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Can't keep a good wo-man down!
by Morgause Fonteléve
Who tried to kill the Goddess? Who sits on the sepulchral stone preventing Her resurrection? "For all that dies shall be reborn", saith the Goddess. She the unending Wheel, she the unending sequence of cycles, the spiral dance which doubles on Her own footsteps and affords us the gift of trance and vision.
The magical language of poetry is where the Goddess has always dwelled from the very beginning of time.
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That language that was intimately intertwined with religious thought, ritual and ceremonies in honour of the Ancient Mother, the Goddess Triformis, the Moon Mother, the sacred portal through which all enters and exits life.
She who looked down on us from primordial darkness and who was our Muse, She who influences our inner tides and inspires our artistic expressions, lies somewhere, holding Her breath, awaiting the return of Her children’s spiritual whispers and incantations.
Robert Graves in 'The White Goddess' mentions that patriarchal invaders from the Middle East "falsified the ancient myths" usurping Her power and forcing social changes which changed our world, catapulting us into an alternative reality. And mankind began living within 'the matrix' of prosaic reality where men are men and women are females. A world where the serpent is a reptile at a peep show, where a horse and a greyhound are seen at the race track, the bee is a threat to man, where a bird is a pet in a cage, roosters something you bet your money on, wood the product of a sawmill and marble slabs are found in cemeteries rather than dressing temple floors; temples dedicated to the Goddess.
Religion blossomed from rituals of propitiation, spells specifically written to subdue the Elements, and the necessity to believe in the Divine Ultimate Goodness. In this manner man developed his own survival mechanism, empowering himself against the loss of hope and from reverting to fear, despair and terror of the natural world. The function of poetry, of the magical language, was the secret invocation of our Muse and Mother.
With the advent of the Solar Gods, magical poetry became taboo. Derogatory names were coined for those like us. Magical poetry made place for rational poetic language. The magic of the gut made place for the magic of the head. In came the Apollonian language of enlightenment and transcendence which elevated with it (wo)mankind.
The old myths and stories which had been shared around communal fires suddenly offended those who were dedicated to the disciplines of logic, philosophy, science, reason and order. The world listened to the wise men and turned its back on the Moon Goddess of yore. Man turned his back on Her who has always inspired him and given his life meaning, who had lit his path in the darkness of night, whose love had enraptured him. Men found platonic love more desirable than abandon and surrender to Her and sooner than soon the wild language of the Goddess began withering away. Man no longer had to pay homage to Her and She sadly entered into a disappointed slumber, hurt and pining for Her children’s voice.
What did mankind do in its terror of Goddess Triad, Moira, Ilithyia and Callone ( Death, Birth and Beauty), of 'She of the Three Faces' who presided over every phase of man’s life, before man’s intellect made itself self-sufficient from Mother, rebelling against her demand for, respect, worship and homage.
But in truth there is no escape from Her. Even Socrates had to submit himself to Her will and was through fate reunited with the Mother when, ironically, his life was cut short by a drink of the milky draught of hemlock, sacred plant of Hecate.
The Goddess’ realm of mystery became arid and a hidden place of forbiddance. But the magical language survived within secret traditions of the ancient world and the Witch traditions of Western Europe whilst the rest of the world succumbed to the intellectual opposition to Mother Nature. Man rose from the abysmal chthonian realms in order to seek self-realization, forfeiting the energy of the tension of the opposites, dedicating their psyches and consciousness to the masculine aesthete and opposing his cosmic antagonist, Mother Nature, Mistress of Change, She who never loses a conflict or battle.
Mankind’s early ideas of the Divine were shaped against the background of Nature and what was natural. Patriarchy dragged him away from the comfort of Mother’s lap, to dwell within a faceless crowd, a collective ideology named society. Society, the artificial institution, the invention, the man-made construction. Order and systemic society could not be achieved by succumbing to Mother Nature. She had to be overcome. What then awaited them was a life of self-denial and renunciation followed by their becoming an accessory to the brutal attempted matricide.
The Sciences apply reason, logic and analyze how Nature operates. Its observations have in a way diminished man’s anxieties and fears by demonstrating that Nature is cyclical and therefore predictable. Science is a product of the Apollonian mind and by the icy light of intellect it distances the archaic night where the Moon Goddess rules supreme. Out of sight and out of mind.
Biology, geology, western standards, weights, measures and scales render logical the brutality of Mother Nature. It revises and re-writes the natural truth and returns it to us in a processed, more acceptable, more palatable form.
And (wo)man? Woman has always been identified with Nature and its cycles. Western society deviates from femaleness, almost to the point of penalization and rejection. The last society to worship female power was the Minoan Cretan. The sciences, arts and crafts of modern man made the natural recede into occult anonymity.
Some say that men invented culture as a defense against female nature. Nature’s cycles are woman’s cycles. We are the daughters of our Mother. Our biological nature consists of a sequence of circular returns, a spiral microcosm of the Supracosmic Whole, and from this vortex man seeks independence, for reunion with the Mother is akin to the Lorelei’s song that haunts him from the moment of separation at birth, to when finally he takes his final rest in Her earthen womb.
Man achieves this through linear thinking, the science of evolution, chronological recording of historical events; he moves outwards in a straight line, whilst she relentlessly circles her own centre.
Woman has no choice in the matter. She is one with Nature. She is the never-ending cycle. She is Nature’s machine. She is the collective entity of friends, colleagues, tribe members, mother and daughter. She has one mission: procreation. She takes seed-filled mucus and transforms it within her into a sentient being. She is the ocean acted upon by the gravity of Moon. She is the labyrinth where men get lost in the sorcery of the Mother, she is, the garden of Eden and the serpent dwells within her.
"Ancient One I hear you call, Ancient One I hear your voice..."
How do we come to terms with the Goddess? What sort of commitment are we, irrespective of our gender, prepared to make to Her? What kind of commitment is ours? Part-time. Full time? None whatsoever?
You can’t keep a good (wo)man down! Let us liberate our poetic souls, removing the weight of patriarchal judgment from where She lies entombed in rules and limiting regulations. Let Her live through our words and incantations once more. May She return through us as we attained Life through Her. So Mote It Be!
REFERENCES:
The White Goddess – Robert Graves - 1946
The Great Cosmic Mother – Monica Sjoo and Babara Mor – 1987
Sexual Personae – Camille Paglia - 1991
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