Navigating advice on the internet in 2022 means filtering through being told to embody an increasingly bizarre universe: to be a “high-value man”, a “light feminine woman” or to embrace “siren energy”. While the past year has been dominated by multiple buzzwords and phrases circulating the internet with the promise of leveling up your current reality — not to mention countless trending aesthetics like “clean girl” and “that girl” — the phrases “divine feminine” and “divine masculine” have prevailed. If “manifestation” was the internet’s word of the year for 2021, this year’s “divine dialogue” would take the crown. But are divine femininity and divine masculinity just traditional gender roles repackaged as some form of New Age spirituality?
In a viral TikTok posted in July, holistic wellness creator Carolina outlined “how to tap into your divine masculine versus divine feminine”. In the video, she classified high intensity workouts, discipline and “having a sense of direction in life” as masculine and “surrendering control”, self care and “opening your heart to receive love” as feminine. While this specific creator did encourage her followers to “tap into both”, a central theme of the divine conversation online is that both genders must “step into” their own gendered divine energy and “heal” themselves to ultimately be together.
Online, channeling divine feminine can mean anything from posting before and after “glow-up” videos, being told to never raise your voice or, as one list on TikTok put it, taking pride in your appearance and letting go of control. There’s also often a distinction made between dark feminine energy which includes “women with high standards” and who are “confident” and light feminine energy, which is all about being nurturing, forgiving and accepting. On the other side of the coin, divine masculine men are told to stop taking selfies and “cut off all women to find their purpose”. The phrases often also go hand-in-hand with the Andrew Tate-popularized terms “high-value man” and “high-value women”, as many creators use the phrases interchangeably in their hashtags.
With the general consensus of the divine dialogue being that the feminine is the “receiver”, while the masculine is the “giver”, the conversation often feels suspiciously like dating advice that you might’ve heard from your grandmother — like “letting the man take the lead”. Considering that at least half of Gen Z and Millennials believe that traditional gender roles are outdated, these conversations on youth-dominated platforms like TikTok feel surprising. However, despite growing conversations around dismantling gender binaries, the hashtag #DivineFeminine has 1.6 billion views on the app alone.
Porsche Little, a spiritual worker who lives in Los Angeles, says that (despite what you’ll see online) the emphasis of appeasing to masculinity isn’t actually part of what she considers her divine feminine energy, as everyone holds and can tap into both energies. “They are two different things but they both can coexist peacefully,” she says. “People are being led to believe that divine femininity is obedience and submission.” Instead, Porsche explains that the term refers to intuition, “psychic energy” and the nurturer in her. “I think when spiritual conversations come from a place of misogyny and not awareness, patriarchy infiltrates our spiritual movements and it stops us from fully being able to nurture and protect our divine feminine,” she says.
Another term that’s come to embody traditional conservative ideology online is “soul tie”, which refers to a spiritual link between two people. Videos outlining how you can “break the chains” between yourself and an ex often go viral on TikTok, encouraging everything from praying to blocking the person online. Porsche explains that a soul tie simply refers to a strong connection that is built emotionally or sexually between two people that are being intimate. “The purpose of being aware of soul ties is just another way of saying ‘be intentional’,” she says. “The discussion of soul ties should only be a topic when discussing the importance of protecting our energy and our emotions. Casual sex can exist with intention.” Despite this, the phrase has become a slippery slope to perpetuating purity culture online, with male creators using the term to promote abstinence until marriage.
Of course, the conversations around divine feminine energy and soul ties aren’t the first spiritual terms to be infiltrated by hyper-conservatism. There’s a long history of overlap between left-wing wellness and far-right conspiracy theories, with Q-Anon having roots in the New Age spirituality dialogue. It is, however, just one way that algorithms are surfacing content that combines Christian ideas with New Age and non-Western spirituality, as part of what’s been called “a new kind of religion”. “‘Women belong in the kitchen’ got rebranded to ‘the feminine nurturing womb energy is charged by tending the sacred hearth’ and people ate that shit up,” wrote @Cele_The_Fish on Twitter.
Subscribe to i-D NEWSFLASH. A weekly newsletter delivered to your inbox on Fridays.
David Voas, a Professor of Social Science at University College London, co-authored a paper in 2011 called The Emergence of Conspirituality exploring “a rapidly growing web movement expressing an ideology fuelled by political disillusionment and the popularity of alternative worldviews.” David says that it’s often “women who are trying to free themselves from conventional values, expectations and religion” that are drawn to alternative spirituality. “Unfortunately, a lot of the rhetoric around self and oneness is esoteric mumbo jumbo designed to make them feel empowered without actually being in positions of power,” he says.
While any one video encouraging tapping into your “divine” might seem harmless, the gendered nature of the phrases continues to create a divide. For example, suggesting that you should “love and trust yourself” instead of constantly “chasing” people (romantically or in friendships) or challenge those around you to grow isn’t bad advice. However, once words like “awakened masculine” enter the picture, we head into the territory of gender essentialism. “Any form of gender essentialism ends up reinforcing traditional stereotypes,” David says. “The divine feminine is just another way of putting women up on a pedestal and keeping them away from work that matters.”
While many spiritual practitioners teach people about the balance of energies that exist within every person regardless of their gender, the reality is that many of the “divine feminine” and “divine masculine” conversations online are misogyny-coded. “Only the divine feminine can attract divine masculine,” life coach Danny Morel says in a now-viral TikTok, labelling everyone else as “wounded”. The terms are also often used as a method of making people feel superior to others who are still in this co-called “wounded energy” or are “low value”. This classification method, like many others before it (think “wife material” versus “sluts”) may stroke the ego of the few at the expense of the many. To avoid falling into the trap, when coming across divine feminine content on your For You Page, swap the terms for “good women” and “strong men” and ask yourself if your hyper-conservative great-uncle has ever said something similar.