🌚 New Moon Archetype Spotlight: The Tantress & Her Shadows
With this week’s New Moon calling us into emotional honesty, depth, and intimacy, it feels like the perfect moment to honour one of the most potent archetypes of feminine embodiment: The Tantress – the Lover, the embodied, sovereign heart of the feminine.
The New Moon is a threshold: a moment when the inner world becomes louder than the outer one. It is a time of deep listening, of returning to the body, of remembering what is true beneath the noise. And the Tantress is an archetype who lives in that place of truth.
At Wanderess, our Feminine Archetypes Card Deck celebrates these essences of femininity. Each light archetype is a chance to work with hopes, dreams, and aspirations; each shadow archetype is an opportunity to reconnect with aspects of yourself that have been hidden, silenced, or shaped by external expectation.
Let’s delve deeper….
🌹 The Tantress – Feminine Archetype of the Lover
Rooted in Tantric wisdom, the Tantress embodies the union of body, heart, and spirit. She moves with awareness, honours the sacred dance of masculine and feminine energies, and reminds us that love is not something we earn – it is something we are.
The Tantress embodies passion, deep connection, and unconditional love – for oneself and for others. She represents the full embrace of physical, emotional, and spiritual intimacy, celebrating the transformative power of love, vulnerability, and profound connection. This energy is unafraid to explore desire, confront taboos, and heal the shadow through self-love, shedding outdated beliefs around sexual purity or the “danger” of female desire. The Tantress reminds us that the body is sacred and central to the human experience of the divine. Enlightenment is not found by transcending the body, but by embracing the senses, emotions, and desires as essential parts of our spiritual journey. Is this something that you resonate with? Or do you find yourself struggling to feel the divine in the every day?
Archetypal Lover energy echoes through myth and tradition: Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty; Inanna, the Sumerian queen of heaven who descended into the underworld to reclaim her power; Radha, beloved of Krishna, embodying ecstatic union of soul and divine; and Lalita Tripura Sundari, the Tantric goddess of sensuality, bliss, and sacred feminine energy.
Her gifts are subtle yet profound:
- Deep sensual presence and self-love
- Reconnection to body, desire, and pleasure in pursuit of the divine
- Emotional depth, intimacy, and authenticity
- The courage to embody your truth without apology or shame
In our Feminine Archetypes Deck, we chose Tantress – rather than the more familiar “Lover” – for this archetype’s main expression/title because we wanted a word that captures the full depth of what this archetype truly represents.
The Lover, in her essence, is not just about romance or sensuality. She is the feminine principle of embodied love, sacred desire, heart-led devotion, and spiritual intimacy. She is in many ways rooted in the ancient wisdom and philosophy of Tantra, where the body is honoured as a pathway to awakening, and where love is experienced as a divine force, not merely an emotion.
By choosing the word Tantress, we are linking this type to a lineage in which feminine sensuality and spiritual power are not separate but intrinsically intertwined, where feminine Shakti energy is sacred, and the union of divine masculine and feminine (energies, not genders) is the ultimate act of enlightenment.
The suffix –ess in our deck is intentional: it honours the feminine principle without diminishing it, reclaiming a linguistic tradition that has too often been associated with diminishment or objectification. Here, it becomes a marker of sovereignty, embodiment, and feminine agency.
The Tantress is not simply “the Lover”, she is:
- the woman who loves from her centre rather than her wounds
- the woman who meets life through the body, not in spite of it
- the woman who knows that desire, presence, and intimacy are sacred
She represents a reclamation of the feminine as spiritually potent, emotionally intelligent, and unapologetically alive.
Her love is not dependent, performative, or self-abandoning: it is sovereign, devotional, and deeply embodied.
In this way, “Tantress” speaks to the archetype’s roots in Tantric philosophy, its reclamation of embodied femininity, and its reminder that spirituality need not mean renouncing the body: sometimes, it means returning to it.
Under the New Moon and its fertile darkness, sitting with the energy and story of the Tantress can teach us that love begins in the unseen: in the quiet chambers of the heart, the primal animal instinct of the body, the whispered truth rising from the belly.
Journal prompts to awaken the Tantress:
- When do I feel fully alive in my body and senses?
- Where in my life am I holding back my pleasure or embodied expression?
- How can I honour the senses as a sacred part of my experience?
🥀 Shadow Archetypes
In Jungian psychology, the shadow is not the “bad” part of us, but the unlived part: the emotions, instincts, desires, and truths we learned to suppress in order to belong. Shadow work is the gentle art of bringing these exiled aspects back into the light, not to fix them, but to integrate them. When we meet the shadow with compassion rather than fear, it becomes a source of power, creativity, and authenticity. In this way, the shadow isn’t an enemy of the self, but the doorway to our wholeness: the bridge between who we have been and who we are becoming.
In the Wanderess framework, shadows of the feminine are therefore never seen as negative in and of themselves but as fertile ground for inner understanding and growth. They are expressions of an archetype’s deepest gifts, shaped by old wounds, conditioning, or unmet needs. Each one contains a seed of the feminine’s’ true essence, waiting to be reclaimed with compassion.
The Whore – the shadow of misplaced worth
The Whore provides a mirror reflection of what happens when the need for love and validation becomes entangled with the fear of not being enough and the projection of one’s worth onto the other.
Here, boundaries blur out of a profound desire to be chosen, seen, valued.
Underneath the pattern lies the sacred truth: “My worth is intrinsic – my desire is sovereign.”
The Maiden – the shadow of purity myths
When worth becomes tied to innocence, obedience, or being “good,” sensuality feels dangerous, and desire becomes something to hide.
But this shadow is not repression for repression’s sake: it’s the psyche trying to stay safe in a world that has not always been kind to feminine desire.
In integrating this shadow, the Maiden matures, discovering that purity is not the absence of desire, but the presence of truth.
The Saint – the shadow of spiritual bypassing
Here, the body is abandoned in pursuit of transcendence. Desire is labelled “lower,” emotion “messy.”
But this shadow is born from a deep yearning to stay connected to something holy – it simply forgets that the body is holy.
When loved back into wholeness, the Saint remembers the Tantress’ teaching: “The divine does not require your perfection – only your presence.”
The Other Woman – the shadow of unspoken longing
This shadow speaks to the ache of unmet desire, hidden passion, living on the edges of one’s own truth.
It often arises when expression has been stifled, when honesty feels dangerous, when needs have been silenced.
Its gift is clarity
what is concealed within us will always ask to be lived more fully and authentically.
Journal prompts for shadow work:
- Which shadow feels most present in my life today?
- How does this pattern limit my joy, confidence, or creative expression?
- How can I reclaim the essence of the Tantress here?
Each shadow holds a unique key to reconnecting with your own inner power and wholeness of self.
🌺 Dive Deeper: Bali Tantra Goddess Rising Retreat
For those ready to explore these archetypes fully, our Bali Goddess Rising Retreat offers a transformative, research-informed, and deeply experiential journey.
What you will experience:
- Somatic practices, movement, and meditation to reconnect to your body’s wisdom
- Archetype embodiment workshops to explore individuation of self
- Tantric ritual and Balinese cultural practices, including temple visits and sacred ceremonies
- Polyvagal-informed therapy and trauma-aware support to regulate your nervous system
- Luxury accommodation, nourishing meals, excursions, and cultural gift bag
- Ongoing integration support after the retreat
Scholarships up to £2,000 are available to make this sacred space accessible.
“Literally life changing. Something really has shifted for me and I am definitely being even more my authentic and powerful self. Highly recommend. Ellie is fascinating to listen to and really took care of us.” – Maslen
“Ellie made me feel safe and supported the whole time. The memories I made with her will stay with me forever.” – Amanda
“Memories I will carry with me forever. The course designed by Ellie was culturally informative but respectful to local community, driven by creativity and, most of all, amazing fun. If you want a break from the day-to-day and time to nourish your creative side, join one of Ellie’s retreats.” – Morven
Step into the embodied feminine, reclaim your pleasure, and awaken your creative power.
Explore our Feminine Archetypes Card Deck and join us in Bali for the Goddess Rising Retreat, a journey of sensuality, somatic awareness, and archetypal healing.