unconscious. And the queen is one of those archetypal patterns, the sovereign feminine, the woman who rules her own domain. In Jungian psychology specifically, the queen represents self-possession and knowing who you are, authority, claiming your power, order and structure, creating containers, generativity, building, creating, sustaining, and the integrated feminine, both nurturing and powerful. And Young also talked about how we individuate, how we become whole by integrating all parts of ourselves, including the parts we've been taught to reject or hide. The journey from maiden to queen is in many ways an individuation process. You're integrating the wild with the grounded, the pleasure seeking with the structure building, the spontaneous with the intentional. You're becoming whole. And now I want to name what I'm not talking about in this episode, other than my quick hecate mention, but that's the crone. And the crone is the third aspect of the triple goddess, made in Mother Crone. And the crone can absolutely embody queen energy. In fact, often the most sovereign powerful queens are crones, the wise women, the elders, the ones who've walked through the fire and come out the other side with deep knowing. But the crone archetype deserves her own space. She's not just older queen. She's the death keeper, the wisdom holder, the storyteller who passes down what matters. She's the one who's released what the mother and queen still hold. She's the one who knows. And I'm going to explore the crone more deeply when we start season two. Specifically the role of the crone as the wise woman and the power of storytelling from sovereignty. Because storytelling is how wisdom gets passed down through lineages, how we remember what patriarchy tried to erase, and how the crone teaches the maiden and mother what they need to know. So for now, we're focusing on the journey from maiden to mother to queen. But know that the crone is waiting and she has her own teachings. And I want to say this again: I'm learning this too. I'm on this threshold. Some days I embody queen energy, I know my worth, I source my power from within, I give from fullness. Other days I still seek approval. I still give until I'm depleted. Being sick was really hard to take that much time off work. Um, and let myself be cared for. Let myself be cared for by my partner in the king archetype. That's normal. That's the work. You don't arrive at Queen and stay there. You practice her, you return to her over and over. So let's talk about the journey. The Maiden to Mother threshold, as I call it, is not just about having children. In fact, for many of us, it has nothing to do with literal motherhood. It's about moving from unconscious to conscious, reactive to intentional, seeking external validation to internal knowing, performing to embodying, moving from potential to manifestation. And this threshold usually hits somewhere in your late 20s through your 40s. For some people it comes later, for some, it happens multiple times. Actually, I'd say for most it happens multiple times. And you'll know you're in it when the old ways don't work anymore. The things that used to be easier, but not necessarily easy, suddenly feel impossible. You feel like you're dying because part of you is dying, the maiden self. You're being asked to build, not just explore. You're starting to be asked to make commitments, root down, create structures. Your body feels different. Less spontaneous, maybe heavier, slower, but potentially more powerful. And you can't perform your way through anymore. Authenticity becomes non-negotiable. And that might be one of the biggest signs I've noticed. So here's what's actually happening. The maiden archetype under patriarchy was never fully free. She was taught to perform, to be what others wanted, to seek validation externally, to prove her worth through how desirable, how perfect, how good she was. Even when she felt powerful, it was often power borrowed from someone else's gaze. Am I hot enough? Do they want me? Am I doing this right? Do I look cool? And that version has to die. Because the queen doesn't perform. She doesn't wait for external approval. She doesn't source her worth from how others see her. She knows she's valuable because she says so. Because she was born so. And this is something I like to I like to say to myself. Um you have a birthright to love and be loved. You have a birthright to self-worth. Like you are born worthy. And your body knows that. And your body and your psyche, your soul, it won't let you access queen energy with maiden patterns. You have to let the maiden die. You have to grieve her. You have to release the fantasy that you can go back to unconscious, easier, externally validated anything. And then you have to build something new. And here's what I'm learning: you don't do this once and you're done. You do it over and over. You claim queen energy, then you slip, then you claim it again. Some days I catch myself performing in my relationship, in my teaching, in how I present myself. And I have to consciously return to I'm worthy because I say so, and I just am. I'm worthy because I was born worthy, not because they agree. This threshold requires grief. And that's what's so uncomfortable about it. But you're mourning, you're mourning the version of yourself who didn't know how rigged the game was. The spontaneity that came from not yet seeing the whole picture, the body you used to have, or the body patriarchy told you was acceptable, the external validation that felt like confidence, even though it was conditional. And it's okay to grieve. It's okay to say I miss when things felt easier. I miss feeling desired in that unconscious way. I miss not carrying this much responsibility. I miss the version of me who didn't know what I know now. This grief is sacred. And the maiden under patriarchy was never fully free. She never got to be her fullest expression of what that archetype could be. She's what you knew, and she's gone. You can't go back, you can only go through. And what's on the other side, what's waiting for you once you've walked through the fire, is the queen. The woman who doesn't need anyone to tell her she's powerful. The woman who sources her desire from within, the woman who builds what she wants, holds what matters, and releases what no longer serves. The woman who knows her body is sacred exactly as it is. The woman who gives from fullness, not depletion. A woman who is sovereign. And I'm still grieving. There are still days I miss the maiden version of me. Even though I know she wasn't free, even though I know she was performing, I miss when things felt easier. I miss not carrying this much awareness. That's okay. The grief doesn't mean you're failing, it means you're human. So how do you actually become the queen? How do you embody sovereignty? You're gonna laugh at my answer, but my answer is it starts in the body. Because the maiden lives in her head. She's anxious, performing, monitoring how she looks from the outside. She dissociates from her body because her body was never safe under Patriarchy's gaze. The queen lives in her body. She's present, grounded. She trusts her body's wisdom. And before I talk about sexuality specifically, I want to talk about safety. Um, in somatic therapy, body-based therapy, we work with a foundational principle. You cannot heal without enough safety. Your nervous system will not allow you to relax, to feel, to be present, to access deeper states unless it perceives safety. This is not a choice. This is biology. And here's what that means for the queen archetype. The world makes constant demands on the feminine body. Under patriarchy, under capitalism, under white supremacy, the feminine body is expected to perform, produce, be available, give endlessly, stay small, look a certain way, and serve others. This is a social justice issue as much as it's a personal one. The systemic oppression of feminine bodies, especially black and brown feminine bodies, queer bodies, disabled bodies, fat bodies, is designed to prevent us from ever feeling safe enough to claim sovereignty. Because if we're safe, we might rest. We might feel. Not wait for someone else to make you safe. Not hope that a partner will hold space for you. My hope is that they eventually will, but they will once you know how to yourself. And to be in healthy partnership, you need to know how to create safety for yourself. So you have to learn that you create the container. You build the safety. And then once you know how to hold space for yourself, you can recognize when someone else, a king, another queen, any partner, is offering to hold space with you. But you have to know what safety feels like in your own body first. You have to practice being the witness for yourself before you can surrender into being witnessed by another. And I want to name I'm currently in a relationship with a cis man. Um, but I'm pansexual and I'm speaking from a heteronormative framework in parts of this episode because it's my current lived experience. Um, and not just this episode. Throughout this whole podcast, I'm aware that that comes up. But queen energy holding space for queen energy, or any configuration of sovereign partnership, works the exact same way. This applies in queer dynamics, in polyamorous dynamics, and any relationship structure, because the queen knows how to hold space for herself, and that's what allows her to hold space for another sovereign being, regardless of their gender. It's not about gender, it's about sovereignty meeting sovereignty. Okay, so now let me talk about how this shows up in sexuality. I'm going to talk about this specifically. Specifically, because it's where so many of us get stuck. And I'm actively working through this myself, but this applies to all of life: your work, your relationships, your creative practice, everything. And if you're wondering how, go back to our episode on creative practice where I talk about Shakti. But maiden sexuality under patriarchy, and I want to clarify, I'm talking about this under patriarchy, not in its purest form, is responsive, waiting for someone else's desire to activate yours. Performative, which is trying to be what they want. Externally validated. That question, am I doing this right? Am I enough? And it's spontaneous but anxious. Easier arousal but constant self-monitoring. Queen sexuality is self-sourced. You choose desire from within. It's embodied. It's not performing, it's being. Slower, deeper, more conscious. And here's what happens at that threshold. Your body goes on strike. It says, I won't give you pleasure until you love me as I am. I won't perform for external validation anymore. And I won't surrender until you prove it's safe. And suddenly things that used to be easier become hard or suddenly impossible. Not because you're broken, but because your body is demanding that you meet it differently. It's requiring you to get out of your head and into your body. Presence over performance. It's requiring you to love this body now, not when it looks different. It's requiring you to source your desire from within, not waiting for external validation, and create actual safety, emotional, physical, and relational safety. And it's asking you to slow down and deepen. Queen pleasure isn't fast, it's intentional. This is true for sexuality, and it's true for everything. The queen doesn't perform her power, she embodies it. The queen doesn't wait for permission, she grants it to herself. The queen doesn't need you to tell her she's worthy. She knows. And some days I embody that, some days I don't, some days I slip back into trying to be what others want or what I think they want, because you never really know what anyone else wants. And then I catch myself and I return to I am the queen. I source my power from within. So here's what this looks like in practice. The first step is to love this body now. Not when you lose weight, not when you look different now. And so some practices for that are mirror work. Um, mirror work, there's so many versions, but for this particular version, what I would suggest is looking in the mirror and finding something that you find beautiful, finding beauty in this body, even if it's just one thing to start. Um, adornment. I like this word, adornment. Um, it was on a card that I pulled at a friend's house recently. But dress like the queen you are. And movement. Celebrate what your body can do instead of, you know, sitting around lamenting over what it can't. Receive compliments without deflecting. This one's hard. But you receive more compliments than you think you do. Just today, someone was asking me and complimenting me on one of my rings. It's my great-grandmother's, my great-grandmother Vera's ring. It's crushed turquoise, it's very cool. But when I was in Maiden Energy, I would have been like, oh, thanks. It's no big deal. I like something something about you, right? And I was just like, thank you. That's meaningful. This belonged to my great-grandmother. It is beautiful, isn't it? Right? And that's not my body directly, but it's something that I'm wearing and I'm just receiving. And you can still offer gratitude, but not deflecting the attention away from you. The second step is to claim your desire. And so that means to stop waiting for someone else to activate your desire, right? It means to choose desire from within. And so you can say, I am choosing pleasure. Say this before creating, before anything that requires presence. Um, you can even say this before eating your favorite food, right? Um, to help you be more present with it. And then tell your partner what you want. Just tell them. And not a timid, like, oh, is this thing maybe I might be nice. It's like, no, I want this. And that's okay. It's okay to say that. It's okay to own your desire. Not because someone else wants you to own your desire, but because you actually are desire. And the third step, and the most important step, arguably, is to build safety first. Queen energy requires safety. And safety includes knowing your no will be honored. And from a somatic therapy perspective, safety means that your nervous system perceives that you're not actively in danger. In this exact moment, right? Stuff is always going to be happening in the world that we're aware of. And there needs to be a time and space in your life where you can say, in this moment, I'm safe enough. And safety is not an absolute. So when I say build safety first, I mean build enough safety, right? And only you know what enough is. Your nervous system knows what enough is. Um, safety also means that you have agency. You can make choices, you can leave, you can say no, and that you have support, internal supports, and external supports. Whether that's your dog or a friend or your partner or a parent or a teacher, a mentor. And safety also means that you can trust that your boundaries will be respected. Safety is not the absence of discomfort or challenge, it's the presence of support, agency, and trust. You cannot access queen energy, presence, embodiment, surrender, pleasure without safety. So practice saying no to small things and having it honored. And know that you can stop at any point without consequences. Build containers where you feel held in your life. And only say yes when you actually mean it. Notice what helps your nervous system feel safe. Maybe there's types of movement, right? Maybe you notice that what for me in my body, um, yoga feels safer than running. My body does not like running. I don't do it. I've tried multiple times to get into it. It's just a no in my body. Maybe yours is the opposite, but I my body feels like the movement of yoga or dance feels better for it. Maybe there's certain types of touch that feel better than others. Um there's right, like light touch. Sometimes it's pressure, like if you're getting a massage, sometimes that actually feels safer than light touch. Um have a friend play with your hair. If you've never done that, it's awesome. And then, you know, become the witness for yourself first. What that means is holding space for your own emotions, sensations, and needs. And then one other big thing that feels important is to create from fullness, not depletion. Because the queen gives, like she naturally gives. Again, it's Queen of Pentacles energy. If you know the tarot, that's the card, right? And the Queen of Pentacles is very generous, but she doesn't give until she's empty. She has deep roots. She knows when to stop, and she's deeply supported. So notice when you're giving from obligation versus choice, and practice no as a complete sentence. Just no or no, or no. Practice it. Just say it out loud to yourself. Rest before you're burnt out and fill your own cup first. Okay. And the other practice is around the approval seeking, right? Needing external validation. The queen doesn't need that, the maiden does. So when you catch yourself seeking approval, just pause. Ask yourself, do I believe I'm worthy regardless of what they think? If the answer is no, ask yourself, do I believe that me as an infant, baby me, was born into this world worthy of joy and happiness and love? That answer might be different. Practice trusting your knowing over other people's opinions and speaking your truth even when it's not popular. And there's some um stuff happening with the asteroid, Eris, goddess of discord, and Chiron in the sky recently. Um they've been like just interacting with each other a lot over the last year. And so this piece of speaking your truth is extra relevant right now. And these are practices I'm working with right now, not things I've mastered. They're things I'm learning. Uh, some days I nail it, I claim my desire, I love my body, I give from fullness. Other days I catch myself giving from depletion, seeking approval, judging my body. That's the work. It's noticing when you slip, and not noticing when you slip in a way where you then begin chastising yourself. It's just noticing and intentionally returning to the queen over and over. Becoming queen isn't a destination, it's a practice, a returning, a constant choice. So that was a lot of suggestions, but for our closing practice, we're gonna drop into the body and practice embodied sovereignty. So I want you to just find a comfortable position, um, sitting or standing, close your eyes if you're not driving, and that feels good. And just start by taking a deep breath in and out. And then just bring your awareness to your body, how it feels. Feel your feet on the ground, your sit bones in the chair, the weight of your body held by the earth. You are here. You are embodied. You are real. Now bring your hand to your heart. You can bring both hands there if that feels better. But feel it beating. This body is a temple. Not because it's perfect, but because it's yours. Your soul chose this body. And all of its imperfections are perfect lessons. So say out louder in your mind. I am the queen of this body. I am sovereign here. Feel that. Let it land. Now ask yourself, what does my body need right now? Not what you think it should need, what it actually needs. Listen. And if you can, give it that thing. Right now, even if it's small like a sip of water. Because the queen doesn't wait, she acts. Take one more deep breath. Feel yourself here. In this body. Sovereign. Thank you for being here. Thank you for this work. Next week, we're talking about grounding in the chaos, potentially. Um, some post-eclipse integration. So, how to use the Virgo and Capricorn energy to be your own inner witness and ground in reality during all the chaos happening in the world. Um, Matt will come on for the King episode sometime in the next few weeks. Not a hundred percent sure when. Um, and this week, please check out the first spontaneous download episode. So you know what that is all about. Or spontaneous transmission. I call them transmissions. Perfect. I'll see you soon. Subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss an episode. Trust the spiral. This podcast offers spiritual and psychological education and priestess wisdom. This is not therapy, counseling, or mental health treatment. If you need mental health support, please contact a licensed provider and in a mental health emergency in the U.S., call 988.