---
slug: woodman-the-feminine-1e214e18
title: "Woodman on The Feminine"
author: "Marion Woodman"
work: "Conscious Femininity: Interviews With Marion Woodman"
section: ""
year: "1993"
tradition: jungian-core
themes:
  - the-feminine
fragment: |
  Breathing is very important because it is a matter of receiving and that is the feminine principle incarnate.
lead_in: ""
reflection: |
  Woodman locates breath at the site where the body refuses the pneumatic project. The pneumatic move is exhalation — release, transcendence, the upward rush, spirit departing the body's density. What she points toward is the inhale: the moment the body opens and receives what is not yet known, what has not been controlled, what comes in on its own terms. That is the motion most ordinary spiritual practice systematically bypasses. You can make an entire practice out of letting go, of emptying, of ascending — and never once train yourself in reception.
  
  The word she uses — *incarnate* — is doing precise work. The feminine principle is not an idea here, not an archetype held at the level of concept; it is enacted in the body every few seconds whether the ego cooperates or not. The body keeps drawing in the world. The question the passage presses is whether consciousness participates in that drawing-in or whether it holds itself slightly apart, managing the breath rather than surrendering to the fact that something foreign, unowned, outside the ego's jurisdiction enters and alters the interior with every cycle. Reception is not passive; it changes what receives it. That is what the ego, trained in the pneumatic preference for ascent, finds most difficult to tolerate.
reflection_v0_3: |
  The sentence turns on "receiving" — not receiving as passivity, but as the act that precedes everything else. Woodman is making a theological claim in physiological disguise: that the body already enacts the feminine principle with every inhale, whether the mind consents or not. This is close to what Hillman means when he says the soul is not made but found — it is prior to intention. Where the tradition diverges is here: ego-centered psychology treats breath as a tool for regulation, something the will deploys. Woodman is saying the opposite. Breath is where the will gets interrupted, where the body insists on its own rhythm. The feminine principle, on her reading, is not something you cultivate — it is something you stop preventing. Notice today whether you are breathing or being breathed.
parent_id: Woodman_1993_Conscious_Femininity_Interviews_With_Marion__par0005
source: oracle-v3-retrieve
generated: 2026-04-17
regenerated: 2026-04-18
prompt_version: v2.7
status: draft
---

Woodman writes:

> Breathing is very important because it is a matter of receiving and that is the feminine principle incarnate.

— Marion Woodman

Woodman locates breath at the site where the body refuses the pneumatic project. The pneumatic move is exhalation — release, transcendence, the upward rush, spirit departing the body's density. What she points toward is the inhale: the moment the body opens and receives what is not yet known, what has not been controlled, what comes in on its own terms. That is the motion most ordinary spiritual practice systematically bypasses. You can make an entire practice out of letting go, of emptying, of ascending — and never once train yourself in reception.

The word she uses — *incarnate* — is doing precise work. The feminine principle is not an idea here, not an archetype held at the level of concept; it is enacted in the body every few seconds whether the ego cooperates or not. The body keeps drawing in the world. The question the passage presses is whether consciousness participates in that drawing-in or whether it holds itself slightly apart, managing the breath rather than surrendering to the fact that something foreign, unowned, outside the ego's jurisdiction enters and alters the interior with every cycle. Reception is not passive; it changes what receives it. That is what the ego, trained in the pneumatic preference for ascent, finds most difficult to tolerate.

---

Marion Woodman · *Conscious Femininity: Interviews With Marion Woodman* · 1993