Unchain the Power of Women
as a Mighty Force for Revolution
What started
the discussion:Editor's Note, Bellowing Ark, Volume 19, #6 (Nov/Dec 2003)
Late fall and early winter provide much leisure time for sedentary activities; reading and thinking, late evening discussions with other thinking folk on topics of serious interest and import. Of late, the Dew Drop Inn conversation has turned to the current social turmoil and possible solutions. Clearly, the center has failed; an engine with no governor, no one at the controls, our society spins itself apart, hurling pieces in every direction. Part of the problem is, as Luke Doolin so often says, "a man don’t stand for something, he’ll fall for anything." Not just a matter of belief, or the lack thereof, but what to believe.
Too many people, especially creative sorts, have no beliefs, no faith and in fact are actively opposed to the idea of faith. I’m not speaking here of any particular sect or belief, but of the idea itself: that life has some meaning, apprehensible or not, and that our individual lives might best be spent in working to learn and celebrate that meaning. Unattainable? Probably. But if a man’s reach doesn’t outstrip his grasp, what’s a heaven for? ’Course, most of the people of whom I am speaking don’t believe in a heaven, so the idea is moot for them but for those of you who are willing to think about this, let me ask: does a life lived with no point whatever make any more sense than a life seeking an ideal that might not exist? Especially if seeking somehow leads the seeker to be a better person and living more enjoyable?
Without addressing the problem’s sources, which are finally irrelevant since they cannot be rectified, we will consider some paths down which thought might be directed. It is clear that all our institutions are either failed or failing. Government, Religion, Science, Philosophy, have all fragmented or been reduced to a parody, lacking any moral authority. What form of moral authority might then arise to replace the lately toppled icons?
We might begin by examining how power has been allocated for the last five thousand years, as contrasted with society’s dynamic previous to the fall of the Minoan empire. Before the rise of the machine culture, two-value logic and male dominance--vide two-value logic--societies seem, with some notable exceptions (about which more later) were either more or less equidynamic, with men and women sharing authority, or matriarchal, with power lying in woman’s hands. Once power shifted to the male sphere alone, and two-value logic became the dominant paradigm, the rise of western civilization began, the rise of the mechanical/scientific culture became inevitable. Man thinks, and about what he thinks determines how and where the energies of society will be directed. Yes? Problem with logic, with scientific thinking, is that it is inevitably a process of abstraction, of reductionism. The consequences of those processes, abstraction and reduction, are not immediately apparent, but great and dangerous nonetheless.
As Robert Graves put it in The White Goddess:
"The one variety of religion acceptable to him is a logical, ethical, highly abstract sort which appeals to his intellectual pride and sense of detachment from wild nature."
Here we can read culture for religion, for finally culture and religion are largely inseparable; the ethos which forms the moral basis for a people’s development socially and spiritually forms too deep a structure to be considered apart. Graves’ insight that the movement of modernity is away from nature--we can also say here the female--toward a kind of dry intellectuality and spiritual barrenness resonates deeply; for our culture, the West, to survive we must find a way to bring nature back into an active role in our lives, not as a place of recreation and escape, but as an actual presence. By and large, we do not know from whence comes our food, our clothing, the very water we drink. That much detachment is not only dangerous in a physical sense, but in a spiritual way as well. The Earth bore us; she receives us when we die; to pretend that we can live apart from her is to deny our roots, the source of our strength.
But more importantly, and of greater necessity, we must recover and celebrate the Female, both in nature at large and in humanity in specific. The position of the female has, for the last four thousand years, been relegated to something less than that of the male, subsidiary and not quite valuable. Why this is so, and how it happened is of less importance than how to reify the female to the status she once had. More and more evidence has been brought to light recently that indicates that once the Female had at least as much numina, mana, as the Male and must again come to that status. Feminism failed in its mission because feminism attempted to make the Female into the Male, to twist and bend woman being into a poor imitation of man. Woman must rather reassume a position that reflects her actual value, her importance in the spiritual balance of humankind.
Intellectuality, logic, science do not nurture; despite reason’s advances we are moving ever closer to destruction; abstract knowledge is not enough to provide mankind with the wisdom, and the roots to be wise. Is wisdom the province of the female only?
I am interested in opening a dialog on this subject; be there anyone else to whom this has any interest? If so, you may advance your opinion, thoughts, comments to us at bellowingark@bellowingark.org
Perhaps I will have more to say on this subject later.
"Only after a period of
complete political
and religious disorganization can the suppressed desires of the
Western races, which is for some practical form of Goddess worship, with her
love not limited to maternal benevolence and her afterworld not deprived of
a sea, find satisfaction at last"
—Robert Graves
The White Goddess
—Robert R Ward
