Sarah, Hagar & the Banished Womb

In my article last week we explored the current Israel-Iran crisis through the ancient rivalry of Isaac and Ishmael. Yet even that fraternal wound has a mother wound behind it ~ an ache in two wombs still echoing beneath today’s explosions. This has to do with the strained, silenced relationship between the female ancestors Sarah and Hagar. Until their story is healed, every later conflict remains a reenactment.

Sarah as Divine-Birth Priestess

My research in The Mystery Tradition of Miraculous Conception shows that Sarah is best understood as part of the Nadītu line of virgin-priestesses of ancient Mesopotamia, what today includes Iraq, Iraq, Syria, and parts of Turkey. These compelling Nadītu women lived in temple precincts, were probably oracle priestesses, and were granted an authority and economic autonomy remarkable for the time. There was a hitch, though: They were strictly forbidden to bear biological children ~ even though… they could marry.

Why this restriction? I contend it’s because these holy women preserved something threatening to the encroaching patriarchy: an original lineage knowledge of divine birth, that is, specialized, high-frequency conception processes meant to bring in soul-mission children from the stars. By the time the Nadītu appeared in the historical records, the male authorities were already putting the kibosh on starseeds coming to the planet to the greatest extent possible.

More Patriarchal Tworking: Surrogacy & the Law

According to my research, Sarah’s “barrenness” in the Bible is actually a reflection of the fact that despite the injunctions against conception, she had continued to attempt to conceive a child through divine parthenogenesis (without a male). But she had not been successful, and this distressed her greatly.

It seems there was a legal custom already established in the Mesopotamian Code of Hammurabi to allow a Nadītu priestess’s husband to impregnate her “slave” to assure his lineage. The law was focused on a certain interesting issue: If the slave conceived and lorded it over her Nadītu mistress, she could be publicly humbled (“…If she grows proud, her hair shall be shorn…”).

In other words, the system anticipated these kinds of extra-marital pregnancies ~ and built in punishments to control the behavior of the surrogate woman. This is the cultural logic that allowed Hagar, an Egyptian bond-woman acquired during Abraham and Sarah’s sojourn in Egypt, to be offered as a “womb donor” for Abraham’s child.

Violation of the Law

When Sarah finally defied the legal restrictions and achieved her divine conception of Isaac through her years of cultivated womb practices, the patriarchy (patriarchal “god”) demanded the boy’s ritual death, as was the requirement for any child of a Nadītu priestess who slipped through.

Abraham was thus forced to strap Isaac to the altar and raise his sword to smite the child. We’re told “god” then released Abraham from his test of “obedience.” But perhaps it was the not-to-be-messed-with Sarah herself who commanded: DO NOT DO THIS (“Touch him and you sever yourself from my oracle ~ and my yoni ~ forever”).

Hagar’s Flight & the Path of Two Lineages

Meanwhile, some 13 years prior to this, Hagar had already conceived Ishmael by Abraham. Hints in the Bible suggest Hagar herself was likely an oracle priestess of Egypt. This means she was also a holy woman.

Perhaps her sacred status contributed to her friction with Sarah. While pregnant, Hagar had begun to chafe under the arrangement, and when Sarah responded harshly, Hagar fled to the desert. There she encountered an interdimensional being (“angel”) who told her to go back and make things work. Back in the fold, Hagar gave birth to Ishmael and managed to settle down.

When Sarah conceived Isaac, and the children began playing together, Sarah noticed that Ishmael was making fun of her baby. At that point, she demanded that Abraham banish Hagar and her boy for good. The insinuation in the text is Sarah also wanted to ensure that her son would be the guaranteed heir.

We’re told that Abraham sent Hagar and Ishmael away reluctantly. Let’s bear in mind that Isaac was miraculously born, meaning probably without Abraham’s help, and so, of the two boys, Ishmael may well have been his only true blood kin, although Abraham still would have been considered the social father/guardian of Isaac.

Despite his inner conflict, Abraham acquiesced to Sarah’s demand, underscoring the high priestess’s will, personal power, and control in the marital situation. Back to the desert Hagar went, now with her child, only to be saved once again by divine intervention when a spring appeared in the sand.

The two survived in the desert and Ishmael became the father of the Arab people.

Energetic Consequences

Each of the wounds from these events has continued to be felt throughout the millennia:

• Rejected Womb ~ Hagar’s exile became the archetype of every woman, nation, or tradition deemed outside the covenant (due to deities served, religious rituals followed, social status, race, etc.).
• Disrupted Priestesshood ~ Sarah’s various disempowerments as a lineage priestess under patriarchy led her to compete with a sister priestess and defend Isaac’s legitimacy, thereby seeding an energetic distortion around “chosen-ness.”
• Attack on Feminine Spirituality ~ Egypt, Hagar’s homeland, signifies the deep, feminine mysteries: Isis, Hathor, desert monastic lineages. Thus Hagar’s conflict with Sarah was also a clash between Mesopotamian patriarchal priesthoods and Egyptian priestess wisdom, a duality begging reunion.
• Disharmony between Masculine and Feminine ~ the larger patriarchal pressures provoked power struggles between Sarah and Abraham themselves, leading to a profound male-female distortion at the heart of this struggle that continues operate in an unhealed fashion.
• Splintered Masculine ~ Abraham’s forced choice created a division between two heirs, seeding competition that kingdoms would later mirror with armies.

Conflicted Brotherhood: The trauma that Ishmael and Isaac inherited from childhood continued to operate through lateral violence that persists in very real ways to this day.

On Not “Blaming” the Feminine

Let it be said clearly: This post is not offered to blame the Feminine, nor is it meant to cast aspersions on Sarah as a historical or mythic figure. Rather, it is an attempt to honor the complexity of a sacred story in which the Feminine has been both brutalized and disappeared under patriarchy.

This is the story of two women, both constrained by patriarchal structures and spiritual amnesia. And patriarchy itself can be understood as a distortion seeded by interdimensional forces that, long ago, disrupted the organic balance between Feminine and Masculine on Earth ~ not as the fault of men, but as a collective wound that has afflicted all sexes and lineages.

Thus, the history described here is of two powerful women who navigated impossible choices. Sarah’s power, grief, and yearning must be held with compassion ~ not condemnation ~ as must Hagar’s sorrow and strength. When we uncover the feminine roots of this (or any) conflict, we do so not to assign guilt, but to restore voice, understanding, and dignity to those whose stories were flattened, and whose wounds have echoed across generations. This is a call to re-member, not to vilify. 

Keys for Healing Today

Here are some ritual actions we can engage to support the healing of this great feminine rift, which continues to reverberate in world events:

1. Name the Mothers ~ Speak Sarah and Hagar into modern discourse; make the feminine origin of this history visible, with compassion.
2. Reconcile Priestess & Surrogate ~ In ritual, invite Sarah to forgive her fear and Hagar to be welcomed back, understanding that both acted from wounding inflicted under patriarchal control systems.
3. Release Control Codes ~ Work to dissolve other collective patterns that police reproduction (forced sterilizations, restrictive fertility laws, etc.).
4. Transform Sacrifice into Service ~ Refuse any ideology that demands children’s bodies be used (literally or metaphorically) for state or deity.
5. Invoke the Double Rose ~ Visualize twin roses—white for Sarah, red for Hagar—spiraling together over Jerusalem and Cairo, then radiating across the Middle East.

Practice: The Womb-Bridge Meditation

Take a look at the image provided with this post and…

1. Breathe into your heart-womb or hara three times.
2. See Sarah’s tent on one side of a desert ravine, Hagar’s on the other.
3. A bridge of golden light appears.
4. The women meet in the center, exchange veils, and embrace.
5. The bridge widens until the desert flowers beneath.
6. Whisper: “What began in rivalry now ends in remembrance.”

Closing Blessing

May the sorrow of the displaced womb be soothed,
May the miracle child and the wild child remember they are kin,
May every sword melt into mother’s milk,
And may the deserts of exile bloom again with a Rose of Peace.

Join Us for More Healing

As we witness the long-awaited reconciliation of Sarah and Hagar ~ two ancestral priestess lineages once torn by sorrow ~ we are called into our own healing of the rift between head and heart, mind and womb, masculine and feminine within.

This is the very essence of the upcoming Mary & Magdalene Heart-Womb Activation, a free online event where we will enter the sacred field of remembrance held by these holy women. In this ceremonial space, you’ll be guided to release inherited grief, restore womb sovereignty, and receive an infusion of divine feminine codes for the path ahead. If you feel the stirrings of reunion in your own being, you are warmly invited to find out more and join us HERE.

​