" In the theology of Protestant Christianity of my experience, the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost was male. In my own experience, because Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost was invisible, it became genderless. In the New Testament, the Holy Spirit descended in the form of a dove, which is a feminine symbol, and was called the Comforter. When we need comforting—when we have been hurt, or in pain or grief, or are sick and afraid—we feel small and want mother to put her arms around us, to kiss the hurt and make it go away. Even when our own experience of mother was not this, we yearn for what we know is archetypal; we miss Mother.

Long before Christianity, the dove was the goddess Aphrodite's symbol. Hidden in the symbology of the male Holy Spirit is the presence of the goddess of love and Beauty who was also a mother goddess. "

― Jean Shinoda Bolen , Crossing to Avalon: A Woman's Midlife Quest for the Sacred Feminine