Politics, Feminism, and Pagan Spirituality

by Lady Galadriel and Lord Athanor

In a society which denies its own dark side, as ours does every day, at the top of it's lungs, the faults of ancient cultures can appear not only shocking, but gross. Conversely we are uncommonly comfortable with our own habits and mores.

For instance, it is comfortable - is it not? - to believe that because no human beings can be bought or sold at the market place, we therefore have no slaves. Yet every day men and women, as a matter of mere survival, do sell themselves on the labor market. Even though today no employer owns (or takes responsibility for) the person of the worker, or the members of their family, nor openly exercises the power of life and death over his employees, why is it that so many women and men have acquired, and function within, a slave's mentality? In Shaw's 'Major Barbara' the tycoon Andrew Undershaft gives the answer: "Why enslave a man when you can employ him!"

But, theoretically, we have no slaves. Theoretically, women are free - they can vote, go to work, and divorce. And how we do respect, theoretically, the rights of children: the newborn are no longer exposed, it is illegal to make children work, to educate them is obligatory! Everything today has such a humanitarian air about it. And yet!

And yet we are hearing more and more, from an expanding number of protest movements, that both men and women feel they are selling themselves "body and soul" in order to survive. What precisely does the feminist movement (and the gay movement, and the children's rights movement, and so on) manifest if not a cry of indignation and despair that has never before been heard with such clamorous importunate urgency? what suffering causes so many of our youth today to succumb to drugs? or to take their own lives?

In a previous article we suggested that sensitive people today need and need desperately, to establish a cultural state wherein masculine politics and science are tempered by feminine religious and emotional influences. Today we are seeing a rise of, and a nostalgic refuge being taken in, the cult of the Great Goddess. It is indeed necessary and wholesome to bring this archetype back. The return to the Great Mother is comforting.

But even when we are inspired by the past, should we choose a monotheism of the Goddess? It is not at all evident from earlier matristic societies that they had an attitude of monotheism towards their Great Goddess. She comes in many forms, and with many faces - The Virgin, The Mother, The Marine Goddess, The Warrior, and The Scholar. Perhaps these are not multiple forms of one Goddess, but a display of an actual polytheism.

The names Rhea, Dictynna, and Britomartis are often interpreted as different names of the same mother goddess - but it is more likely that they represent different deities in different localities, with different sensitivities - a type of feminine pantheon, balancing the masculine.

When one speaks of a single Great Mother with many faces this may be a projection of the monotheistic attitude; whereas, if we conceive of many feminine divinities, existing in an inherently harmonious inter relationship, we open up the possibilities of a female pantheon.

This has become a necessity today, not only because politics, business and culture are dominated by men, but also because all of the modern mainstream religions exclude not merely Goddesses, but the entire feminine side of life and reality. In short, our spiritual life is maladjusted, out of whack, and nothing of joy or happiness will we have so long as this condition persists.

Now, Pagan polytheism is exceptionally egalitarian. It grants its Goddesses (and by extension, their priestesses, including each female votary) an importance comparable to that of its Gods. For example, on Mount Olympus there were six major gods and six major goddesses; while in the Christian religion we are battling three to nothing. (An argument could be made, and Jung makes it, for a three to one ratio; but the fact is that none of the Protestant churches at all, and none of the Catholic churches save the Roman, officially recognize the Virgin Mary as a goddess. And the fact is also, that one encyclical by one pope has not yet had enough impact on the Roman power structure to make the ordination of priestesses likely within the foreseeable future.)

Whatever faults one may find with polytheism, however much one may question the equality of rights accorded to the old Gods and Goddesses, at the very least the issue was raised. In Christianity, Judaism, and Islam there have been, for all practical purposes, no discussion whatever. The structure of power and its sharing is never debated between Christ and his Mother: whereas it is discussed between Zeus and Gaia. It is not argued between Christ and Mary Magdalene, but it is between Zeus and Aphrodite. In fact, within these high monotheistic religions, no feminine figure, mortal or divine, has enough character to argue over a power issue, as does, for example, Athena with Poseidon, Aphrodite with Dionysus, Artemis with Apollo, Hestia with Hermes, or Hera with Zeus.

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, God and power are both masculine, and it goes without saying that if there is no negotiation of power between males and females, then there is even less chance of negotiation between different female deities. There is no equivalent of oppositions such as that of Athena or Artemis to Aphrodite; nor of alliances, such as those between Aphrodite and Hera, or Artemis and Hecate.

Assuming that the Great Mother were the equivalent of the Almighty Father, would there be any advantage to bringing back a monotheism of the Goddess? We think not. We believe that not only is the Father image exhausted of its spiritual resources and possibilities, but that monotheistic practices are on the verge of choking on their own narrowness. As the poet says:

"The nineteenth wave of the ages rolls
Now deathward since thy death and birth.
Hast thou brought freedom upon earth?
Or are there less oppressions done
in this world under the sun?...

The tree of faith ingrafted by priests
Puts it's foul foliage out above thee,
And round it feed man-eating beasts
Because of whom we dare not love thee;
Though hearts reach back and memories ache,
We cannot praise thee for their sake."

We do not think, however, that polytheism is eternally superior to monotheism - that would be contrary to the very idea of a plurality. But we do think that polytheism does, for todays world, more adequately represent an already inherently pluristic reality. Why replace a male monotheism with a female version? Both patriarchal and matriarchal values are corruptible if you set one before the other. So we regard the plurality of the Goddess (and of the God, for that matter) not as a fragmentation of the personality but as a developmental sequence encompassing the archetypal forms of divinity. There are as many forms of the feminine as there are of the Goddesses; of the masculine as there are Gods.

If women felt confined to a single model of feminine identity under the patriarchy, they can ill afford to settle for a monotheistic feminism as a replacement. A single feminism is not enough - since behind each Goddess there is a unique kind of strength and knowledge. Women's values and behavior are bound to change, modify and grow as they emerge from one myth into another, expanding their vision of the world,. and deepening their access to the archetypes who inhabit their minds, hearts and bodies.