In recent decades, several social and political movements have had profound impacts upon the popular Western psyche. Collectively, they pose a powerful challenge to religiously grounded relational paradigms which until recently have been accepted almost without question. These movements include the human rights trio (ethnic/racial civil rights, lesbian/gay rights and feminism) and environmentalism.
The last two of these, feminism and environmentalism, have been converging to the degree that a common discipline, ecofeminism, has been born. Although some affinities exist between these two and the others, the only solid connection seems to be the choice by some feminists of lesbianism on ideological grounds in spite of their personal sexual preferences. What could the womenÌs rights movement have in common with the attempt to preserve and protect our planetary ecology which the homosexual and nonwhite rights movements do not share? To answer this question, we must take a look at the paradigm they are all opposing, and in what ways each of them oppose it.
Our Present Paradigm
This paradigm is drawn from the moral laws set down in the holy texts of the religions comprising mainstream Western Monotheism. These religions mainly include Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Zoroastrianism; their texts include the Bible, the Koran and the Zend Avesta. For purposes of simplicity and brevity, we shall call this the JCIZ paradigm.
JCIZ postulates a single omniscient, omnipotent and relatively benevolent male deity (Jahweh, Jehovah, God or Lord, Allah or Ahura Mazda), who created and populated the world but is essentially transcendent with respect to it. This deity is opposed by another somewhat less knowing and powerful, relatively malevolent male deity (Lucifer, the Devil, Shaitan or Ahriman), who is also essentially supernatural. These two opposed forces of good and evil, light and darkness, contend with each other by intervening in our affairs. Each of us shall spend eternity with whichever one he or she allies with; in any case this earth is a temporary inconvenience, unimportant in the greater order of things. It is in our interest to ally ourselves with the 'good guy', and we know how to do this because He's thoughtfully sent us a male savior or prophet or avatar (Moses, Jesus, Mohammed or Zarathustra) to so inform us.
We are now in a position to understand the special affinity between feminism and environmentalism. Homosexuality is condemned and slavery condoned in the JCIZ, but if these tendencies were reversed, it would not compromise the underpinnings of the theological structure; gay/lesbian rights identical to those of straights and white/nonwhite equality are no metaphysical threat to the integrity of the system. The religious ramifications of feminism and environmentalism, however, strike it to its very core. By criticizing the consequences of following the JCIZ, they indict as immoral or unwise the premises upon which it is based, and do so from the perspective of an alternative paradigm which derives from many pagan sources past and present, but which is crystallized in Wicca.
Feminism
In the JCIZ, all deities are male, the first human is male, and any central prophets or saviors are male. In the cosmic play, women are relegated to the roles of dupe, slave, rebellious whore, broodmare and submissive saint. Mary Daly's dictum that if God is male, the male is God has the existential corollary, within the JCIZ, of reducing females to nothing. In order to follow God's plan, women must submit to their husbands' rule in particular, and to male authority in general. Men may have to attend the school of hard knocks, but women are stuck with their homework. They are to raise their many children but not their voices, for fear of getting knocked about themselves. This excision of the feminine from spiritual significance and their resulting societal subservience has provoked, within many contemporary women, a soul alienation of Marxian proportions. Revolt against the predominance of this divine chain of being has followed, and the guerillas have not been exclusively female. Some men have come to feel cramped and pigeonholed in the role of overseer on the domination plantation and degraded and ashamed of what is expected of them there. They have therefore joined the rebellion against the JCIZ gender hierarchy, agreeing with Martin Luther King that you can't hold folks down in a ditch unless you climb down in there with them. As women and men come to the practical conclusion that only equality of rights, responsibilities and opportunities works, however, they also tend to come to the spiritual conclusion that this is true because the sexes equally approach divinity. This, however, would require deity to be comprised of masculinity and femininity in equal measure, which of course directly contradicts the JCIZ.
Environmentalism
In the JCIZ, the Creator packed a hostile and bountiful world like a reluctant lunchbox for fallen humanity (read man) to suffer, endure, dominate, subdue and exploit for his own benefit. This divine license for exploitation without regard to consequences in the name of greed has borne bitter fruit. Because we have not held our common home in reverence, or honored her as sacred to us, we have felt free to pollute, pillage, rape and otherwise profane her. Yet, after fouling our own nest, we seem surprised to find ourselves surrounded by human filth, with the blood of extinguished comrade species crying out inconsolably from the bleak bare ground. We are coming painfully to the understanding that the earth is our source and foundation, and that poisoning and impoverishing her can only hasten our own hollow demise. However, the grasping of the fact that we are only a part of something much older, wiser, grander and more complex than ourselves draws us inexorably to an experience of awe and sublimity in the presence of the sheer marvel of it. We begin to see ourselves as tiny threads, which, by some miracle, are able to sense the weave of a gigantic dancing tapestry (and the reality is much more wondrous than that). The earth becomes hallowed for us. But this contradicts the JCIZ premise that it is transcendent Deity which is holy, not a nature which, compared to the supernatural, must remain substandard.
ForbiddenFruit
Ecological degradation may be divided into natural resource depletion and biosphere pollution, but both have overpopulation as a root cause. Overpopulation drives us like lemmings to mow our global lungs for farmland, lumber and cattle pasture, sapping species diversity in the process. It drives us to strip-mine our eroding soil to build skyscrapers, cars and soda cans. It drives us to burn our fossil fuels, overheating our atmosphere and decimating our ozone sunscreen for the sake of light, mobility, plastic containers and air-conditioned comfort for a small percentage of our teeming billions. It drives us to turn our over-fished oceans into toxic cesspools when our rivers bear our pesticides, factory byproducts and sewage to the seas. Furthermore, the resulting competition for room and resources on a shrinking sphere has led our infant race to nurse the barrel of the nuclear gun.
It is ecologically imperative that we control our rate of reproduction generally, and the fundamental pillar of feminism that women must have the right to control their own reproduction individually. To this dovetailing of the calls of personal freedom and global necessity, the JCIZ responds with an iron demand frozen for thousands of years in the face of catastrophically changing circumstances; you must be fruitful and multiply.
Ecofeminism
The realization that birth control is both a feminist and an environmental issue is one of many pattern matches which ecofeminists have found. They follow the clue given by the phrase 'Mother Nature' to the conclusion that women and the earth have both been victimized by the same attitudes of subjection, rapaciousness, violation, penetration of virgin territory, stripping, despoiling and defloration. They consider this an unfortunate result of the separation of the sexes into godlike, transcendent man and earthy, immanent woman, into man as mind and woman as body, found in the JCIZ. This partition, for ecofeminists, is based on the differing positions of the sexes with regard to childbirth; men observe, women participate. Women also, like the earth, produce food, and can be planted with seed when in season; hence the ancient occurrence of the term 'plowing' for sexual intercourse.
Sexist theological Cartesianism, however, is untenable; the JCIZ's gender-based spirit/flesh dichotomy has been an injurious illusion. Self-aware parts of nature are still woven into the web they perceive. Mind, whether abstract or concrete, and of either gender, is a bodily based, earthly and evolutionarily emergent phenomenon.
The main division within ecofeminism is between 'gender' and 'nature' ecofeminists. The 'gender' ecofeminists believe that male-female relationships are the source of a domination pattern that is generalized to apply to culture-nature relationships, and that if we replace it with an egalitarian sexual partnership pattern, our environmental abuse will stop. 'Nature' ecofeminists believe just the opposite; that replacing the egocentric, exploitative and uncaring attitudes underlying environmental abuse with valuing, consequence based stewardship will repair male-female relationships by osmosis. I think that the domination pattern is imprinted during child-rearing, and that to end it, we have to embrace noncoercive methods of socializing our young.
The Challenge of Neopaganism
Neopaganism Generally
The Neopagan alternatives to the JCIZ paradigm trace their roots to prehistoric Eurasian and African tribal and shamanic nature religions, and count the Amerindian and Australian aboriginal traditions as siblings. From them, Pagans have taken their reverence for the earth and their celebration of the more feminine principles of divinity. They generally create sacred space by casting a circle (which is the intersection between a sanctified sphere and the ground), and calling the four directions, which correspond to the four elements, and to the divisions of a day, a moon cycle, a year and a lifetime, and much else. Their holy days fall on the solstices and the equinoxes, on the midpoints between them (the cross-quarters), and/or on full moons. In addition, they honor personal rites of passage; such as birth, a naming of the child (sometimes called wiccaning), puberty, marriage (known as handfasting), menopause (croning), and death. Contemporary neopagan groups include the Fellowship of Isis, Ar n Draiocht Fein (Our Own Druidism), the Church of all Worlds, Asatru and the Church of the Eternal Source.
Wicca Specifically
All the above is true of Wicca, but when casting their circles most also call the Earth Mother, Sky Father, and Center, this last representing both the individual selves of the participants and the common center they create by joining together. They also thank and dismiss them when they open their circles upon the conclusion of their ritual workings.Wicca follows a gender-complementary immanent duotheism comprised of a God and a Goddess; for Wicca, deity is double and non-transcendent. The distinctions between them entail neither mutual hostility nor the subservience of either to the other, but instead require the co-presence in dynamic symmetry of these differing yet equi-primordial principles for circumstances to proceed. The fundamentalist belief in the actual existence of these deities is not a prerequisite for becoming Wiccan. In fact, many, if not most, Wiccans view the Earth Mother and Sky Father as archetypes in the Jungian sense, and as lenses through which to apprehend, and grasp in concrete, human-friendly terms, a totality which is too vast and ineffable to be circumscribed by finite minds. Wiccans consider all Goddesses and Gods throughout history as cultural manifestations of these principles, revel in the diversity of expression that they find, and borrow whatever they find that works for them. In this sense, Wicca does not enslave and use its adherents; rather it is the case that Wicca is made use of by them, as a spiritual tool with which to focus their passions and intentions upon the realizations of their plans and desires. The conceptions and attributes surrounding these deities are not inscribed for all time in any holy text, but are flexible, for Wicca is an evolving, pragmatic religion with little dogmatic baggage.
Wicca's central ritual, the Great Rite, consists of dipping a dagger in a chalice of wine in symbolic intercourse. The Christian Communion, in contrast, is symbolic cannibalism.Wicca has one major law, the Law of Three (any action, whether well or ill intentioned, is returned to its source threefold), and one commandment, the Wiccan Rede ('if it harms none, do what you will'). While these admonishments do emphasize personal freedom, they link it to personal responsibility, and the consequences of following them are a strict self-discipline, since one is expected to strive not to harm oneself, others, or the biosphere we share. Their more magickal practices include a Santeria-like invocation of the masculine principle by the priest and of the feminine principle by the priestess (the Drawing Down of the Sun or Moon), and Raising the Cone of Power. This practice involves an entering of the group into a shamanic state of consciousness, usually by means of some combination of dancing, chanting and drumming, preparatory to attempts at divination or spellcasting.
The Earth Mother represents the foundation or substrate of change; the matter underlying form, the being beneath becoming. She is omnipresent, although aspects of her may undergo periodic change. She never dies. The feminine principle of divinity encompasses the cyclical-intuitive, synthesizing, fecund-formative, nourishing aspect, with its emphases on the personal and collective dream worlds, and on relatedness.The Sky Father represents the changes of form that must occur in the life cycle and food chain. He withdraws and returns, and never lingers. He is the God of the inseparability of hunter and prey, and of the cycle of vegetation. He is born of the Mother, grows, flowers and dies, to be reborn of his own seed the following year. The masculine principle of divinity encompasses the linear-logical, analyzing, fertilizing aspect, with its emphases on ego, task and individuality.A combination of these traits is preferable to either alone, and all people are considered to have their own particular ratios of these attribute sets; their own yin-yang or anima-animus blend.
Modern Wicca publicly began in 1949 when Gerald Gardner published High Magic's Aid, a book of Wiccan ritual disguised as historical fiction. He then, in collaboration with Doreen Valiente, published Witchcraft Today in 1954 and The Meaning of Witchcraft in 1959. Although other Wiccan forms exist, Gardnerian Wicca and an offshoot (Alexandrian Wicca, after its founder Alex Sanders) remain the core Wiccan traditions. Other important Wiccan theorists include Janet and Stewart Farrar, Starhawk and Z Budapest.
WiccanTheo/alogy and the Foundations of Feminism and Environmentalism
In a religion in which the God and the Goddess are equi-potential (possess complementary and equal status), gender equality is mandated rather than forbidden. Freedom of societally and planetarily responsible choice belongs to all. In a religion that urges its adherents to love the earth as a mother, rather than resenting and coveting her as a rich, conquerable hostile kingdom, children would be raised from birth to treat her with restraint and respect, and to pass her on to their children in as pristine a condition as possible. There is, in fact, a kind of Wiccan Eden myth; a vision of a prehistoric peaceful eco-friendly agrarian matriarchy which was overthrown by males banished for violence, who banded together to conquer and enslave their former society and pillage its lands. This Edenic vision is more admired than believed. Most Wiccans desire a 'return' to this Eden, even if they also acknowledge that humanity has never in reality been there.
Feminists and environmentalists, particularly ecofeminists and deep ecologists, share this vision for the future; it is what they strive for. It is therefore to be expected that many of them would appropriate a belief system possessing sensibilities so in harmony with their hopes, goals, desires and dreams. If the Wiccan Utopia is theirs also, adoption seems eminently reasonable. In fact, these movements receive both support and guidance from Wicca, and give both in return.
Wicca and Science
Wicca's attitude toward science is one of intense interest and positive regard, for Wicca's perspective of pragmatic self-conscious evolution and its anti-dogmatic character resemble scientific ideals. Science, for Wicca, is attempting to reveal the underlying nature of immanent divinity, and as such is performing a sacred service. In addition, Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis, that the entire biosphere is an evolving, self-regulating totality, appears to be to Wiccans the beginning of the confirmation of their ecological suspicions, and the recent comparisons of gender, brain structure and cognitive style bolster the validity of their chosen deity attributes. They for the most part accept that humanity creates divinity in its own image, and feel flattered that science is indicating that they in particular are doing it rather well.
The Twin Springs of Magick: Divination and Spellcasting
But how can one reconcile Paganism's science-friendly stance with their practice of something so seemingly unscientific as magickal working? Because nonfunadmentalist NeoPagans, who comprise the vast majority of NeoPagans generally, do not see their practice of magick as something supernatural and mystical so much as something naturalistic and empirical. Magick is conceived of in Wicca as the science which is not yet widely understood, but which is not supernatural, but very much natural, and it falls firmly under the umbrella of cause and effect. Magick falls into two categories, divination and spellcasting, having to do with knowing and doing, respectively.
(1) Divination
Long ago, before the vocation was polyfurcated into medical doctor and psychologist and social worker, when the tribe had a problem, they would bring it to their shaman. (S)he would listen to the concerned and involved parties explain what comprised the problem, then would enter into a trance state by one or more of many means (mantra (chanting), mandala (single-point concentration), mudra (rhythmic dancing), tantra (sexual stimulation), soma (psychedelics), fasting, etc.). While in trance the shaman would ask the question the answer to which would solve the tribal problem. When (s)he returned from his/her journeyings, (s)he would pronounce a remedial course of action, not just for the afflicted one(s) to follow, but for the whole tribe to jointly pursue. This still happens today among preliterate aboriginal tribes, and more and more among e-literate and postmodern NeoPagans. But what is really happening here? To get an insight, we turn to past artifacts and the testimony of contemporary shamans. The cave paintings in Lascaux France, the !Kung tribal paintings in Africa, the rock carvings of the Australian aboriginal Dreamtime People, Tibetan mandalas, Zuni sand paintings, all separated by thousands of miles and years, contain a common thread. There are depictions of their native ecologies and societies (the !Kung paintings include trees with horizontal leaf patterns, elephants and giraffes, the Lascaux cave frescoes include mastodons and bison, etc.), but they all include certain common geometric patterns. The Grid. The Zig-Zag. The River S. The Concentric Circles. Why, separated by thousands of miles and years, should these common patterns continually manifest themselves? Psychology calls them endoptic forms. They are hard-wired into the human visual apparatus, and are thought to relate to the shadows which capillaries cast upon the retina. If you close your eyes and press on the outside corners of your eyes, you can invoke them. But the question remains, what do these have to do with shamanic divination? When we sleep, truths which we wakingly deny or overlook come to us in the imagistic language of dreams. There is a gating mechanism of the hippocampus of the midbrain which paralyzes our will so that we will not will to move in our dreams and hurt or reveal ourselves (sleepwalking phenomena prove that this mechanism is not flawless). This mechanism may be overridden by sonic or somatic driving in a particular frequency, (dancing, chanting or rhythmic dancing) or by entering a state of altered awareness (fasting, mandalic concentration and psychedelics). In such a condition, an experienced shaman may wilfully direct waking dreams, and properly interpret the imagery confronted, much as an experienced lucid dreamer is able to do with actual dreams. When first entering the trance and looking inward, they would first see the cognitively archetypical endoptic patterns; deeper in they would access and experience the ecosocial imagery in which they would seek their answers. This is the first appearance of the use of the brain as one would a computer, maximizing access to all that one actually has learned and (if only subliminally) knows through the long span of one's life, rather than merely what one might remember. The modern shamanic uses of indole alkaloids (LSD, mescaline, psilocybin and all the rest) are, when they are used for exploration rather than mere entertainment, instances of the same phenomenon.
(2) Spellcasting
Spellcasting can be done repetitively by individuals or singly by a group. A coven gathers and agrees upon a common and specific goal to be achieved; then they start "raising energy", as you call it (it is really a process of activating emotions) theough a combination of dancing (usually circular or spiral and repetitive, and most commonly around a common bonfire), chanting (what is desired to happen), and drumming (to co-ordinate and focus the group). When the collective emotion is at its peak, the priest(ess), by shouting "So Mote It Be!" or some other symbolic trigger phrase, signals the members of the coven to simultaneously launch their collective wills toward the realization of the common desire. Whether or not something "really" soars through the apex of the "Cone of [emotional] Power" and physically effects things in the world is beside the point; everyone in the coven has just engaged in a mutually supporting act of mass imprinting. When they return to their (generally shared) social milieu, their actions are adumbrated in both overt and subliminal ways toward the realization of the group purpose. All these little differences sooner or later usher in the "butterfly effect" (as in chaos theory) where due to SDIC (Sensitive Dependence upon Initial Conditions), these little differences snowball into an social avalanche, carrying the goal to completion, and "magick happens." When this imprinting is a solitary and self-programmed practice, it just takes more persistence and repetition.
Addendum: Notice that divination is usually practiced by a single person, whereas spellcasting is practiced by both singles and groups. This is because a group can choose to have their wills voluntarily channeled for a single purpose, but cannot be instructed in advance to arrive at identical answers to a question; if the answer were known in advance in order to permit such instruction, there would be no need for the divinatory working. A multiplicity of differing answers to a question would only serve to confuse, not to guide subsequent actions based upon answers received.
A Note on the Relation between Eclectic Wicca and Chaos Magick
Whereas both Eclectic Wicca and Chaos Magick cheerfully steal anything that they find will work for them from any arena they encounter, Eclectic Wicca imports what it appropriates into the Wiccan nosmology and paradigm. Chaos Magick, on the other hand, adopts a metaposition of scepticism of all magickal claims, yet its practitioners master a multiplicity of magickal systems. When they have chosen a magickal task they wish to perform or a magickal goal they desire to realize, they choose from among these systems the one that seems to be most conducive to and simpatico with their chosen task or goal; they then suspend their metaposition of disbelief for the duration of the magickal working, and reassume their metaposition at their working's conclusion. They thus employ belief as another magicak tool in their toolbox, to be used when warranted, then put aside when they are done with it. However, as happens with all magickal systems, Chaos Magick is beginning to assemble its own collection of doctrinal accretions, among them servitors (individual thought-forms), egregores (group thought-forms), and sigils (a method to subconsciously imprint goals and purposes).
Difficulties
Wicca's deities form a heterosexual couple, and sex with one's significant other is regarded as a sacrament. This has caused gays and lesbians to sometimes feel uneasy with the energy in the circle. For this reason, some gay men have formed Faerie circles and some lesbians have embraced Dianic Wicca. Straight women will also meet in full moon circles, or esbats, and straight men in wild man groups. Although there are some differences, for instance in the deity or deities invoked, the thaumaturgy, or ritual structure, remains similar throughout. General meetings are held on the sabbats eight times a year, and networking is constant. Wicca and Neopaganism remain far more gay-friendly than JCIZ.
Although racial diversity endures as an ideal in Wicca, it is sadly lacking in reality. This failure to rainbow the Craft is deeply disturbing to its members. It is almost certain that the reason for the phenomenon of whitebread Wicca is that, for racial minorities, the intensity and immediacy of their oppressed condition drives gender and ecological concerns to the periphery if their awareness. Also, it only stands to reason that they would feel uncomfortable participating in ritual as the token minority, or at best as one of the few. It is very likely that, despite the best intentions of the other participants, such an experience serves to reinforce, rather than relieve, the awkwardness and sense of difference for which racial minorities would seek religious comfort. Wiccans, having experienced discrimination themselves on the religious front, understand these impediments, and continue to remain open and hopeful.
Lastly, the Wiccan division of deity has inadvertently had the corollary of evolving lists of masculine and feminine gender attributes that seem disturbingly similar to those of the JCIZ, only wrapped in positive-regard packaging. Also, in some cases, the Wiccan backlash against patriarchy has swung the pendulum too far in the opposite direction, subjecting men to the same ridicule and discrimination that the phallocentrists previously reserved for women. Wiccans must be on guard that they do not pigeonhole individuals into these archetypes, and thus descend the slippery slope into the very bigotry and gender expectations that many have joined Wicca to escape.
Small Note on the Mother-Goddess
« Reply #1 on: 2003-04-06 11:13:12 »
I used to hang out with a lot of practicing Wiccans (and participated in quite a few rituals) and I have noticed one thing about the neoPagan formulation of the Goddess: She is incomplete.
I think it's fair to say most Wiccans have a conception of the Goddess that is not much different from the picture on a certain margarine container.
However, the original Goddess had three forms. She was the Virgin (most Wiccans do get that), Mother (classical form), ... and Crone. As in not just wise old woman, but Kali the Destroyer.
Mother Nature may give us all life but she can also be an earthquake, hurricane, and tornado-throwing bitch. As the source of life she also generally is responsible for the mechanisms of death and for keeping the Wheel of Life in motion.
I'd like to see a conception of the Goddess that is more balanced in this regard. Just my $0.02.
Re:Gender and Nature in Contemporary NeoPaganism
« Reply #2 on: 2003-04-06 16:19:58 »
I would suggest that reading the Greek myths might be regarded by some as a prerequisite to this discussion. Just as an awareness (at least) of the history and content of the works criticized in the original, might have made it a little less overtly silly.
The three phases refered to above are recognizably the three aspects of fate, Lachesis (the young girl, portrayed with distaff or spindle, who creates the threads of life), Clotho (the mature woman, often portrayed with handloom, globe or scroll, who weaves the tapestry of life) and Atropos (the withered crone, holding shears, who cuts the threads of life). A much more sophisticated (and recent) idea than Gaea, mother to, and lover of, the Titans, the incestuous, neolithic, prototypical earth-mother, common to so many of mankinds' religions (including Judaism).
Of course, none of the above bear any relationship whatsoever, except as a tenuous and indiscriminate borrowing, to modern "Wiccanism." As I understand this woolly hodge-podge, based on some research on an occassion when we were drenched with an uninvited stew of "Wiccan" works on the list, the whole barmy concept was derived from addled off-cuts and scraps of faded myth by the unimaginative Gerald Gardner (and perhaps some unacknowledged collaborators), during the miserable autumn of 1939.
In my experience, modern "paganism", most usually "Wicca" to its demented followers, is found largely among the ill-educated* and in those very few of them who escape that description, "Wicca" apparently appears only in those lacking in any sense but a desire to lead their fellow deluded. In any case, ill-educated or otherwise (but always shrill), "Wiccans" are indubitably as indiscriminating as their founder (whether due to the aforementioned poor education or to a more general new-ageish unwillingness to examine the "contradictions inherent in the system" - or even due to early onset senility, is left to the reader to determine). Content in a condition of happy plagiarism, "oohing" and "ahing" at one another as they repetitively recycle ancient misbegotten ideas (due to poor memories, always new again), whilst lapping at one another's psychoactive trails in their endless circling of the unimaginable whilst dribbling the unmentionable**, for adequate reason, Wiccans are not renowned for their piercing intelligence.
While this might be said, by some, to be sufficient to explain the severe neuroses that the vast majority of the specimen "Wiccans" traipsing through the CoV seem to be laboring under, I hold that it is more a case (with credits to Oscar) of the unspeakable in full pursuit of the incredible - and so swift their helter-pelter, that what little wit they may have started out with, tends to be left behind by the time they catch up - and embrace - their laughably lampoonable quarry. The only possibly good thing about it is that I have never yet met a Wiccan who has recognized the loss. Perhaps they don't see it that way, or perhaps it really is, just something in the "water."
In any case, given the lamentably incomplete state of what Wiccans pass off for minds, is it a wonder that their "goddess" should not be different?
Hermit * In whose ranks the scribbler of the above turgid and erroneous mess is, no doubt, to be found. **Alluding of course to the ancient habit of recycling psychoactives by means of imbibing one another's micturations.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
I would suggest that reading the Greek myths might be regarded by some as a prerequisite to this discussion. Just as an awareness (at least) of the history and content of the works criticized in the original, might have made it a little less overtly silly.
The conception I quoted is considerably older than the Greek one, and is one many anthropologists believe was the ancestor of the Greeks. It is the tripartite White Goddess described by Robert Graves and others. In other respects the White Goddess is very similar to the Wiccan goddess, having her Consort, running the Wheel of Life, and so on. She has hardly anything at all to do with later systems like the Greeks or (gah) Romans who named her parts and lined them up as small actors in a crowded pantheon.
snip
Quote:
As I understand this woolly hodge-podge, based on some research on an occassion when we were drenched with an uninvited stew of "Wiccan" works on the list, the whole barmy concept was derived from addled off-cuts and scraps of faded myth by the unimaginative Gerald Gardner (and perhaps some unacknowledged collaborators), during the miserable autumn of 1939.
Gardner (a person most Wiccans would probably like to forget ever existed, for good reason) was much more strongly influenced by the animistic early religions of Britain than by classical (e.g. Greek) myths. However, the tripartite nature of the White Goddess had not been worked out at the time he ripped the idea off.
(unnecessary ad hominem rant snipped)
I had a business for a few years selling supplies to New Agers and found a mix of people among my customer base from people who can generously be lumped under your description through people who were very erudite on philosophical matters. Broad generalizations about them would be generally untrue whatever they assert.
Carlita Hermie is presently motivated by a visceral and unreasoning animus against me which imposes a memetic filter preventing him from registering, or at least admitting, that my work possesses any merit whatsoever. This is, of course, the same person who has voluminously quoted me in the past as a paragon of rationality and penetrating perception, and has in the past asked me for philosophical edifition; aid that I willingly provided to him, both in the critiquing of his prospective posts and in the sending to him, gratuitously and out-of-pocket, gifts of the seminal works in contemporary philosophy for his perusal and enlightenment (he is quite a tyro in the field). I am not surprised that he could find no value in my essay, as grokking same requires intelligence and discernment unencumbered by mindless bias. He was wrong about Afghanistan, and wrong about Iraq; rather than engage me in these areas, where he, and every other sane and aware person, full well knows that the subsequent course of events have vindicated my position and invalidated his, he is reduced to the last resort of sniping at my other displayed work here. Having removed the 'Best of Virus" site, which was dominated by my contributions (not his), he hopes to convince the newbies here that he actually possesses some degree of cognizance and sophistication which he will maintain that I lack. His fallback position is that I once possessed these qualities, but possess them no longer; this position is, however, shattered into miniscule shards of credibilityness by my recent posting of an essay on the motivating emotion behind suicide, my comparison of Zen Buddhism and Existential Phenomenology, and my justification of statistical thought in the social sciences, work the calibre of which he would be incapable of in his most megalomanic dreams. He certainly has not posted anything of suck quality recently, if ever, which begs the question not of whether his cognitive abilities are declining, but wherther they ever existed at all.
Re:Gender and Nature in Contemporary NeoPaganism
« Reply #5 on: 2003-04-10 20:51:56 »
Why not occupy yourself with something more suited to your mental level, rather than wasting our time with your attempted insult and incessant whining? Too stupid to find something appropriate? Here you go then - see the attachment (infra).
PS - re "voluminously quoted me in the past as a paragon of rationality and penetrating perception, etc."
Given the slew of plagiarised postings, demonstrated across the BBS by Joe Dees, I had not initially realized that this screed was scrawled by him. Now that he has owned it as his own, my opinion is further lowered.
When McPees quotes my opinion of him as having been significant, he should ask himself why it changed (and perhaps why he no longer considers it so). My reasons are quite adequately expounded all over the BBS, but for brevity, let me reiterate them. When McPees abandoned reason, rationality and perception, for bigotry, viturperation and jingoistic bombast, then the reasons for regarding him favorably evaporated. When he resorted to personal attacks, my friendship with him followed. When he presented poorly researched articles, blatantly intended to convey preconceived perspectives, irregardless of facts or consensus opinion, then he simply underlined why I no longer regard him as a credible source. When he undertook to spam the BBS at a rate of some 1,000 uncredited postings per month, apparently stolen from the most virulently biased sources he could find, so making those areas of the BBS unviable for their intended purpose, he proved that he no longer shared the aims of the CoV, and as such, is present under false pretences - and every further posting by him underscores his dishonesty.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
The conception I quoted is considerably older than the Greek one, and is one many anthropologists believe was the ancestor of the Greeks. It is the tripartite White Goddess described by Robert Graves and others. In other respects the White Goddess is very similar to the Wiccan goddess, having her Consort, running the Wheel of Life, and so on. She has hardly anything at all to do with later systems like the Greeks or (gah) Romans who named her parts and lined them up as small actors in a crowded pantheon.
[Mermaid]Hermit is right. localroger, I am afraid you(or Graves, rather) confused The Fates(they are not Goddesses) with the White Goddess. Yes, the White Goddess(She came from Africa tens of thousands of years ago...and goddess worship is prevalent in hunter/gatherer and later agricultural societies..she did not rule their lives..she ruled the elements) is much older than The Fates....and I am afraid she was never spinning any wheel(1600.B.C was the height of Goddess worship)..at any point of time...that seems to be the full time job of Pagans or Wiccans.....and no, she has nothing to do with the Greek Goddesses...oops..oh..except maybe with Gaia..
I think the Wiccans have spoiled mythology for the rest of us. Thats my $0.02.
Those who actually read my paper will have to admit that I not only acknowledged, but also embraced, these facts (and I quote myself):
There is, in fact, a kind of Wiccan Eden myth; a vision of a prehistoric peaceful eco-friendly agrarian matriarchy which was overthrown by males banished for violence, who banded together to conquer and enslave their former society and pillage its lands. This Edenic vision is more admired than believed. Most Wiccans desire a 'return' to this Eden, even if they also acknowledge that humanity has never in reality been there.
The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory Why an Invented Past Won't Give Women a Future By CYNTHIA ELLER Meeting Matriarchy
Once while I was browsing through On the Issues, a feminist magazine, I happened upon an advertisement for a T-shirt: "I Survived Five-Thousand Years of Patriarchal Hierarchies," it proclaimed (see Fig. 1.1). This same birthday for patriarchy, five thousand years in the past, was mentioned several times in a lecture I attended in 1992 in New York City. I heard this number very frequently in the late 1980s and early 1990s; I was researching the feminist spirituality movement, and five thousand is the most common age spiritual feminists assign to "the patriarchy." Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised to hear it yet again. But I was: the speaker was Gloria Steinem, and I hadn't figured her for a partisan of this theory.
As I later learned, Steinem had been speculating about the origins of the patriarchy as early as 1972, when she told the readers of Wonder Woman this story:
Once upon a time, the many cultures of this world were all part of the gynocratic age. Paternity had not yet been discovered, and it was thought ... that women bore fruit like trees—when they were ripe. Childbirth was mysterious. It was vital. And it was envied. Women were worshipped because of it, were considered superior because of it.... Men were on the periphery—an interchangeable body of workers for, and worshippers of, the female center, the principle of life.
The discovery of paternity, of sexual cause and childbirth effect, was as cataclysmic for society as, say, the discovery of fire or the shattering of the atom. Gradually, the idea of male ownership of children took hold....
Gynocracy also suffered from the periodic invasions of nomadic tribes.... The conflict between the hunters and the growers was really the conflict between male-dominated and female-dominated cultures.
... women gradually lost their freedom, mystery, and superior position. For five thousand years or more, the gynocratic age had flowered in peace and productivity. Slowly, in varying stages and in different parts of the world, the social order was painfully reversed. Women became the underclass, marked by their visible differences.
In 1972, Steinem was a voice in the wilderness with her talk of a past gynocratic age; only a handful of feminists had even broached the topic. The second wave of feminism was young then, but for most feminists the patriarchy was old, unimaginably old.
Too old, some would say. The patriarchy is younger now, thanks to growing feminist acceptance of the idea that human society was matriarchal—or at least "woman-centered" and goddess-worshipping—from the Paleolithic era, 1.5 to 2 million years ago, until sometime around 3000 BCE. There are almost as many versions of this story as there are storytellers, but these are its basic contours:
* In a time before written records, society was centered around women. Women were revered for their mysterious life-giving powers, honored as incarnations and priestesses of the great goddess. They reared their children to carry on their line, created both art and technology, and made important decisions for their communities.
* Then a great transformation occurred—whether through a sudden cataclysm or a long, drawn-out sea change—and society was thereafter dominated by men. This is the culture and the mindset that we know as "patriarchy," and in which we live today.
* What the future holds is not determined, and indeed depends most heavily on the actions that we take now: particularly as we become aware of our true history. But the pervasive hope is that the future will bring a time of peace, ecological balance, and harmony between the sexes, with women either recovering their past ascendancy, or at last establishing a truly egalitarian society under the aegis of the goddess.
Not everyone who discusses this theory believes that the history of human social life on Earth happened this way. There is substantial dissension. But the story is circulating widely. It is a tale that is told in Sunday school classrooms, at academic conferences, at neopagan festivals, on network television, at feminist political action meetings, and in the pages of everything from populist feminist works to children's books to archaeological tomes. For those with ears to hear it, the noise the theory of matriarchal prehistory makes as we move into a new millennium is deafening.
My first encounter with the theory that prehistory was matriarchal came in 1979 in a class titled "Minoan and Mycenaean Greece." While on site at Knossos, our professor—an archaeologist with the American School of Classical Studies in Athens—noted that the artifactual evidence on the island of Crete pointed toward Minoan society being matriarchal. I don't recall much of what he said in defense of this assertion or what he meant by "matriarchal." All of this is overshadowed in my memory by the reaction of the other members of the class to the professor's statement: they laughed. Some of them nervously, some derisively. One or two expressed doubt. The general sentiment went something like this: "As if women would ever have run things, could ever have run things ... and if they did, men surely had to put an end to it!" And, as my classmates gleefully noted, men did put an end to it, for it was a matter of historical record, they said, that the civilization of Minoan Crete was displaced by the apparently patriarchal Mycenaeans.
There were only a dozen or so of us there, ranging in age from teens to forties—Greeks, Turks, expatriate Americans—about evenly divided between women and men. The men's reactions held center stage (as men's reactions in college classes tended to do in 1979). I don't know what the other women in the class were thinking; they either laughed along with the men or said nothing. I felt the whole discussion amounted to cruel teasing of the playground variety, and I was annoyed with the professor for bringing it up and then letting it degenerate from archaeological observation to cheap joke. I left that interaction thinking, "Matriarchal? So what?" If a lot of snickering was all that prehistoric matriarchies could get me, who needed them?
Having thus washed my hands of the theory of prehistoric matriarchy, I didn't encounter it again until the early 1980s, when I was in graduate school doing research on feminist goddess-worship. I heard the theory constantly then, from everyone I interviewed, and in virtually every book I read that came out of the feminist spirituality movement. This matriarchy was no Cretan peculiarity, but a worldwide phenomenon that stretched back through prehistory to the very origins of the human race. These "matriarchies"—often called by other names—were not crude reversals of patriarchal power, but models of peace, plenty, harmony with nature, and, significantly, sex egalitarianism.
There was an answer here to my late adolescent question, "Matriarchal? So what?"—a thoroughly reasoned and passionately felt answer. Far from meaning nothing, the existence of prehistoric matriarchies meant everything to the women I met through my study of feminist spirituality. In both conversation and literature, I heard the evangelical tone of the converted: the theory of prehistoric matriarchy gave these individuals an understanding of how we came to this juncture in human history and what we could hope for in the future. It underwrote their politics, their ritual, their thealogy (or understanding of the goddess), and indeed, their entire worldview.
As a student of religion, I was fascinated with this theory, with its power to explain history, to set a feminist and ecological ethical agenda, and incredibly, to change lives. Of course I knew theoretically that this is precisely what myths do—and this narrative of matriarchal utopia and patriarchal takeover was surely a myth, at least in the scholarly sense: it was a tale told repeatedly and reverently, explaining things (namely, the origin of sexism) otherwise thought to be painfully inexplicable. But to see a myth developing and gaining ground before my own eyes—and more significantly, in my own peer group—was a revelation to me. Here was a myth that, however recently created, wielded tremendous psychological and spiritual power.
My phenomenological fascination with what I came to think of as "the myth of matriarchal prehistory" was sincere, and at times dominated my thinking. But it was accompanied by other, multiple fascinations. To begin with, once the memory of the derisive laughter at Knossos faded, I was intrigued with the idea of female rule or female "centeredness" in society. It was a reversal that had a sweet taste of power and revenge. More positively, it allowed me to imagine myself and other women as people whose biological sex did not immediately make the idea of their leadership, creativity, or autonomy either ridiculous or suspect. It provided a vocabulary for dreaming of utopia, and a license to claim that it was not mere fantasy, but a dream rooted in an ancient reality.
In other words, I had no trouble appreciating the myth's appeal. Except for one small problem—and one much larger problem—I might now be writing a book titled Matriarchal Prehistory: Our Glorious Past and Our Hope for the Future. But if I was intrigued with the newness and power of the myth, and with its bold gender reversals, I was at least as impressed by the fact that anyone took it seriously as history. Poking holes in the "evidence" for this myth was, to rely on cliché, like shooting fish in a barrel. After a long day of research in the library, I could go out with friends and entertain them with the latest argument I'd read for matriarchal prehistory, made up entirely—I pointed out—of a highly ideological reading of a couple of prehistoric artifacts accompanied by some dubious anthropology, perhaps a little astrology, and a fatuous premise ... or two or three.
When I picked up my research on feminist spirituality again in the late 1980s and early 1990S, I got to know many women involved in the movement, and I felt largely sympathetic toward their struggles to create a more female-friendly religion. But I continued to be appalled by the sheer credulousness they demonstrated toward their very dubious version of what happened in Western prehistory. The evidence available to us regarding gender relations in prehistory is sketchy and ambiguous, and always subject to the interpretation of biased individuals. But even with these limitations, what evidence we do have from prehistory cannot support the weight laid upon it by the matriarchal thesis. Theoretically, prehistory could have been matriarchal, but it probably wasn't, and nothing offered up in support of the matriarchal thesis is especially persuasive.
However, a myth does not need to be true—or even necessarily be believed to be true—to be powerful, to make a difference in how people think and live, and in what people value. Yet even as I tried to put aside the question of the myth's historicity, I remained uncomfortable with it. It exerted a magnetic appeal for me, but an even stronger magnetic repulsion. Eventually I had to admit that something was behind my constant bickering about the myth's historicity, something more than a lofty notion of intellectual honesty and the integrity of historical method. For certainly there are other myths that I have never felt driven to dispute: White lotus flowers blossomed in the footsteps of the newly born Shakyamuni? Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments carved into two stone tablets? Personally, I doubt that either of these things happened, but I would never waste my breath arguing these points with the faithful. Truth claims seem beside the point to me: what matters is why the story is told, the uses to which it is put and by whom.
I have been a close observer of the myth of matriarchal prehistory for fifteen years now and have watched as it has moved from its somewhat parochial home in the feminist spirituality movement out into the feminist and cultural mainstream. But I haven't been able to cheer at the myth's increasing acceptance. My irritation with the historical claims made by the myth's partisans masks a deeper discontent with the myth's assumptions. There is a theory of sex and gender embedded in the myth of matriarchal prehistory, and it is neither original nor revolutionary. Women are defined quite narrowly as those who give birth and nurture, who identify themselves in terms of their relationships, and who are closely allied with the body, nature, and sex—usually for unavoidable reasons of their biological makeup. This image of women is drastically revalued in feminist matriarchal myth, such that it is not a mark of shame or subordination, but of pride and power. But this image is nevertheless quite conventional and, at least up until now, it has done an excellent job of serving patriarchal interests.
Indeed, the myth of matriarchal prehistory is not a feminist creation, in spite of the aggressively feminist spin it has carried over the past twenty-five years. Since the myth was revived from classical Greek sources in 1861 by Johann Jakob Bachofen, it has had—at best—a very mixed record where feminism is concerned. The majority of men who championed the myth of matriarchal prehistory during its first century (and they have mostly been men) have regarded patriarchy as an evolutionary advance over prehistoric matriarchies, in spite of some lingering nostalgia for women's equality or beneficent rule. Feminists of the latter half of the twentieth century are not the first to find in the myth of matriarchal prehistory a manifesto for feminist social change, but this has not been the dominant meaning attached to the myth of matriarchal prehistory, only the most recent.
Though there is nothing inherently feminist in matriarchal myth, this is no reason to disqualify it for feminist purposes. If the myth now functions in a feminist way, its antifeminist past can become merely a curious historical footnote. And it does function in a feminist way now, at least at a psychological level: there are ample testimonies to that. Many women—and some men too—have experienced the story of our matriarchal past as profoundly empowering, and as a firm foundation from which to call for, and believe in, a better future for us all.
Why then take the time and trouble to critique this myth, especially since it means running the risk of splitting feminist ranks, which are thin enough as it is? Simply put, it is my feminist movement too, and when I see it going down a road which, however inviting, looks like the wrong way to me, I feel an obligation to speak up. Whatever positive effects this myth has on individual women, they must be balanced against the historical and archaeological evidence the myth ignores or misinterprets and the sexist assumptions it leaves Undisturbed. The myth of matriarchal prehistory postures as "documented fact," as "to date the most scientifically plausible account of the available information." These claims can be—and will be here—shown to be false. Relying on matriarchal myth in the face of the evidence that challenges its veracity leaves feminists open to charges of vacuousness and irrelevance that we cannot afford to court. And the gendered stereotypes upon which matriarchal myth rests persistently work to flatten out differences among women; to exaggerate differences between women and men; and to hand women an identity that is symbolic, timeless, and archetypal, instead of giving them the freedom to craft identities that suit their individual temperaments, skills, preferences, and moral and political commitments.
In the course of my critique of feminist matriarchal myth, I do not intend to offer a substitute account of what happened between women and men in prehistoric times, or to determine whether patriarchy is a human universal or a recent historical phenomenon. These are questions that are hard to escape—feminist matriarchal myth was created largely in response to them—and intriguing to speculate upon. But the stories we spin out and the evidence we amass about the origins of sexism are fundamentally academic. They are not capable of telling us whether or how we might put an end to sexism. As I argue at the end of this book, these are moral and political questions; not scientific or historical ones.
The enemies of feminism have long posed issues of patriarchy and sexism in pseudoscientific and historical terms. It is not in feminist interests to join them at this game, especially when it is so (relatively) easy to undermine the ground rules. We know enough about biological sex differences to know that they are neither so striking nor so uniform that we either need to or ought to make our policy decisions in reference to them. And we know that cultures worldwide have demonstrated tremendous variability in constructing and regulating gender, indicating that we have significant freedom in making our own choices about what gender will mean for us. Certainly recent history, both technological and social, proves that innovation is possible: we are not forever condemned to find our future in our past. Discovering—or more to the point, inventing—prehistoric ages in which women and men lived in harmony and equality is a burden that feminists need not, and should not bear. Clinging to shopworn notions of gender and promoting a demonstrably fictional past can only hurt us over the long run as we work to create a future that helps all women, children, and men flourish.
In spite of overwhelming drawbacks, the myth of matriarchal prehistory continues to thrive. Any adequate critique of this myth must be based on a proper understanding of it: who promotes it and what they stand to gain by doing so; how it has evolved and where and how it is being disseminated; and exactly what this story claims for our past and our future.
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..and no, she has nothing to do with the Greek Goddesses...oops..oh..except maybe with Gaia..
