Have you found yourself wondering how the world has arrived at this particularly precarious and divisive place?  Many of us are extremely frightened to see the reemergence of hate; unmasked greed; the rise of an already glutinous elite and leaders who recklessly imperil the earth on the whims of their emotions.  How did we get here? How can we begin to slow down, much less halt this progressive lust for power that seems to be overtaking all that is decent?  Why is the human race in this state?

The answers are likely to be found in the history of religion and cultural understandings of the Feminine and Masculine.

Archeological evidence indicates that human beings transitioned from being tribes of nomadic hunters to tribes that settled into agrarian villages, when women discovered that the seeds they gathered to grind into paste for bread, would grow into new plants.  As such, it would appear that women are the mothers of agriculture.  Women were revered for their ability to produce new life and sustenance from their bodies, as well as  from the Earth.   The practice of agriculture led humans to understand the importance of seasons and the influences of the moon, sun and rain on crops.  Humans seemed to have drawn unconscious analogies between the Earth’s creative force to bring forth life and the creative force innate in a woman’s being.  The mysterious menstrual cycles became analogous to the cycles of the waxing and waning moon and the changes of seasons which brought about new growth from fallow fields.  As a result, the Moon and the Earth came to be a powerful representations of the Feminine and each became central figures of sacred rituals.  The Sun was often thought of as Masculine and many cultures deified the Sun.  The Sun’s attributes are to move linearly forward, to provide powerful energy that draws the crops upward toward the sky into fruition.  As such, Masculine deities were thought of as powerful, warrior-like beings that could dominate with their energy.  The Masculine represents brute strength, domination and linear movement forward.  Ancient people recognized the importance of reverence for both the Masculine and Feminine, as lacking one or the other created imbalance.

Pagan (a name for peasant or agrarian) cultures understood the natural world as sacred and assigned that value to the Moon, Sun, stars, Earth, water, plants and animals.  They understood their existence was dependent on the forces of nature which meant to them that they must be reverent of nature; honor it and care for it.  They also understood that the Feminine had the power to create, feed and nurture life.  She was at once the gentle maiden of the new Spring; the seductress that enticed reproduction; the mother that brought forth and nurtured new life and the Dark Mother who could bring about destruction and death just as the Earth becomes the place of death and transformation of life.  The Feminine came to represent life, compassion, nurturance, death, transformation and abundance.

The importance of the Feminine was quashed with the onset of a one-God culture in the age of Yahweh.  Yahweh was a Masculine God that required His followers to denounce all other Gods (and Goddesses).  Archeologists and Anthropologists have surmised that the inception of Yahweh as the “one, true God” was a sociological necessity to bring about unity among many different tribes of people. If all tribes were required to accept the same God as their representation of the Divine, they would naturally be less inclined to war with one another and would be more easily controlled by a human ruler.

The Feminine was a threat to the power of this new, Masculine God. After all, She contained the power of creation, something the Masculine could not claim.  Thus, the Feminine representations of the Divine were systematically undermined and destroyed.   The Goddesses were abandoned for a Masculine representation of the Divine which jealously demanded that all the attention be given to Him.  This began man’s journey toward extreme imbalance both individually and as a collective.

As we lost our connection to the Feminine side of the Divine, we also lost touch with the attributes of the Feminine.  We became an unbalanced society that focuses on the values of the Masculine, alone.  We lost our reverence for and understanding of the natural world.  We became focused on domination and forward movement at the cost of nurturance, creativity and compassion.  Our goals became about linear progression and what can be gained, materially and in the form of power.  We lost our understanding of the value of riding with the ebb and flow of nature.  Now, we no longer feel a pull to be quiet, to sit in the moment.  We’ve lost our compassion for one another and for the Earth.

We have arrived at a point in human development where we must make a choice to re-member (as in reunite the pieces of) the Feminine that exists in us, both individually and in whatever we call the Divine.  We must turn our gaze back at what we have left behind to embrace that essential part of us that holds compassion for others and the Earth.  We must take our values back to those of nurturance, creativity, love and the gentleness represented by the Feminine.  In that embrace, we will find our salvation and that of our Earth.  No longer will we be focused on profit for the sake of profit, but rather on creating ways to save our planet and our own lives.  No longer will we be focused on domination of others, but rather nurturance, understanding and compassion for others.

We must turn back our gaze to the Goddess who dwells within each of us, to save ourselves individually and collectively.

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