"When She Rises" is a kirtan meditation exploring the awakening and ascendance of sacred feminine energy—a central theme in many spiritual and dharmic traditions. The piece, produced by Siobhán Moore and released in 2020 on the Lunar album by Woven Kin, invites listeners into a contemplation of how the divine feminine principle manifests in consciousness, healing, and spiritual transformation. Rather than addressing a single doctrine, the song serves as a sonic gateway to understanding what spiritual traditions have long taught: that wholeness requires the integration and honoring of feminine power alongside masculine principle.
What Is the Divine Feminine in Spiritual Traditions?
The concept of the divine feminine—often called Shakti in Sanskrit traditions, or referred to as the Divine Mother, Sophia, or the Goddess across cultures—represents far more than gender. It is understood as a fundamental creative force, the dynamic power that animates all manifestation. Where masculine principle is often associated with form, witness consciousness, and stillness, the feminine is associated with movement, creation, transformation, and the womb-space from which all forms arise.
In non-dual Tantra and Kashmir Shaivism, Shakti is not separate from consciousness itself—she is the active, intelligent power of consciousness made manifest. Without Shakti, consciousness remains inert; without consciousness, Shakti has no witness. The rising of the feminine in spiritual practice and collective consciousness is therefore not a political or cultural statement alone, but an energetic and metaphysical one. It signals a re-integration of what has been fragmented, suppressed, or forgotten.
Why Does the Feminine Need to Rise?
Historically, many cultures and religions have subordinated, denied, or distorted feminine power—both literally in social structures and symbolically in spiritual narratives. This fragmentation is not incidental; it reflects a distortion in how we relate to creation itself. When the feminine is diminished or denied in the collective psyche, the result is an imbalance in how humans—of all genders—access their own creative, intuitive, and transformative capacities.
The "rising" spoken of in song, meditation, and contemporary spiritual discourse refers to a remembering and reclaiming. It is the return of awareness to what has always been present but has been obscured. This is not about replacement of masculine principle with feminine, but about restoration of balance. Many teachers and traditions emphasize that authentic spiritual maturity requires access to both poles of consciousness.
How Does Feminine Energy Show Up in Healing and Transformation?
The feminine principle is inseparable from the body, emotion, intuition, and somatic wisdom. While masculine principle tends toward transcendence and abstraction, feminine principle is grounded in immanence—the sacred presence within matter, sensation, and lived experience. This is why many contemporary healing modalities, from somatic therapy to embodied spirituality, place particular emphasis on honoring the body and emotional truth as gateways to awakening.
When "she rises," there is often an accompanying liberation of life force, emotional authenticity, and embodied knowing. This can manifest as:
- A felt sense of permission to feel deeply without shame or suppression
- Access to intuitive knowing that bypasses purely rational mind
- Creative expression and generative power flowing more freely
- Healing of ancestral and personal wounds stored in the body
- A grounded, embodied spirituality rather than one that denies or transcends the flesh
In kirtan and devotional song, the act of singing itself becomes a vehicle for this rise. Sound, rhythm, and repetition work directly on the nervous system and energy body, creating conditions for inner shifts that words alone cannot catalyze.
What Is the Connection to Lunar Cycles and Time?
The title of Ajeet's album—Lunar—is significant. The moon has long been associated with the feminine: its cyclical nature mirrors menstrual and emotional cycles, its pull governs tides and waters (elements associated with the feminine), and its light is reflective rather than generative, mirroring the receptive capacity of feminine principle. The rising referred to in the song may thus evoke not just spiritual ascent but cyclical, natural awakening—the moon waxing toward fullness, the tides responding to lunar pull, the seasons turning.
This grounds the spiritual concept in lived, embodied reality. The divine feminine is not an abstraction but something inherent in the rhythms of body, nature, and time itself. When a woman's own cycle aligns with awareness of lunar cycles, or when someone consciously attunes to natural rhythms, there is often a sense of reconnection to something ancient and reliable within.
How Does Kirtan Serve This Awakening?
Kirtan is a participatory form of call-and-response chanting rooted in bhakti yoga—the yoga of devotion. It is inherently a feminine technology in many ways: it emphasizes feeling over concept, participation over performance, the heart's opening over intellectual understanding. The singer or musician serves as a channel, and the listeners become co-creators in the sound field.
Ajeet, as an artist and devotional musician, works in this lineage. The production choices—spare, grounded, with Siobhán Moore's engineering craft evident in the sonic clarity—create space for the listener to enter their own inner experience rather than being overwhelmed by production complexity. This is a core principle of effective devotional music: the vehicle should be transparent, allowing the contents (the mantra, the feeling, the sacred intention) to shine through.
When listeners engage with "When She Rises," they are not passive consumers but participants in a collective remembering and honoring of feminine power. The song becomes a mirror, a permission structure, and an invocation all at once.
Where to Go from Here
To deepen engagement with this work, consider: How do you relate to feminine power within yourself, regardless of your gender? Where might you have internalized messages that diminish, shame, or suppress embodied knowing, emotional truth, or creative expression? What would it mean to consciously invite the feminine to rise in your own life—not as ideology, but as lived practice?
Listen to the song in a quiet space where you can feel it in your body. Notice where it lands—in the heart, the belly, the womb space, the throat. Pay attention to any emotions, sensations, or images that arise. This is the non-conceptual work of devotional music: it speaks to the part of you that knows without thinking, that feels before explaining.
If you wish to go deeper into the philosophy and practice surrounding Shakti and the divine feminine, explore texts like the Devi Mahatmya, Kashmir Shaivism teachings, or contemporary dharma teachers who address this directly. Equally, practices like yoga, dance, embodied breathwork, and somatic awareness can become pathways for allowing the feminine to rise within your own being.
