February 15, 2003
Awakened Woman's Circle is working for peace
Thoughts on War, A Response to Starhawk's "The Choice Before Us"
By Shekhinah Mountainwater:
I believe much depends on shifting the dominant paradigm, and that's the work we all can help with no matter who or where we are in society. The world is cusping on the brink of a huge change in consciousness... the New trying to push through like a slender blade of grass upwards against the solid soil... the Old resists and backlashes. Mother Dark will give us a gentle shift if we can wear down the resistance... a cataclysm if not. Media continues to broadcast the illusion that "most Americans" want this war... play down the actual numbers that show up for peace demonstrations- hundreds of thousands- many mainstream "ordinary" folk... in this way they can convince us to vote for the old ways instead of the new.
What is the new paradigm? It's essential core is our concept of gender. Male-opposite-female, the gender split, the view of the world as polarized duality, is the archetypal root of patriarchy. God/dess as our One Mother Source, the wo/man in us all regardless of genital/hormonal plumbing is the key to the change we need for peace and justice. The totem pole of inequality is undone when we reify those in lower positions, be they positioned there by race, class, sexual preference, looks, size, ability, age or any other quality. The gender split and the one-down position of woman in relation to man, of Goddess to God, is the root of all the others. Therefore let us reify God/dess and women, and reify the women in men. Let us cultivate a cooperative, nurturing, circular, tribal, inclusive and loving approach to ourselves, to each other, to our planet, to the five worlds:
Animal, Plant, Human, Mineral, and Faery...
Spread the word, be an awakener. And look within. What are the ways each of us participates in the old paradigm of domination/submission, alienation, fleshly loathing, divorce from nature, sexism, classism, racism, agism, looksism, ableism, homophobia, and all the ism schisms? Open your heart and make heart politics. Open your mind and be willing to learn a new way of thinking. If enough of us do this in time we could avert world war three. For the archetypes rule us, as Carl Jung says. Change the world? Change the archetypes! Consciousness creates all that we see. Consciousness can re-create all that we see, if enough of us join the wave.
"The universe has no laws, only habits!" <grin>
FACTS (I did not make these things up!)
The Y chromosome is evolved from the X
The human embryo begins as female
Mitochondrial DNA is carried only through women
Parthenogenesis exists
Male babies are sometimes born with breast milk
Men have vestigial breasts and wombs
Men can cry, be nurturing, gentle and cooperative when not socialized out of it
Men have lunar hormonal cycles
In some species males turn into females during survival emergencies The further back we go in biology, geneology, social systems, religions and myths, the more fe/male they are. Social systems that are wo/man-positive are inclusive, not exclusive, though they also support woman-only practises like menstrual and pregnancy rites, which are understood to be essential for the health of the entire tribe.
Matristic societies precede patristic societies by many thousands of years. The earlier they are, the more peaceful, gentle, and inclusive the are... of women and men, of plants and animals, of old and young, of gay and straight, of well and sick, of spiritual and wordly...and no economic classes.
MORE
A woman is raped by a man every 3 minutes
Men dominate society in government, religion, the marketplace, the arts, education, the military, the domestic sphere, etc. etc.
Sexism is rampant
Women are in a lower position on the totem pole
This society IS a totem pole; a dominator system. War, its ultimate expression, threatens continually.
Race, Class, Age, Economics, Size, Looks, Sexual Preference, Ability, Gender... all are brought to bear on the degree of privelege one can have, or lack thereof.
Yes many women play the dominator game which has been the only model offered them by the white male dominator system. Nevertheless, those women who gain power are a tiny minority in comparision to the millions who are rendered powerless, impoverished, physically, mentally, spiritually and emotionally suppressed throughout their lives.
I do not agree with women who take on dominator roles and behaviours. When the women in my neighborhood sought to exclude my son one night, from a circle to which he had been invited, I defended him.
Though on the average they reap more priveleges, men also suffer in the dominator system.
A woman like me who has sought to be creative, empowered and whole is either attacked or ignored, must live in poverty and isolation. Unless she has the good fortune to find support from someone with privelege in the system. When women gather in their own circles there is an outcry that they are excluding men. When men gather in their own circles, which happens on a much vaster scale, who says, hey where are the women?
I have fought most of my life for my beliefs, been made invisible, silenced, ignored, accused, rarely given the chance to explain them fully. This also by folks one would think would be the first to support me; women, witches, feminists, Goddess women, musicians, gays, lesbians, ecology workers, green party members, etc. etc.
My cosmology is not anti-male or based on anger, resentment, etc. as I have been accused. It is based on love, a desire to shift the dominant paradigm which rules our world and our psyches. Gender duality, a construct and obviously not a universal fact, is the root of the dominant paradigm.
Look at our words:
Male, Man, He, Him, God
Wo/man, He/r, S/he, Fe/male, God/dess
Even our language shows that woman contains/includes man, while man is said to stand alone.
My quest is for reifying the female in us all, for creating an egalitarian, circular, inclusive paradigm in which each individual can flower, be supported to be any degree of strength or gentleness, empowered or yielding, mental or emotional, etc that their nature and inclinations indicate. We are all five pointed stars with head and four limbs; all with varying degrees of fiery, watery, earthy, airy and psychic qualities. Men are wo/men too!
Blessed Be.
In Her Love,
Shekhinah
Magic is afoot, a heart and a hand
And Goddess is alive in the land!
Shekhinah Mountainwater, Radical Muse, Faery Bard, Priestess of Aphrodite
Come visit my website Moonspell at:
<A HREF="http://shekhinah.net/">http://shekhinah.net</A>