Carrie Bradshaw (the fictional character from Sex in the City) has been replaced by a new woman: she meditates, seeks inner peace, knows her sign, and considers herself self-empowered.

Women are being encouraged to eat right, exercise, tap into their spirituality, and start listening to their inner selves. They aren’t heading to a trendy bar for cocktails in Manhattan anymore, they’re meeting with their life coach or sitting on a Yoga mat in the lotus position. They don’t eat red meat. They don’t wear fur. And shoes are no longer a huge priority.

Spirituality—and not necessarily religion—is something the New Age woman embraces. She believes in a greater power, but that power is not necessarily the God she was taught about in Sunday School. Urban women, in particular, are searching for a new way of life, an inner peace and tranquility that their traditional religious education didn’t give them. They don’t want the hectic career, and if they do, they want to be certain they are happy-purely, spiritually happy.

This doesn’t mean a wave of women are heading for a commune and plan to sit around meditating all day. These highly educated, successful women are simply striving to find true balance in their lives by embracing spiritualism and self-actualization in a way their mothers and grandmothers never did.

Among the other events predicted for 2012—in addition to the dire prophecies of an apocalypse on Dec. 21, 2012—there is another interesting event that hasn’t gotten nearly as much notice. In that year, Venus is passing between the earth and the sun, forming a perfect ellipse.

The general thought by some scholars is that this passing marks a change in the feminine. After centuries of oppression, women will again become a symbol of strength that they had prior to male-dominated religions, they believe. The earth will be dominated by the feminine and an era of peace, understanding, and beauty will follow. The sun is often thought of as the masculine, and Venus as the feminine, making this historic alignment even more significant.

Astronomers call this celestial alignment, which will occur June 5, “significant.” During this time, Venus passes directly between the earth and the sun. One of the most interesting aspects of this Venus “transit” is that it will be visible from most areas of the world. Venus will appear as a small back dot moving across the sun.

Do you think anything out of the ordinary will happen in 2012? Tell us what you think!

The term “sacred feminine” refers to the belief that the feminine spirit is closer to God than the masculine. Dan Brown’s The Davinci Code touched on this topic in some depth, creating a vast manly conspiracy to keep the concept of the sacred feminine under wraps so that men could be in charge of the church.

The idea of the sacred feminine has caught on, and created a small religious movement in which believers worship feminine beauty and the sexual reproductive powers of women. The idea is that women are more “sacred” because they can bear children. Indeed, iconic images of Mary holding the baby Jesus have been a huge part of artwork for centuries. Interestingly, the only way men can experience this “sacred feminine” is through sex. Makes one wonder if this was yet another invention by men—for obvious reasons.

While this is an interesting notion, it is not one that is widely accepted. Most people who embrace the idea of the sacred feminine are pseudo-Christians, radical feminists, goddess worshippers and even those who practice Wicca, a form of modern witchcraft. So, no, this is not a mainstream concept—but it is an interesting one to ponder. If the sacred feminine were, indeed, the way of the world, entire religions would have to re-think their treatment of women (perhaps not such a bad idea).

Those who negate the idea of the sacred feminine often point to the Bible—and its failure to mention such a concept—as proof it does not exist. However, the Bible was written by men at a time when it was illegal for women to even know how to read. Just food for thought.