Tiggy – do you ever wonder if maybe female spirituality is a completely different baby altogether, with different struggles than that of our male counterparts? I get on these sites and I realize that I only toy with theology, and mostly just to undo residual brainwashing. I flirt with theology and religion. But I don’t flirt with being a mom or a wife. That I take absolutely seriously. Yet, St. Augustine was able to walk away from the girl he knocked up. And then when he felt guilty about how the boy was being raised, he took it away from the mother and had the child raised it in his monastery. Buddha walked out on his wife and child. Jesus demanded his disciples walk away from their families without so much as a “good-bye”. Socrates had no issue dying for a cause and leaving his wife and children behind.

Sometimes I think men are able to go off on extreme mental/intellectual exploration because women are there to provide the relational foundation. So while the mental stuff is kind of interesting, in the end, it doesn’t really amount to whole lot.

Just an off the wall observation that kind of came at me from left field. Maybe it goes nowhere.

“We are viewed as part of the Dionysian world, along with emotions and sex.”

Wow! I think that’s right on!

Maybe I’m a bit of an idealist, too. I still believe in the Apollonian sense of beauty and order. But not at the expense of the wonder of Dionysian chaos.

Very true! Superheroes are somewhat trivial if not understood in terms of universal archetypes.

So maybe we have simply allowed the male gender to make us feel ugly and disoriented? I remember my friend calling me one day. She was doing dishes and taking care of the kids and suddenly had a huge realization. She said something like – “This is it! This is all there is. And we bought into it hook, line and sinker.” Which obviously isn’t a huge realization – we all come to it eventually, I suppose. You play the role you are told to play, thinking there will be some sort of reward in the end – but the reward is something like getting to do the dishes! But it was what she said afterward that really got me. She said, “Laura, we allowed this to happen. We gave men all of the power they have over us.” Which I think is right! They didn’t have the power, we gave it to them!

And I think this is the same for all authority, whether we be males or females. We want the order and structure and want the beauty that goes along with it. Which would be fine, except for whatever reason, we are willing to sacrifice our Dionysian natures for the promise of that structured beauty. Which, of course, never comes! It ends up being all about utilitarian matters like washing the dishes, which is potentially beautiful if you are Brother Lawrence. But not so beautiful when the structure strips you of your very nature.

I didn’t mean for the dishwashing anlogy to be taken literally, Tiggy. My friend who said that had actually had a housekeeper at the time.

But I hear ya! Having a companion is nothing to take for granted.

If you go back far enough in time – pre- “His”-story, the primary gods were goddesses – fertility, growth, renewal. And back to being associated with Dionysius – the Jesus’ myth is heavily rooted in Dionysian symbology.

So what allowed for the patriarchy? It wasn’t just physical strength.

At the time, she was an Olympic Figure Skating Coach. She’s also one of those people who help put on mega charity balls. She had plenty of interests in her life. But that wasn’t the point. The point was that she recognized all of the crap she was doing as diversions. It was all just washing the dishes.

I thought you would understand because you said you understood archetypes early-on.

Nevermind!

What was she “doing”?

That’s the problem, Tiggy. We aren’t Human Doings, are we? I, like you, worry about paying the bills. We never have enough money. But hopefully that’s not the totality of our existence, anymore than it is the totality of the wealthy to justify their wealth.

There are lots of different archetypes dependent upon your orientation: the prostitute, the vampire, the hero/heroine, the prophet, the muse, the magician, the healer, the hermit, the rescuer, the outcast, the scapegoat, the task, the quest, the loss of innocence, the intiation, water, The list goes on and on. And we all play them out in one form or other.

Or drop the gender identification altogether. What makes us allow for and succomb to those who have placed themselves in authority?

Tiggy and Arulba…of course feminine spirituality is different. Look at the feminine principal and the masculine principle. The masculine principal is all about ideas… the feminine is all about bringing those ideas to fruition. Our functions are totally different. Men who aren’t in touch with there feminine side aren’t able to have mystical experiences. Women tend less to the theological and are more prone to spiritual experience. The conditioning of the judeo- christian world has put women in a subservient role. That conditioning began with the goddess religions with the infiltration of a male oriented tribe. Some think that this tribe became the levitical priesthood. up until that time the women were the spiritual leaders for the most part.

Tiggy…the book its in is in the other room. I’ll look it up over the weekend and give you the references. You’re probably better at ideas because you’re very much in touch with you’re masculine side…but you are also creative, so you’re in touch with the feminine as well.

I think there is significant evidence for goddess worship. The Chalice and the Blade was the book everyone was reading back in the ’80s. I haven’t read it, but a lot of my friends considered it to be “life-changing”. But I think a lot of it’s ideas have been heavily challenged.

Joseph Campbell confirms the goddess worship and what preacherlady is saying. It might be true that the Levitical Priesthood upset the goddess worship in the middle east – at least for the Hebrew tribes. David Leeming talks about it in his book, Jealous Gods, Chosen People. As the Hebrew myths begin to take shape, there is a movement away from what is typically found in the area (the agricultural tribal pagan goddess) toward a patriarchal, hierarchical mentality. Even as late as 720 BC, the God most worshiped among the northern tribes was Asherah – the mother goddess.

What I’d love to see is evidence for female leadership in the Middle East. That is what has been so heavily challenged in the Chalice and the Blade.

I don’t know how significant the leadership roles were, but there is a lot of significant evidence that women held much more powerful roles than they did once societies became patriarchal. But I don’t think there has ever been any significant evidence that women held equal roles. But maybe that’s the wrong way to look at it?

Way more than that, Tiggy. Egyptian women held both physician roles and extremely prominent roles of leadership. Celtic women held warrior leadership roles – many led men into battle. And going back a bit further into Celtic history, women were Druid priests. Matriarchies were not unknown. But the history along the Mesopotamian Peninsula doesn’t turn up the same sort of female equality, even though there is plenty of Goddess worship.