Why the Living Temple,Why Now
Across cultures and centuries, people have honored the feminine face of the Divine. In the temples of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Mesoamerica, and India, she was invoked through many names and forms: Inanna, Isis, Lakshmi, Coatlicue, Artemis, beings who carried the force of life itself. Creation and destruction, sovereignty and surrender, sensuality and wisdom, death and rebirth. She was not one figure but a living field, reflected through countless mirrors.
With the rise of monotheistic traditions including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the Sacred Feminine became veiled, yet she did not vanish. She lived as Sophia, divine wisdom in early Christianity. She dwelled in the Shekhinah, the indwelling feminine presence of God in Jewish mysticism. She radiated through Mary, vessel of holiness, mother of mysteries, tender witness at the thresholds of life and death.
In many Indigenous and earth-based traditions, she never left the center. She is Pachamama, Grandmother, the living Earth herself, sustainer of all life, carrying an unbroken thread of reciprocity and reverence through centuries of colonization and attempted erasure.
And within the mystical traditions, including the Shakti schools of Hinduism, the Sufi songs of the Beloved, the emanations of Kabbalah, and the Gnostic gospels revealing Magdalene as Christ’s initiated companion, we find her again. Not only goddess, not only Earth, but essence itself: the animating force of creation, inseparable from Source, alive in everything that breathes.
The Erasure of the Sacred Feminine
For thousands of years, across continents and cultures, humanity lived inside a different frequency, one where the Sacred Feminine was honored as essential to life itself. Her wisdom shaped the way we related to the Earth, to each other, and to the Divine. We understood ourselves as part of the web of life, belonging to something vast and interdependent.
But over time, this balance was dismantled. The Sacred Feminine was deliberately erased, not as an accident of history but as a strategy of control. As Her presence faded from stories, ceremonies, and structures of power, the systems that had sustained reciprocity and wholeness were replaced with hierarchies, extraction, and domination.
Temples were destroyed. Wisdom keepers silenced. Women who carried knowledge of the body, the plants, and the stars were hunted and killed, not only out of fear or superstition but because they held land, resources, and influence that threatened centralized control. Communities rooted in shared stewardship were broken apart, and entire economies reorganized around profit rather than care.
In the stories that survived, women were split into archetypes of purity or danger, virgin or whore, saint or witch. Generations inherited these narratives, shaping how we see ourselves, how we see one another, and how we understand power. Men were taught to separate from tenderness and grief. Women were taught to mistrust their bodies, their knowing, and their authority. A culture of separation replaced a culture of belonging.
Colonial systems spread across the globe, outlawing ceremonies, severing ancestral lineages, and imposing economic and political models designed for domination. Indigenous knowledge of reciprocity, including ways of tending the land, community, and Spirit, was violently suppressed.
This was never only about belief. It was about power, about who controls resources, who decides value, who gets to speak for God, and whose lives are centered or erased. And we are still living inside the architecture it built: extractive economies, political polarization, endless war, climate collapse, and systems designed to keep us disconnected from one another and from the Earth.
And yet, what has been hidden is not gone. The memory of another way lives in us still. It stirs in our bones, in our dreams, in the deep longing so many of us feel, the knowing that we are meant to belong, to be in right relationship with each other, with the Earth, and with what is sacred.
Restoring the Sacred Feminine is not about reversing the imbalance or replacing one form of domination with another. It is about remembering the wholeness we came from, returning to reciprocity, and choosing a different future, one where care and interconnection guide how we live, lead, and create together.
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Why the living temple now
We call it the Living Temple because it is not fixed or separate from us. It is alive. It breathes through the people who gather here, through the ceremonies we hold, and through the choices we make in our daily lives. It moves with the seasons, the cycles of the Earth, and the moment we are living in together.
But the name carries an even deeper meaning. The Living Temple is not only a place where we gather. It is something we become. Our bodies, our homes, our families, and our communities are living extensions of the sacred. When we come into ceremony, we are remembering how to hold the frequency of the temple within ourselves, to live as the temple wherever we are.
to remember that the Divine dwells within us, to tend that flame, and to embody the teachings in how we love, how we lead, and how we belong to each other and to the Earth.
And because remembering must become practice, the Living Temple has two distinct spaces.
The Temple is where we gather in sacred feminine ceremony, to remember the Divine within, to root ourselves in love and sovereignty, and to hold the frequency of wholeness together.
The Agora is the practice field, where what opens in ceremony moves into how we live, lead, and respond in the world. Here we explore interconnection, courageous truth-telling, holding complexity, collective care, centering impact, and turning remembering into response.
One without the other would be incomplete. Together they create a living ecosystem where devotion becomes movement, where personal transformation ripples into collective repair, and where the restoration of the Sacred Feminine is inseparable from the restoration of the world.
Community Values
The Agora’s Mission, Vision and Core Values
Vision
A world where we live in right relationship with each other and the Earth, where care, dignity, and reciprocity guide how we live, and where our systems exist for the well-being of all.
Mission
The Agora is the practice field for collective action. It is the place where what we open in ceremony moves into how we live, lead, and respond together.
Here we resource each other’s leadership, name systems of harm, practice holding complexity, and mobilize around solutions. We are building a network of sacred leaders committed to shaping culture, systems, and communities rooted in care, dignity, and interconnection.
core values
one
Rooted in Interconnection
two
Courageous Truth-Telling
three
Holding Complexity
Four
Collective Care
five
Centering Impact
six
From Remembering to Response
We begin from the knowing that our lives are bound together, with each other, the Earth, and what is greater than us. The work of the Agora is to restore what has been fragmented and to return to living in right relationship.
We name harm when we see it, even when it is uncomfortable. We are committed to learning the histories, systems, and power dynamics shaping our world, and we ground our truth-telling in care for one another and the greater web of life.
We make space for difference without collapsing into separation. We practice staying in relationship when perspectives diverge and allow multiple truths to exist, while staying rooted in shared values of dignity, justice, and belonging.
We are responsible for one another’s dignity and safety. In the Agora, we tend to bodies, hearts, and nervous systems as an act of spiritual practice. Care is not passive here. It is an active commitment to how we show up for each other and the world.
We listen for and prioritize the voices and experiences of those most impacted by systemic harm. We practice humility and accountability in how we learn, speak, and act, aligning our choices with our stated commitments to collective liberation and justice.
The Agora exists to turn spiritual practice into movement. We come together to deepen awareness, strengthen our capacity for dialogue and action, and mobilize in service of love, justice, and interconnection.
About The Founders
Ordained priestess, teacher, and visionary devoted to restoring the Sacred Feminine. Trained in the 13 Moon Mystery School and rooted in Avalon, Magdalene, and earth-based lineages, Sarah has spent over a decade guiding people into sovereignty, magic, and remembrance through the power of ceremony.
sarah jenks
CEO, weaver, and sacred leader bridging spirit and systems. Once a communications and policy advocacy strategist, Kelly now co-stewards the Living Temple, carrying the vision for the Agora and shaping spaces where spiritual practice becomes collective care, repair, and cultural change.
Kelly Taveras
