John Giannini on the Sacred Feminine (aka Patriarchal Nightmare, Part 2)
Culturally, some religious denominations still struggle with women’s issues more than others. The theologian of the former Pope Benedict XVI wrote that women cannot be priests because ”men are likely to think of God in terms of philosophical definitions and logical syllogisms…a quality valuable for fulfilling a priest’s duty to transmit church teaching.” And, besides, he adds,” men are more practical.” I can hear a multitude of women-- who are philosophers, theologians and CEOs of companies or who as wives and mothers attend to endless pragmatic duties—angrily responding to this man who obviously is living in an ecclesial male vacuum and its fear and hatred of the feminine.
We see this male outlook in typical television ads. The analyst James Hollis points to an ad in which, for example, “a macho group of merry fellows hoist girders, saw logs or drive fork-lifts, but little is said on how men relate to women, unless helped with alcohol.” Hollis concludes: “How can men expect to have good relationships with women when men do not have a relationship with their own feminine soul?” (Hollis, 1993, p. 54)
Underlying this male behavior is a fear and hatred of feminine qualities within themselves. This lethal attitude called misogyny is the oldest prejudice in history. (Holland, 2006) The analyst Erich Neumann gives this attitude a cosmic meaning:
Devaluation of the Earth, hostility toward the Earth, fear of the Earth: these are …..the expression of a weak, patriarchal consciousness that knows no other way to help itself than to withdraw violently from… the Earth as the unconscious making, instinct-entangling and therefore dangerous feminine.(Newman, 1994, pp. l70-l7l)
We will see many other evidences of this universal patriarchal misogyny in this book as well as spiritual awakenings to the maternal archetype’s presence in Nature, culture and persons. This fear and hatred of the feminine in women, in sensitive men, and in the cosmos constitutes what I call “The Patriarchal Nightmare.” On the other hand, speaking of nightfall, all of us, male or female, experience the maternal archetype’s attribute as darkness in which we are enveloped by her and even more crucially, we eventually must surrender to her darker reality of sleep. Whether we know it or not, we are then in the arms of the maternal principle, in which in some dreams, patriarchal men will experience her as a holy terror.
I will give countless examples of male violence not just toward women but to humankind. Each day evidences of this male pathology mount up. For example, on the first page of one New York Times, I found the following: (1) an article condemning HBO’s “Game of Throne’s” because it is “riddled with sexual abuse.” Further, it has a seventeen million person following, the most since HBO’s “The Sopranos.” (Itzkoff, 2014, p. 1). (2) An article, describes how Myanmar’s Buddhist-led military government has cut off medical aid to Muslims, after its “expulsion of Doctors without Borders, one of the world’s premier humanitarian aid groups.” (Perlez, 2014, p.) (3) Another article states that Obama has ordered a “policy review of executions” after a “botched execution in Oklahoma.” (Baker, 2014, p. 1) We are one of the few nations still fostering this inhuman practice.
Carl Jung, who is often the hidden source of much current thought on personality and spirituality, will provide a psychological approach to a depth view of the maternal principle who is patriarchy’s greatest nightmare.
Culturally, some religious denominations still struggle with women’s issues more than others. The theologian of the former Pope Benedict XVI wrote that women cannot be priests because ”men are likely to think of God in terms of philosophical definitions and logical syllogisms…a quality valuable for fulfilling a priest’s duty to transmit church teaching.” And, besides, he adds,” men are more practical.” I can hear a multitude of women-- who are philosophers, theologians and CEOs of companies or who as wives and mothers attend to endless pragmatic duties—angrily responding to this man who obviously is living in an ecclesial male vacuum and its fear and hatred of the feminine.
We see this male outlook in typical television ads. The analyst James Hollis points to an ad in which, for example, “a macho group of merry fellows hoist girders, saw logs or drive fork-lifts, but little is said on how men relate to women, unless helped with alcohol.” Hollis concludes: “How can men expect to have good relationships with women when men do not have a relationship with their own feminine soul?” (Hollis, 1993, p. 54)
Underlying this male behavior is a fear and hatred of feminine qualities within themselves. This lethal attitude called misogyny is the oldest prejudice in history. (Holland, 2006) The analyst Erich Neumann gives this attitude a cosmic meaning:
Devaluation of the Earth, hostility toward the Earth, fear of the Earth: these are …..the expression of a weak, patriarchal consciousness that knows no other way to help itself than to withdraw violently from… the Earth as the unconscious making, instinct-entangling and therefore dangerous feminine.(Newman, 1994, pp. l70-l7l)
We will see many other evidences of this universal patriarchal misogyny in this book as well as spiritual awakenings to the maternal archetype’s presence in Nature, culture and persons. This fear and hatred of the feminine in women, in sensitive men, and in the cosmos constitutes what I call “The Patriarchal Nightmare.” On the other hand, speaking of nightfall, all of us, male or female, experience the maternal archetype’s attribute as darkness in which we are enveloped by her and even more crucially, we eventually must surrender to her darker reality of sleep. Whether we know it or not, we are then in the arms of the maternal principle, in which in some dreams, patriarchal men will experience her as a holy terror.
I will give countless examples of male violence not just toward women but to humankind. Each day evidences of this male pathology mount up. For example, on the first page of one New York Times, I found the following: (1) an article condemning HBO’s “Game of Throne’s” because it is “riddled with sexual abuse.” Further, it has a seventeen million person following, the most since HBO’s “The Sopranos.” (Itzkoff, 2014, p. 1). (2) An article, describes how Myanmar’s Buddhist-led military government has cut off medical aid to Muslims, after its “expulsion of Doctors without Borders, one of the world’s premier humanitarian aid groups.” (Perlez, 2014, p.) (3) Another article states that Obama has ordered a “policy review of executions” after a “botched execution in Oklahoma.” (Baker, 2014, p. 1) We are one of the few nations still fostering this inhuman practice.
Carl Jung, who is often the hidden source of much current thought on personality and spirituality, will provide a psychological approach to a depth view of the maternal principle who is patriarchy’s greatest nightmare.