Snap! The Robot Awake…aka Awaken the Goddess. The mythological Goddess has been living underground in the psyche of all Earth’s sentient beings for thousands of years. The effects of which are evident in the ailments of our modern world, ailments that I believe can be healed through Her reemergence and the marriage of masculine and feminine principles on a macro and micro level.
The reality is that this is not a women’s issue alone; this is a human issue. Patriarchy is not synonymous with the masculine, it is a societal structure based on power and control. Women can be just as competitive and power hungry as men (Woodman, 1993, p. 120). Though the feminine in men is more damaged than in women, this is an issue that we must work on together (p. 119). As Woodman put it (1985):
The word “feminine,” as I understand it, has very little to do with gender, nor is woman the custodian of femininity. Both men and women are searching for their pregnant virgin. She is the part of us who is outcast, the part who comes to consciousness through going into darkness, mining our leaden darkness, until we bring her silver out. (p. 10)
We are living in a time that does not have any mythological role models to ground us in a meaningful spiritual context. The challenge for women is to “flower as individuals” in the image of a woman, not a man, but “there are no models in our mythology for an individual woman’s quest. Nor is there any model for the male in marriage to an individuated female” (Campbell, 2013, p. xiv). We have to go boldly into the future and recreate our own stories, new metaphors that fit our modern paradigm, while simultaneously connecting us to our roots in ancient wisdom. “We are in this thing together and have to work it out together…in patient fostering of each other’s growth” (Campbell, 2013, p. xiv).
Herman Wirth, a lecturer and professor in the 1980s in Germany, posited “the primordial Mother Goddess as the original religious impulse of humanity…. He held that a resurgence of this impulse is now necessary, based on spiritual potential rather than external power, if our humanity is to survive” (Gimbutas, 1991, p. 50). Wirth believed that the earliest forms of society were matriarchal in structure before 2500 B.C. (p. 50). In these earlier agricultural societies, the Goddess was a symbol of regeneration not only in human birth, but in all birth in the natural world (p. 30). The gradual transformation from a matriarchal society to a patriarchal society was initiated between 4500-2500 B.C. when patriarchal nomadic tribes led by war gods began invading southeastern Europe (p. 48).
Over time, the Goddess became repressed in the shadow of the psyche, the depth of the collective unconscious, and the masculine power structure began to take hold. As mythologist, writer, and lecturer, Joseph Campbell said:
In the older view the goddess Universe was alive, herself organically the Earth, the horizon, and the heavens. Now she is dead, and the universe is not an organism, but a building, with gods at rest in it in luxury: not as personifications of the energies in their manners of operation, but as luxury tenants, requiring service. And Man, accordingly, is not as a child born to flower in the knowledge of his own eternal portion but as a robot fashioned to serve. (2013, p. xxiii)
The deadness of the goddess universe is evident in how disconnected our society is from the feminine earth and from Her various forms of nourishment, our food, our forests, our landfills. Even wild, feminine nature Herself is perceived as a threat; a forlorn and terrifying place, a place that the imbalanced masculine continues to control, destroy, and exploit.
It appears that patriarchal structure, oriented around power, competition, efficiency, and status has squeezed out the unique powers symbolized by the Goddess and “left no room for feminine meandering…. The feminine isn’t interested in being at the top; she is dedicated to life in the moment (Woodman, 1993, p. 116). If we are to have faith in the natural cycles of life, our current time of overpowering patriarchy is as natural as the waning and waxing of the moon. Perhaps, we have to leave the Garden of Eden, so to speak, in order to have a divine context for who we truly are. To that end this fall from grace appears to be necessary to the evolution of humanity.
In the meantime, as citizens of this power-driven world, we are actually far less powerful, expansive, and self-realized than we could be if the feminine were to be reintegrated into our masculine-dominated consciousness. As Campbell (2004) said, “the shadow is the landfill of the self. Yet it is also sort of a vault: it holds great unrealized potentialities within”(p. 73). The Goddess and what she symbolizes is part of this unrealized potentiality. The potential of collaboration, presence, spontaneity, and flow. The possibility of living through the heart, deep intuition, body wisdom, and connection to the cycles of life and death. It is apparent that “if only a portion of that lost totality could be drudged up into the light of day, we should experience a marvelous expansion of our powers, a vivid renewal of life” (Campbell, 2008, p. 12). This would trigger a rebirth in the process of restoring harmony and balance to the complimentary natures of masculine and feminine.
