For millennia, the three faces of the Triple Goddess have, in fact, accurately reflected the stages of women’s lives — the developing youth, the nurturing mother and the wise old woman. She still corresponds with the real life expectancy and experience of most women in the world even today who live pretty much as they always have. The reality of their existence dictates that they grow quickly through girlhood into early and prolonged maternity then, if they are lucky enough to survive multiple childbirths and general poverty, they pass through menopause directly into old age.

Photographs of my own grandmother when she was younger than I am now, picture a matronly looking lady with the Old Worldly stately countenance of a grandmother, a bubby, an abuela — a full decade before I was born. Part of her elderly appearance is purely the style of the period, the rest a reflection of her hard life and times.

While certainly there is still much to learn from these models, the old triple-header construct is no longer all-inclusive. It doesn’t include a description of my life or the lives of other contemporary women in their middle years living in modern developed countries. It does not address our issues and needs, nor does it embrace our unique and unprecedented position in society. It does not even recognize our existence. The old stereotypes simply do not apply to us.

She further notes that due to medical advances and our growing knowledge of our own bodies and how they work, the stage of Crone at a fixed point is no longer viable for some of us. I would ask similar questions. When do we reach it? How do we know? It cannot truly be a "natural" phase in our cycles if some of us are surgically induced into menopause or if we are hormonally postponed from it.  All good things to ponder and good things for women to answer, not doctors.

I would add also that our general lack of particular religious ritual marking rites of female passage are also good reason to suspect that women are left on their own to ponder when they pass through the phases of life. Unless women specifically come together to acknowledge those phases, girls and women are left foundering. Henes offers a Four-Fold model of a woman's life and her middle-aged woman stage that she calls "The Queen" fits pretty well with where I am right now. Like Henes, I don't consider myself a crone even though menstruation has ceased, albeit unnaturally. I've not acquired enough living or cultural wisdom to consider myself in that stage, yet.

So, give Henes' article a read and see what you think. Blessings on your stages, whatever they may be!

Continuation of Essay

One genre, the popular romance, incorporates very well the private and the public aspects of female heroism. While some romances have not varied their plots or characters in years and still practice traditional female objectification the contemporary romance shows promise by creating stronger female characters. Carol Pearson and Katherine Pope assert that in order for the traditional hero/heroine formula to work in the popular romance, “the male is subject and the female is object” (4). Yet, as we shall see in Scott and King, male authors are quite capable of writing women as heroes without projecting them as “The Other” or as “a projected wish or fear,” becoming the object lesson in the story rather than the active principle (Russ 6). These heroes may be difficult to recognize while still couched in traditionally patriarchal storylines, but we can find traces of them by bringing to the fore those aspects that society would consider heroic if the character were male. The importance of picturing women successfully navigating between domestic and public spheres leads us to enable visions of a female hero not defined exclusively by heroinism.(footnote 10) We shall see that the emerging literary female hero can incorporate both eros and logos in her quest and need not be confined to what patriarchy deems the less worthy goal: the quest for love. Our hero can be on “a double quest for love and knowledge” and still be hero (Daly 13). Popular romances can and do traverse the either/or dichotomy of heroic action.

Those who have tended to link the romance novel with furtherance of patriarchal principles have rarely considered the popular romance as a purveyor of progressive archetypes. However, the popular romance does depict the heroic private lives of women as they interact with men and their community. Recent scholarly rereading of the romance, such as Jacqueline Rogers’ Aspects of the Female Novel (1991), argue that women novelists can and have questioned the assumption . . . that the pattern of courtship and marriage reflects the female imagination debased by dependency on men and their maxims. It suggests instead that this pattern continues to be featured because it makes a genuine appeal to the female imagination. (47)In other words, the heroic journey need not preclude courtship, marriage, motherhood, or any familial relationship. Some of the most empowering classic myths involve the mother/daughter or sister/sister bond such as Demeter and Persephone’s or Procne and Philomela’s. (footnote 11) Each alliance with family or lover can be a decisive step that some women may choose to complete their quest for individuation and community involvement.

Janice Radway discusses the tendency of romance readers to reconcile their own independence with social conventions such as marriage within the plots of their favorite romances. Traditionally, romances became popular by feeding the imaginations of white middle and upper class housewives who felt trapped in social roles that confined them only to the disparaged domestic sphere. These women entered the work force for the first time in the 1940s and, spurred by feminist insistence upon claiming the valid choices of both work and private life in the 1970s, they became more active in the community and in the working world outside the home. In response to their readers changing lives, romance novelists began creating plots in which the female protagonist fulfilled multiple roles: hero, sexual partner, worker in the community, and even motherhood. The passive heroine became the new hero in a subtle shift that emphasized her action. Rather than give up reading their romances, readers demanded from authors more active female characters, ones that melded traditional roles with more adventurous options. “This ‘new woman,’” argues Margaret Ann Jensen, gets everything she wants—--economic security, a loving husband, an exciting sex life and a choice of whether or not to pursue a career. This ‘new woman’ is able to augment traditional attitudes with emerging feminist values. (25) The new popular romance gives the female reader permission to be what patriarchy insists she cannot be: erotic and rational at the same time. In order for a true hero to emerge, however, popular literature must show how the protagonist’s heroism not only affects her as spouse and mother, but how it affects the community at large after the initial erotic encounter. Heroism does not exist in a vacuum. It is only as our hero connects her private life with that of the community that she exhibits the traits of true heroism.

Many romance readers are not interested in linking the hero with community while in the courtship phase, but only in linking her with a partner. They are still identifying chiefly with the heroine who cannot move from passivity to activity in her own archetypal myth. With maturity comes the focus on community, rather than exclusive focus on the family unit. Susan Lichtman asserts that “motherhood becomes the link between the individual and the society” (50), but many romances do not include this step after courtship and marriage. Scott, King, and Gabaldon realize this and write their romances within the framework of a broader community. Their heroes illustrate for us how the private lives of women have more far-reaching consequences for community than their personal relationships do. One may delay marriage like Jeanie Deans, one may escape marriage like Rose Daniels, or one may incorporate it into her quest like Claire Fraser, but they all recognize the need for pair and community bonding. Women can even successfully integrate motherhood into the female hero’s journey without sacrificing other aspects of her journey. (footnote 12)

The female hero’s journey begins with an incursion into her own psyche, to forage within her innate Goddess strength for clarification and understanding of her sudden calling. However, it will end with her need to expand her role into the community, and a return to a life of her own, one that she has based upon her reconciliation with dormant or repressed spiritual aspects of herself. She does not have to prove her worth by bearing children, as patriarchy would have it. Empathy with others is what makes the journey worthwhile, not what she offers as proof of the legitimacy of her quest. She does not think that her value rests in motherhood, sexual status, or her societal productive ability. Procreation does not make her a hero. For the female hero, her value rests in the strength she exhibited while choosing, following, and completing her quest within in the circumstances she finds herself. A good female hero archetype would include traits such as the novels in this essay put forth. These novels put women in powerful positions and reveal that the source of strength for the hero is the Divine Feminine and Mother Earth who aids the protagonist on her journey and rewards her with love, friends, family, and land. Identifying Walter Scott, Stephen King, and Diana Gabaldon as popular romance writers and describing their female heroes in terms of the great goddess helps us identify those features of the female hero archetype that best provide an example for contemporary women. End of Parts)

Footnotes:

10 According to Pierrette Daly, the heroine of popular literature follows the trope of “heroinism-—the quest for love” and not the trope of “universal heroism-—the quest for knowledge” (14). Like Harmon and Holman, she too divides the romance into categories by the type of quest undertaken.

11 Procne was married to Tereus who loved Procne’s sister Philomela. Philomela rebuffed him and Tereus had her tongue cut out and repeatedly raped her. Procne found out about this for revenge proceeded to boil her and Tereus’ son in a pot. She then fed the boiled child to Tereus for dinner and later told him what she had done to see his reaction and to avenge her sister’s rape and disfigurement (Ovid, Metamorphoses, 143-151).

12 Lichtman’s biological prerequisite of motherhood as our introduction into communal knowledge too easily dismisses a woman’s intellectual contributions through work and education. Not all women become mothers and not all women believe motherhood is a prerequisite for female maturation.

Works Cited

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This is the end of several parts that comprised one chapter out a larger Thesis I wrote to fulfill my requirements for the Master's in Literature. I used three novels to show examples of the female hero's journey; one in earlier literature and two in popular fiction of our time. I greatly enjoyed writing this thesis, but it's underlying premise, the female hero's journey as distinct from the male hero's journey, is something I have had a lifelong fascination with and fuels my further research in mythology. I hope you enjoyed it as well. Blessings.

Here Continues the Essay:

This trans-mythic journey to the Underworld, usually undertaken by men in the heroic archetypal journey of classic myth, is the possible focal point upon which a balanced archetype could rest when creating an archetype of the female hero. The Goddess equivalent of the Underworld is the Divine Feminine Womb, “thus a descent into the Underworld becomes a return to the womb of the Great Goddess, the source of all, a journey sometimes archetypally identified as a descent into the unconscious” (Harris and Platzner 90). The Divine Womb may be signified as a cauldron, a pot, a cleft, or a cave. This opening or cave represents the nurturing womb to which men and women frequently wish to return and be reborn. Rosemary Radford Reuther argues that archeo-mythologists “can speak of the root human image of the divine as the Primal Matrix, the great womb within which all things, Gods and humans, sky and earth, human and non-human beings, are generated” (48). It is a universal symbol to which all can relate. Therefore, Persephone’s imprisonment by Hades within this womb could suggest attempts by male mythmakers to co-opt stories about the womb’s regenerative powers, turning them toward patriarchal purposes and could suggest women’s ongoing struggle to escape male control.

For men, the mythic underworld/womb/cave often carries within it all that they perceive as mysteriously evil in women, whose symbolic monsters must be slain. In Greek myth, the many-headed hydra, or dragon, represents the goddess that the male hero must slay to display his masculinity to the community (238). The Gorgon who lives in the underground tomb is the embodiment of female evil because she can turn men to stone with one glance (93). Traditional myth depicts her with living snakes coming out of her head, signifying great wisdom, but terrifying men. The male hero must behead her so that he may save society from such a menace. Historically, the serpent was the symbol of women’s sighted wisdom, which has since been demonized by patriarchy (87-88). (footnote 9) Patriarchy traditionally fears feminine power and wishes to contain or kill it. They equate women with with nature, which they believe exemplifies sin and evil. Because men considered anything natural something to dominate or extinguish, western men in less than credible twists of logic have often declared themselves above nature. Patriarchal myth made Hades god of the Underworld, which effectively gave him control over the womb. This co-optation nullifies the significance of the Divine Womb archetype. For many, the womb represents the comforting embrace of the mother who rejuvenates and re-creates us. In Goddess literature, the Underworld is not an environment that one must overcome, but an environment in which life and death are reunited in a continuous cycle of existence.

While there are other stronger female goddesses one could focus on, Persephone’s story is one that provides the best antidote to Odyssean ethics. Many facets of Persephone’s story are preferable in relating women’s experience. Odysseus believes the gods call him to roam the earth (The Odyssey, lines 19-40). He willingly leaves a wife and son at home, travels the world to acquire wealth and adventure, and returns home to his aged father and his waiting wife, the extremely wily yet patient Penelope (lines 100-110). Persephone, however, has no choice in leaving her home and her mother. Abandoned by her father Zeus, young Persephone is left open to attack and is abducted by Hades. The female hero’s journey often begins with the unexpected drawing forth into another realm. While Odysseus freely and knowingly undertakes his journey, endures a series of trials testing his heroic mettle, and returns to his family, Persephone returns to her mother only because Hades allows her to. Odysseus has all of society rooting for him. He is a free man. Persephone is not free, but learns to rule and wield her power limited to the space allotted her by her husband. Odysseus is the prototypical male hero, but it cannot give us insights into the female journey. The female journey is distinct from the male’s journey in several key points. Therefore, I have developed some pertinent traits of the female hero, modeled on Demeter and Persephone’s story as well as other elements of Goddess mythology:

• The female hero’s journey begins with her call, mostly unexpected. Thrust into situations against her will, she is called so suddenly that she usually does not have time to make the choice to journey.In being isolated by uncontrollable factors at the beginning of her journey, she has little time to contemplate what has happened, but quickly learns to adjust to her new surroundings. Recognition of the call is not necessary to quest, yet the call is toward relationships. Unlike male heroes whom the gods call away from their communities, the powers that be call the female hero either to heal it or to rebuild it with new forms of relationship.
• The female hero must face tests specific to women, such as childbirth, spouse or family abuse, or rape, with the latter two involving attempts to take away her strength and debilitate her will. Despite these trials, her inner integrity and her own ethics guide her and she answers only to her own conscience, regardless of society’s customs. She uses her full erotic and rational powers to defeat her foes and the personal demons that haunt her. “Her commitment is to thesmoi (holy codes), rather than nomoi (man-made laws)” (Powers 11). She follows her own experiential moral code rather than ones handed down to her from hierarchical authorities. Therefore, the female hero is not afraid to take life as well as give it. She has the power of the womb behind her, territory that men cannot control. While the male hero goes to the Underworld to slay the chthonic goddess and her strength over him, the female hero embraces and incorporates the Divine Womb’s strength into her quest and discovers tools to take with her.
• She must meet with or wrestle with higher powers to complete her quest. Hers is a psychological quest toward the goddess and shadow sides of herself, finding strength she did not realize she possessed and drawing both together to fulfill her tasks. She discovers her own strength from her connection to the Earth and through rebirth in the Divine Womb. She slays threats to her mental or physical health by confronting and defeating patriarchy. The god/esses do not necessarily exact a price from the female hero for taking from them tools for her journey. She may or may not be physically marked, but either way, marking is a sign of being chosen by the goddess and not a sign of her audacity.
• The female hero may take a partner, have children, remain partner-less, or childless. In any case, it is her choice. She relates to the divine mother’s strength, in the form of the earth, and to her family and community. Unlike male heroes, she does not turn away from community and family to quest but uses their love and care as fuel for her journey. While on her quest she may take friends, family, or others along. She accepts responsibility for her actions and does not assume her right to anything but her own integrity.
• The female hero speaks to future generations of women in a new voice. “She tells her own story, revealing her own connate ethics, explicating her own motives in her own voice . . .” (Powers 11), a voice, which Powers argues, was denied other mythological women, like Penelope and Persephone. The female hero provides an example of a society devoted to life, family, and natural law. She rededicates herself to the land, to the earth, or to the Divine. Her rewards are in physical wealth and mental health.

Unlike the male hero who slays the feminine outside or fears the feminine within himself, the female hero reconnects with all aspects of the human Divine within her and becomes new, reborn, and strong, thereby strengthening relationships with other women and with men. She is a better person and becomes a better citizen of a new societal vision. The earth is her home, not territory to conquer, to claim, or to transcend. She sees herself as a part of a continuous whole and melds activity and passivity, unlike Joseph Campbell’s “mono-myth,” in which the male hero embarks alone, fights alone, and is tested alone. While the tempting Circe waylays Odysseus from his journey, the female hero may engage in sexual activities and never be diverted from her quest. She truly uses all of her personal resources and does not let patriarchal conceptions of good or evil limit her. She also does not limit her own sphere of influence. She successfully moves between public and private spaces rather than staying within areas allotted her by patriarchy. (End of Part III)

Footnotes:

9. See Elaine Pagels’ Adam, Eve, and the Serpent for a more full explanation of this co-optation of women’s symbols in Christianity. Joseph Campbell and other male scholars and theologians argue that the serpent represents bondage to the earth. See The Power of Myth, page 18.

Works Cited
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Next time, I will sum up the what we've discovered so far about the female hero's journey.

Here is Part II (of IV) of the Essay:

Finding appropriate images to filter into society is problematic if we rely solely on classical myth. Few surviving models of female heroic behavior exist in myth except the binary extremes of the nagging wife, Hera, or the virginal warrior, Athena. Most models offered Odysseus, Hercules, and other male heroes are the same ones that have always been offered. However, other scholars, such as Gerald H. Slusser, consider the Jesus story, not the Odyssean story, as the primary and prototypical hero myth of the Western world--one that defines all humankind. In From Jung to Jesus, Slusser defines myth as a retelling of the union between the feminine unconscious (Mother) and the masculine ego (Father) and argues that the ego elevated mankind out of the slime of unconscious evolution into the formation of a fully developed psyche. In patriarchal and dualistic fashion, Slusser contends that the female principle is the muted, unconscious, inert material, the “primordial, undifferentiated psyche” (137) out of which the active male element creates the Ego (135-136). Once more, man becomes the active principle of his world and the female is the passive, receptacle for his action. She is the chaotic, yet inert, material out of which the Divine Father actively molds a coherent world.

The bias in privileging the Father/God principle over the Mother/Goddess in ancient symbols and myth is the foundation of the Jungian archetypal and Western Christian theories that Slusser espouses. He persuasively argues that the

ego perceives the external world and its internal world in symbolic form, i.e., not directly, but coded in a mythic code. Consciousness is mythic. Individually and collectively, we live mythically. Mythology is the catalog of typical human experiences. (130)

However, he also argues that “the Self is the Divine Center” (130) of every human being and this Divine Center is God. For Slusser, God and the subsequent heroic story are male, universal, and interchangeable and further theorizes that “the Hero myth can be read as the story of human development; that “this myth is the central story of psychic development in the human being” (133). What he fails to take into account is his underlying assumption that what the God/male archetype does, the rest of humankind does also. Therefore, the male heroic journey may be, but is not necessarily representative of, the female experience.

Slusser’s heroic journey toward self-individuation, which is supposed to parallel the Christian journey toward salvation, follows certain essential steps. It begins with the hero’s emergence from a virgin (i.e. untainted) mother, to his passing through sexual maturation, the rebirthing process (signified by the male version of the Underworld) and into new realms of thought and spirit (symbolized by the universal Father and Divine Word). Men have thus defined themselves and their journeys and have left women marginalized, first by insisting the savior hero be male and second, by describing the masculine experience as prescriptive for everyone. In The Hero With a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell describes an older prototypical and patriarchal pattern based on Homer’s The Odyssey. In The Odyssey, the male protagonist is removed from his familiar surroundings, goes on a journey alone, undergoes a mysterious initiation that involves a struggle with supernatural powers and a heightened understanding of self, and returns to his community to share his experience.

Typically, in the heroic journey, the central character faces a series of trials designed to test his worthiness. All alone, he battles dragons, and monsters and makes a journey to the Underworld from which he emerges wiser about himself and about “his relationship to the forces that govern the universe” (Harris and Platzner 230). However, what he battles are all the chthonic elements that he should embrace. Perhaps the most important aspect of the male hero is his isolation-the hero must separate himself from his community in order to pursue his quest, (footnote 7) This is contrary to communitarian ethics defined by matrifocal scholars and feminist theologians, which emphasizes relationships and compassion over isolated individuals. (footnote eight) The male hero does not necessarily have to quest alone. While Odysseus continually longs to be home, he takes his time getting there, something patriarchy rarely allows a woman to do on her journey. In this classic hero’s tale, man is the locus that brings order out of chaos. Once again, women are not in the foreground nor are they the actors in the heroic journey toward individuation. Neither the Jungian archetype of the savior/hero nor the Odyssean model of the lone traveler serves to explain the multi-faceted female heroic experience.

While there are many goddesses peopling the stories of classic myth, the story of Demeter and Persephone stands out as a possible model of eros and logos working to meld the binaries inherent in patriarchal myth and to offset the prototypical myths of Jesus and Odysseus. According to “The Hymn to Demeter,” Persephone is near her home gathering flowers when she endures capture and rape by Hades. Taking up residence with him in the Underworld, Persephone bargains her way to the surface every spring. Demeter, Persephone’s mother and Grain Goddess, embarks on her own journey to find her lost daughter. She enlists the aid of the Goddess Hecate and finds Persephone (Harris and Platzner 104-105), who appears now to have free will, for Hades has trapped her in the Underworld and she is at his command. Persephone, however, is persistent in her returns to the surface. She exhibits strength in her captivity, using her status as Queen of the Underworld to aid those who journey there (Harris and Platzner 208, 217). Persephone’s story embodies many elements of the female’s heroic journey is key to the Underworld journey. (End of Part II)

Footnotes:

7. For a Jungian interpretation of separation, see Campbell, Hero 17.

8. See Eve Browning Cole’s groundbreaking study of the problems with Descartean dualism and what that means for a society that devalues women as matter and elevates man as spirit. Her emphasis on the ethics of relationships that women are concerned with, illustrates this point of matrifocal communitarian ethics (See Ruth, Chapter 3, “Body, Mind and Gender”).

Works Cited

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The next part will delve more deeply into this myth and its implications for the female hero.

Let me share with you a portions of a paper in which I put forth a new theory about the female hero (not heroine) and the implications for women reading such myths in canonical and popular fictions. (all rights reserved) (ftn=footnote)

In the Western world, the word “myth’ literally means “utterance’ or ‘something one says’” (Harris and Platzner 8). Following ancient Greek and Roman oral traditions, written narratives featured gods and goddesses representing various aspects of the human world who, in their anthropomorphic form, interacted directly in human affairs. Men like Hesiod and Ovid wrote about and were the heroes of their own stories of the gods. Traditional “Heroism,” writes Meredith Powers, is “that noble conception which is itself an outgrowth of the semina (ftn 1) conception of divinity” and which “appears in myth to be an entirely masculine affair” (3). Since women did not fully author such myth, what resulted was what “feminists frequently term patriarchy . . . a culture that embodies masculist ideals and practices” (Ruth 53). Because of continued male oppression of women in myth, religion, and culture, women’s heroic everyday lives largely became demythologized and marginalized and fell into obscurity. Out of fear of women’s sexual and procreative power, many men frequently mythologized women “as ogresses; Gorgons, Harpies, Sirens, Graiae, Erinyes” (Powers 54). In order to control the strength of women “one of the first and most emphatic innovations of intruding patriarchal cultures,” Powers writes, “was to circumscribe women’s ability to participate in the cultural conception called heroism” (52). If there were stories of female heroism in the West, men of invading cultures often met them with distaste and immediately began co-opting them for their own purposes (52). Female goddesses largely became the creatures of nightmare and supernatural harassment. The father/king figure was posited as the purveyor of cultural control and became enshrined as a god.

According to Eisler, Lerner, and Powers, not all cultures began with a hierarchical model of the family and god/father/ hero. According to matriarchal myth, the cultural rape and subordination of earth-based, mother-honoring religions of earlier societies by invading patriarchal armies had forced women to take a subservient and debased role in culture and therefore in religious myth. The loss and devaluation of Divine Feminine symbols is the precursor of the lack of female heroes in religion, myth, and literature. This lack has generated the development of the heroine archetype instead, in which the passive female, when present at all, typically awaits salvation through a male hero. The sky-god/father/hero became the foremost ideal for patriarchal society. Therefore, the idea of a goddess/mother/hero is “theoretically impossible for the heroin (ftn 2) because of Western culture’s vitiation and eventual denial of the feminine divine” (Powers 3). The divine feminine in Western culture becomes an oxymoron and is therefore lost to future generations as primary myth. Meredith Powers argues in The Heroine in Western Literature that “the absence of a discernibly autonomous heroine" (ftn 3) in prevailing myths “is disturbing” and that scholars must do more to remedy the problem by pointing out heroes in the works of canonical authors. Powers maintains that myth arises as an “outgrowth of ritual and religion, particularly as a means by which ancient peoples explained matters of natural phenomena, but also as a means by which they validated the status quo” (29). The status quo in the Western world evolved into patriarchal myths and religions that have created the exemplar of the savior/hero. This model stresses a binary view of the universe that places men and women into concrete categories of material and supernatural order: higher/spirit/male versus lower/matter/women. The heroic models emerging from this binary view perpetuated an historical and religious cult/ure that relegated women to domestic servant status, presented them with religions that no longer speak to many women’s lives, and forced them to serve a ritualized male cult without representation.

We have been taught in Western religious history that the patriarchal savior hero is necessary for the completion of humanity’s symbolic journey and also necessary to remove the original stain of sin; sin that is believed to remain/be contained within the female body. For those adhering to patriarchal religions, the female embodied what they vehemently denied in themselves--emotions and sensations that were perceived by them as irrational but are typically human. Patriarchal religion considered Nature fallen through the sin of Eve, and unredeemable without a male savior to reverse the sin. (ftn 4) Tertullian, an early Christian bishop, promptly told the women in his care, “The devil is in you. You broke the seal of the Tree. You were the first to abandon God’s law. You were the one who deceived man” (Quoted in Alexandre 407). Women came to embody chaos, which men considered antithetical to order. (ftn 5)Through the Divine Word, and through the Word’s male representatives on earth, chaos could be tamed.

The divine feminine principle gradually lost ascendancy until feminist theorists, theologians and literary scholars ascertained from their deep mythological studies that re-establishment of the Goddess archetype in religion and myth is necessary to correct a cultural imbalance. This imbalance had elevated and enshrined the patriarchal binary opposites of rational knowledge (male) over irrational knowledge (female). (ftn 6) Through this awareness, Logos could finally begin to embrace and celebrate Eros. However, there is a danger in engaging in feminist mythological romanticism in which we envision an antidote to patriarchy by positing an opposing mythical world in which women are higher or more enlightened humans beings than men. Like Radford Reuther, my vision is to meld the best of progressive, romantic, and Marxist ideologies into a composite that enlightens all human beings and promotes an egalitarian, non-hierarchical culture. Women would be the turning point in transforming cultural myth through active embodiment of all aspects of human experience.

Rosemary Radford Reuther argues repeatedly in Sexism and God-Talk that “the critical principle of feminist theology is the promotion of the full humanity of women” (18) and asserts that until both men and women recognize this, our concepts of women acting heroically will not filter into society through religious myth. We must go beyond the religious and philosophical dualities that, while promoting life in the spirit, “devalue life in the body” (240). We need to create new symbolic models that yield an androgynous female heroic trope, one that embodies both Logos and Eros and all of its combinations in human experience, and to find appropriate non-marginalizing images. Those authors, considered popular authors by literary scholars, have been the first to offer such models and the first to break new ground through the romance. (END OF PART ONE)

Footnotes:

1. “Seminal conception” is the truest language to use here since the savior hero myth issues from male thought like seminal fluid and effects the creation or birth of male domination in society.

2.  Some writers use the term ‘heroine” in place of “hero” in their arguments for female heroes, but as I will explain later in the chapter, hero is the proper term for a female protagonist.

3.  Powers uses the word heroine instead of hero in her book, but I prefer hero, since I will distinguish the differences between the hero and the heroine later in this study.

4. “From a woman sin had its beginning, and because of her we all die” (Sirach 25:24).

5. See Rosemary Radford Reuther’s Sexism and God-talk, pages 72-79, for a full explanation of the denigration of female principle in patriarchal religions.

6.  Gerda Lerner disagrees with this approach. In The Creation of Patriarchy, she argues that balancing a patriarchy with a matriarchy produces the same set of symptoms: a power over mentality in reverse. She advocates historicizing patriarchy, thereby making it subject to change (37). This may work for historians and theorists, but using this approach will not be able to change religion, which I believe is the strongest impulse in human existence, next to sex. We must challenge religious myth first. I also believe that using the word “matriarchy” creates the same set of problems that using the word “patriarchy” has. I prefer Gimbutas’ word “matri-focal” or matrilineal to avoid the suggestion of dominance or “power over.”

Works Cited

If you recall, Persephone was a maiden daughter of the Goddess Demeter when she was kidnapped by Hades and taken to his underworld home. Demeter despaired of seeing her daughter again and in the etiological manner of such myths, winter set in. Yet, every spring, Hades allows Persephone to come to the surface and see her mother. The obvious connotations of marriage and loss of virginity are obvious ones, but psychically, the myth holds a fascination for me that goes beyond the obvious. Persephone becomes Queen of the Underworld and has more control there than she ever had on the surface with her mother. Virginity has some power, but sexual awareness expands that power. Demeter may mourn her, but Persephone is now finally fully grown into the woman she was made to be. Despite the horrible implications of Hades' capture and rape of Persephone, that without his "help" she does not become this fully realized "woman," there are undertones of a more self-contained woman; one who grew into her role as Queen despite how she got to the underworld in the first place. She used her circumstances to help many of the lesser gods and goddesses fulfill tasks of love and sexual fulfillment. She comes into her own.

Using my past to find pleasure and fulfillment in the present is something that I've always wanted to embrace. One never forgets what forms us as children. Life comes at you quickly and sometimes you have no option but to simply react. It may be violent and harmful and psychically damaging, but we face it anyway. We have to. Sometimes we botch our reactions and wonder why we didn't do it differently, but the older I get, the more I realize that even the consequences of such botched choices and actions hold valuable lessons and yes, even fulfillment. You just have to face it. No mistake is irrevocable. The choices we make are just that, choices we made as broken, damaged people. We cannot be blamed for that. We should not be shamed for that. We did not choose it. Sometimes things choose us and no matter how hard we fight it, it remains there. Like Persephone, we were captured and raped and made to live in a Hel of someone else's making. We were forced to confront Be-ing in all it's rawness. Going underground willingly to face that brokenness and finding what heals us is a deeply personal choice. But, we MUST make sure we have the right guides along the way and unconditional love in the process. And.. you may have to go back underground repeatedly to do it.

I am not afraid. In spite of the dangers, I finally feel safe.

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Part of the Synchroblog here at Mahud's site below:

Helen Nearing and her husband Scott moved to a farm in Vermont in 1932 and began a grand experiment in what would now be called “voluntary simplicity.”  They grew their own food, built their own house, made their own clothes, and only made enough money to meet their most basic cash needs.  (Until this time, Helen had grown up in luxury and done very little physical labor. Think of the faith, love, and courage it took for her to make the decision to do this!) They divided the day into four-hour blocks:  one was for “bread work,” meaning what they needed to do to meet essential needs to sustain life, one was for community service, and one was for leisure and recreation. 

The key was to reduce their needs to a minimum.  No trips to the mall, no fancy clothes, no new cars, nothing that did not serve a useful purpose.  In exchange, they got back four or more hours a day and the satisfaction of spending their time outside, doing honorable, healthy work, and being role models for people like me who were looking at non-traditional ways of living their lives. 

To me, voluntary simplicity is less about doing things a certain way than in creating a new relationship between yourself, your work, and money.  It is about not taking the media’s word for it that you really need 95% of what they are selling. It is the realization that if you do not needs gobs of cash, you do not have to give away your precious time and energy at a job that is extremely stressful and time-consuming instead of one that is fulfilling, requires fewer hours and serves others, but may be lower-paying.  You can choose how you spend the days of your life and what you give your precious talent and energy to.

In 1953, they wrote their book “Living the Good Life” about their experiment and, over the years, until their deaths in the 1980s and 1990s, they were visited by literally thousands of people who came to their home to learn what they had to teach.  They wrote more books and articles, lectured, and always lived what they preached.  Scott was actually the more public face of the two, but he was more analytical and pragmatic, while Helen came from a more mystical, artistic, contemplative point of view and so it was she that I felt connected to, though I never met her.

I do not, of course, follow their lead exactly (as the Coldwater Creek catalog people can attest), but it is because of them that I bought an old house with few modern conveniences and have worked for 20 years with my husband to renovate it, grow many of my own herbs, shop mostly in consignment stores, and take jobs that don’t necessarily pay tremendously well, but pay enough for me to live and help support my family. And, I should say that I am not advocating that women stop fighting to be paid as much as men or that they live at poverty level.  Of course women need to have economic equality – the issue is how much of our lives we want to spend making money, not that we should make less than men – and too many women completely underestimate how much they will really need in retirement.  If you have children or parents to support or care for or have special needs yourself, your financial need will be substantially higher than people like the Nearings, who had no responsibilities other than to themselves and were in good health till their deaths.

What I have recently come to realize is how integral this view of how to make a living can be to women’s spiritual lives.  Many women feel that their connection to the Earth is an essential aspect of their spirituality.  The importance of not over-consuming and making your living in a way that does not exploit the Earth is obvious.  “Voluntary simplicity” is one important way to reduce the amount of energy we use, garbage we generate, and pollution we cause.  There is no better way to honor the Earth than to step away from destroying Her.

Voluntary simplicity is also key to a healthy global web of sisterhood between women.  When food, clothing and materials for shelter are exported rather than used for the good of the women in other countries who make them and factories that make unnecessary goods pollute the environment, especially in developing nations, what we have here in the US really does reduce the quality of life for women around the world.  Here is where “fair trade” can come in.  If you buy goods that are made by women who are fairly paid and who work in safe, ecologically-sound conditions, you can have your imports and help women overseas support themselves in a way that benefits them, too.

Finally, voluntary simplicity is a grand way to express to yourself and others that you are sacred.  Your time, energy and talent is worth more than a cashmere shawl or yet another knick-knack or fancy dinner out.  If you spend the time you gain on “soul pursuits” like music, art, poetry, walks in the woods, reading, or whatever brings you closer to your Creator and your inner self, how rich will you indeed be.  You have not only stated your sacredness, but taken back power over your life by being the one to determine how you spend your time and energy.

In the last few years of her life, Helen wrote a book titled “Loving and Leaving the Good Life” about her marriage to Scott and her thoughts about what their lives had meant.  She chose to end the book with words that were not about economics or freedom or power, but about love.  And this, to me, is the real spiritual message of voluntary simplicity: love yourself and your soul enough not to waste them, love others enough to spend time with them rather than in constant work, love the Earth enough to conserve it; love all beings enough to participate with them in this world in a responsible way. 

But she says it much better than I do: “A network of love crisscrosses the globe…  There are so many threads of love in the world, so much love going on, for and from so many people.  To have partaken of and to have given love is the greatest of life’s rewards.”

To learn more about the Nearings and their work and lives, go to The Good Life Center, the organization that sells their books and continues to spread their message.

                                                                              ~ Carolyn Lee Boyd

When we consider all that the location of the wound means – regeneration of life, feeling, separation from the Creator and so much more – we see how it is, indeed, representative of the wound that all men suffer when they are told not to cry and not to feel, when we give them toy guns and teach them to make war instead of dolls to love and nurture.  It is clear how this wound does lead to despair and global destruction. 

But, if that is the male cosmic wound, what is the cosmic wound for women?  Where are the female versions of the Fisher King in folklore and literature?

The story of The Handless Maiden comes immediately to mind and has been paired with the Fisher King by others.  In a version of this story beautifully retold by Clara Pinkola Estes’ Women Who Run with the Wolves, a young woman is sold to the devil by her father.  However, when the devil comes to collect her, he cannot get her because she has purified herself and stands in a chalk circle she has drawn.  Even when she does not bathe so she may become impure, her tears run onto her hands, purifying her and she is still out of the devil’s reach. The devil insists that the father cut off her hands so that her tears will not run onto her hands and purify her.  The father does as he is told but the devil is still rebuffed.  When the defeated devil leaves, the father offers the handless maiden a home, but she, instead, walks off into the woods where she eventually meets a king who marries her and after a number of adventures, her hands grow back and they live happily ever after.

Many, many analyses of this story exist by people with more expertise than I have and some relate it to a cosmic wound.  Like all meaningful stories, it has many levels and many possible interpretations and these interpretations are valid.  However, I have another interpretation.  As mysterious and meaningful as this story is, it does not feel to me that being handless is the female cosmic wound from which all other wounds come.  It does seem like another, female, version of the Fisher King, in the sense that hands are the way we create and feel.  Losing one’s hands is certainly a grievous injury and women do suffer from being severed from their creativity forces and emotions. But, to me, that is not the deepest wound I feel.  Women have found ways to be creative and regenerate life, and are not considered to be unfeminine if they express caring and compassion.  Also, the handless maiden’s regrowth of her hands is almost incidental to the story.  It happens after she has already found happiness.

To me, the cosmic female wound goes beyond this.  When women became wounded, the world became a place of barrenness and despair and so out of alignment with the paradise it was meant to be that the wound became almost unknowable.

While The Handless Maiden’s loss of her hands may not be the cosmic wound in my interpretation, I think the story does hold the key.  The maiden’s fortunes begin to turn around when she walks away from her father.  Until this point, she has passively accepted all that others have done to her.  She has allowed herself to be sold and to have her hands cut off.  She rejects her father’s offer of a home and walks away into the woods.  It is at that point that her healing begins as she makes her own fortune.  She is free.

To me, the cosmic woman’s wound is the loss of freedom: freedom to be who we are, freedom to do what we wish, freedom to live where and as we wish, freedom to marry or not and whom to marry, freedom to bear children or not, freedom to earn our living as we wish, freedom to dress as we wish, freedom to live in society or away from it as a hermit.  I sometimes wonder if any woman on Earth really knows what true freedom is.  Perhaps we have not identified it in terms like “the cosmic wound” because we don’t know what it is like to not be wounded.

Stories do exist that talk about women’s loss of freedom, especially those of mermaids or selkies/silkies who are forced to marry and live on land until they find some object, a pelt or bridle, that was stolen from them, leap back into the water and return to their lives of freedom in the sea.  Water frequently does represent our deepest selves, especially as women, and being forced to live away from the water, or that place where we have the freedom to be ourselves, does indeed cause profound despair. 

These are the stories that cause my heart and soul to ache.  When I think about what other women have expressed to me as their deepest wounds, this loss of freedom is what I hear.  I think of my grandmother who told me a story about her mother.  Her mother would say “Oh, Gladys, you’ll do wonders” when my grandmother would tell her mother her hopes and dreams.  Her mother was not encouraging her, but was rather saying “Don’t dream too high for you are sure to be disappointed.  You cannot do all that you wish.”  Eighty years after she was told that, the bitterness was still in my grandmother’s voice at the retelling. 

Women can also be a great source of healing and freedom for other women, however. The other stories my grandmother told me were of her mother’s not remarrying for decades after my grandmother’s father died and my great-grandmother, instead, making her own way in life as a seamstress.  Also, my grandmother told of how her mother supported her wish to go to college by moving near the college so my grandmother could attend.  In these stories, she showed my grandmother a freedom that my grandmother, and my other female relatives, in turn, taught me. 

Perhaps it is the task of this generation of women, and men, to name the wound and begin healing it before it is too late, before the Wasteland caused by all our wounds spreads to all of Earth.  What would our world be like if women had never lost their freedom that so many ancient civilizations seem to have offered women?  What would a world be like in which women, and men, were truly free to be the best, most caring and compassionate, creative, happy and joyful beings they can be?  May our wounds be our guide to healing ourselves, each other, and the Earth.

                                                                              ~ Carolyn Lee Boyd
 

A series of Read’s films, The Goddess Trilogy, was released today by Alive Mind. 

The three films are Goddess Remembered, a panoramic sweep of 35,000 years of global worship and reverence of the Sacred Feminine, from cave drawings to the present day; Burning Times, which gives the viewer a real sense of horror and tragedy, as well as the consequences that still continue today, of the witch hunts in Europe from the Middle Ages to the 18th century; and, finally, Full Circle, a very personal film about the meaning of Goddess spirituality to those who practice it as a western eco-feminist movement as well as those who are following their own culture’s traditions that are thousands of years old.  The series is available from womenandspirituality.net.

A year or so ago I saw another of Read’s film, Signs Out of Time, about the archeologist Marija Gimbutas.  Gumbutas uncovered tens of thousands of artifacts from the Goddess culture of Old Europe, giving back to us Europe’s peaceful, joyful ancient times.  This is available from Belili Productions.

It is impossible for anyone to watch these films and not have her life changed in some way.  I have studied women’s spirituality for 25 years, but I was still moved to tears by seeing the ancient temples where women and men peacefully worshipped a loving, abundant Mother, the village square where women were tortured and burned not so many centuries ago, and the commitment of those all over the world who revere the Earth and are determined that we shall not be the last generation.  For anyone who is not familiar with women’s or Goddess spirituality, watching these films will give a background that it took me decades to gain from reading books. 

The films are like sitting in a circle with women from our ancient past who tell us how their lives revolved around a diety who was a woman and women residing next door who talk about how their daily lives have been enriched and purpose found through women’s spirituality.  They have a warmth and passion that will inspire, move, and teach.  Go into your cave, invite these films in, and let your fire be lit.

                                                                              ~ Carolyn Lee Boyd

Imbolc, which falls between the two celebratory seasons on February 2, always seemed to me to be a somewhat outdated holiday.  In the Celtic cultures in which it was celebrated, it was the early spring holiday when the lambs began to be born and the first plants began pushing up through the soil.  Where I live, it occurs in the deepest of winter, when the snow is three feet deep and the first crocuses are almost three months away.  

But, if we look at it differently, perhaps it could become a third holiday that celebrates the Mysteries that occur in everyday life, the “kitchen mysteries” that do not originate in the heavens, but on earth; that we help create with what we always do after getting up in the morning everyday; that are not celebrated with global festivities, but at our breakfast tables and in our gardens. 

Though I cannot see the seeds of rebirth preparing to bud, it is happening all the same in this most basic manifestation of the Great Mystery of the coming of the renewal of life, of light’s return, of the earth and Divine joining to make the world anew.  This coming back to life or into life occurs each day as our children grow from babies into full-grown adults with lives, spirits, and personalities of their own.  I see it in all of our creative endeavors that begin with the smallest of ideas and transform into books, paintings, quilts, organizations or businesses, and so many things.

Perhaps we can make Imbolc a time to celebrate those Mysteries in our everyday lives the same way we do the other holidays, with decorations, foods, and activities that symbolize the message of this time.  Just as we begin to prepare for those other holidays for weeks, I plan to get ready for Imbolc starting now.  What might we do to honor those seeds of so many things that are the bridge between the winter and spring, a wasteland and abundance, the old and the new?

I have already begun watering a planter full of crocus bulbs and their little heads peeked through the soil yesterday.  If I had enough light in my house, I would plant more seeds for flowers, vegetables and herbs.  What can you begin to plant?

We can make an Imbolc mix of seeds, nuts, and dried fruits to put out for snacks during these weeks ahead.  We can serve meals to ourselves and our families that are high in nutrients, full of the life of the seed as it prepares for its journey to the upper world, and that are full of the spirit of the earth.  These might include more seeds, lentils, beans, root vegetables and, to celebrate the coming abundance, grains.

We can read or listen to a retelling of the story of Innana. This story is, to me, a perfect Imbolc tale because it recreates the journey of soul to the underworld where she is purified and made wise so that she can re-emerge into the earth better able to serve. 

We can find ways to nurture children and help them bring forth their own inner powers. We can spend more time with our own children or others for whom we have caregiving responsibilities, asking more questions about their interests and dreams. We can volunteer or donate to organizations that work for children with special needs, education, or other similar causes.  We can share our skills and experience to benefit children who may come across our paths at this time and throughout the year.

We can spend some time doing at least one creative project that has lain dormant for whatever reason.  It may be writing about a subject that scares us.  It may be trying some new media – if you are a writer, paint; if you bead, make something out of clay; if you are a singer, try cooking.

This new kind of Imbolc is a holiday that you can make your own.  What does it mean to you and what would you like it to be?

I recently learned a lesson in both the magic of the unexpected and the life-giving and deeply complex flow that makes the ordinary and everyday possible, which begins with the earth’s turning to bring each dawn and has grown into cars and jobs and all that makes up our modern life.

I was waiting at an intersection on a snowy day when a driver on the cross street ran a red light, hit another vehicle, skidded, and came flying across the intersection to whack me head-on.   My car has been out of service ever since and it is only now, two weeks later, that I am beginning to feel  as if my soul has re-entered my body.  I now know why traditional people and others seek shamans at times of illness and trauma.  Even though my trauma was minor compared to what many other people face, how I have wished that someone would venture into the otherworld to retrieve who I was as I wandered without center, without the previously unspoken, but still absolute belief that I would survive each day unscathed. 

So, during these two weeks I have worshipped at the altar of the Goddess of the Unexpected.  I have been cast into her realm where no other, more comfortable, aspects of the divinity within can dwell. It has been just She and I as I have come to slowly explore my home in exile from my comfortable kitchen where I know who I am and what I will do each day.

It is a place where the everyday becomes deified simply because I finally understand how each day is truly a miracle, where each moment that goes as I expect it will is a complex orchestration of galactic mathematics, of earth’s delicate ecology, of human interaction and cooperation. I have come to truly appreciate this everyday life that I have been trying to celebrate in this blogsite.

But, this temple of the Goddess of the Unexpected is even more than that.

It is a place where I can be truly myself, can finally see myself exactly as I am because who I have built myself up to be, who I wish others to see, no longer exists while I am in this realm. 

It is a place of true new beginnings. Without the gravity of the my own expectations of what I should be and do that day pulling on me, I can now take flight into the endless sky.

It is a well of power freed from within myself as I experience my own will to survive, as I allowed myself to fall into dissolution and stopped the descent by pure desire to live again my everyday, “in a teapot” life.

It is a well of intense terror that I had no idea could be unleashed within me and the knowledge that now I can magically turn it back by the force of my mind’s ability to see myself from outside myself and to think analytically.

I am now gathering all these gifts as I embark on my journey back to everyday life.  Even though, during the first few days, I experienced that realm as a prison into which I had been cast to undergo some kind of tortured inquisition, now I embrace this Goddess of the Unexpected and express my appreciation that I have lived in Her Realm, as much as I hope not to have to go there again anytime soon.

Coincidentally, before the accident, I had been “memed” by Cate to list unusual things about myself.   Each of these aspects of myself is a small spell cast by the Goddess of the Unexpected, something that does not quite fit with most of my everyday life and makes my life therefore more fascinating, more passionate, more creative.  By venturing into these unexpectednesses, I taste some of that power, some of the liberation, some of the otherworldly sparkle of life outside the routine and expected.

1. I love kitsch.  When I moved into my house, I inherited lots of objects from my grandmother and mother-in-law so my home reflected their rather elegant and Baroque tastes, respectively.  As I came up on half a century of life, I decided it was time for my surroundings to appeal to me, so I went shopping and bought whatever caught my eye.  As I unpacked my shopping bags I came upon an undeniable truth.   I love kitsch – tiny ceramic teapots for my kitchen, silk flowers in every room, circus pink pillows.  Someone stop me before I hang velvet pictures of waifs with really, really big eyes… I think I love the innocence of kitsch, the pure childlike joy of it, the colors and icons that bring my heart back to another time of my life when I had fewer questions and answers were surer.  Maybe I just have no taste.

2. I once sat in a taxi with Helen Hayes, the famous actress.  I was working for the press office of a NYC agency and she was helping us publicize a program for low-income, frail elders.  I have no idea what I said, but I’m sure it was ridiculous, and I’m sure she was absolutely gracious.  I also met Danny Kaye at a fundraiser for the same program.  He was extremely jolly.  And I once danced with Patti Smith at a rock and roll club in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  That’s about it for my encounters with celebrities.

3. One of my legs is a half inch longer than the other.  This throws off my whole bone structure and has ultimately caused me to be in mild pain just about all the time.  But, at the same time, it makes me constantly aware of my physical being and the fact that I am connected to the air around me and the rock or soil of the earth under my feet, since these both determine if I will walk well that day.

4. I look almost exactly like my mother.  Photos of us when we were both quite young are almost indistinguishable and we both look different from anyone on her side of the family. Sometimes this is distressing, when I think of some of the physical problems she had that I worry about inheriting or when my identity sometimes seem to meld into hers.  Other times it is quite comforting, an obvious link to the women of my family that has, I think, made me more aware of the importance of being bonded to those women who came before and after me.

5. My favorite Goddess icon is The Sleeping Goddess of Malta, the statue of the woman or Goddess asleep on a couch, possibly experiencing some kind of vision.  In fact, I love sleeping more than just about any other activity and always have.  I don’t have especially insightful or inspiring dreams, I just love the physical feeling of sleep.  Perhaps in a former life I was some kind of priestess whose job it was to envision while sleeping and I got a taste for it.

6. I have an almost supernatural attraction to Scotland.  I may or may not have ancestors from there.  One evening, about 30 years ago, I heard the Tannahill Weavers, a band that plays Scottish traditional music and I was completely mesmerized.  For about the next 15 years, I was obsessed with finding out everything I could about this country and its history and culture.  About 20 years ago I took a trip there and came across the field where the Battle of Culloden took place, the battle that ushered in the attempted destruction of Highland culture and the migration of hundreds of thousands of Scots who were forced off their land, including possibly my ancestors.  I found the spot where the clan that has the same name as my mother stood. I stood on that ground and thought about how forces much mightier than me in terms of weapons and power had done everything in their power to destroy the spirit and the lives of those who had stood on this ground before me, but, yet, here I was 250 years later, their living legacy, returned, alive, remembering, and carrying on all that had been taken from them and that they had come to America to regain.

It has been so long since I have been able to write in this blog that the meme has, I’m sure, gone on without me.  So I now tag anyone reading who would like to make her or his own venture into the Temple of the Goddess of the Unexpected by writing about seven unusual biographical things.