A Post For International Women's Day

Kali, Hindu goddess and bad to know.

I have posted many times touching on the topic of how the gods and goddesses of Mankind shifted from the archaic nonhuman, feminine, transgender and shapeshifting gods, to exclusively human-like and predominantly male and warlike gods, and how this transition reflected a change from a way of life closer to nature, where man was a part of the natural world, to one where Man attempted to dominate nature and set himself apart from it. However, it is important in the quest to return the feminine to her proper place in the world of the sacred that we do not engage in wishful thinking, because the transition to the patriarchal gods to begin with was an attempt to mold the sacred to be in line with the new human-dominated worldview. The most archaic goddesses were not all warm and loving and caring and all the things we associate with goddess nowadays. They could be destroyers, they could be scary, they were both givers and takers, birthers and slayers. This is because the real things the goddesses were based on were these things.

Take water. Life can't exist without it. 3 inches of it can kill you. Anyone who has looked at video of floods or tsunamis can appreciate how destructive water can be. I tend to regard Water as a goddess because nothing exists without it. It gives life. I love and respect Water, but if it is a goddess it is a powerful one that gives and takes life without concern for individual forms.

Earth. The Earth, the soil, nourishes all things. It is also the Underworld, the dead, decay. This is the nature of these particularly two-edged deities - both giving life and taking it. The story goes that when the (presumably native) excavators first dug up this statue of Coatlique, the Aztec Earth goddess, they buried it again out of fear. Like the Earth itself, it births you and eats you back again.

Coatlique. All-birthing, all-consuming Earth goddess.

You know, being human, I would love to believe in a warm motherly Virgin-Mary-like Goddess, but I am not called to share reassuring fibs with you. If you want love, get a dog or a loving mate or something. The Universe is both beautiful and heartless and that is the real world I want to share with you, and the real world that I want to come more into contact with myself. Because this beautiful heartless universe is not something different from yourself, you are a part of it.

And because the goddess stories generally come from the most archaic and in a sense most truthful and trustworthy sources, they share this resemblance. They are bounteously giving, they give us everything in fact, but are not therefore kind. They can be ruthlessly destroying but not therefore cruel. Kindness and cruelty are attributes of humans, not gods, and alongside the purely benevolent and loving maternal human-like goddesses of "more civilized" and patriarchal cultures comes the more cruel and warmongering human-like gods too, and a way of thinking that justifies human cruelty and oppression to women, destruction of the natural world and oppression of those who are different.  

"When the Dao is abandoned
'Charity' and 'righteousness' appear
When intellectualism arises
Hypocrisy follows naturally
When there is no peace in the family
people talk about 'brotherly love'
When the nation falls into decay
'Patriotism' appears.

-Daodejing #18

And so the simplistic loving goddesses and saints of later cultures are part and parcel with the wrathful and cruel male gods of those cultures. If you have a Virgin Mary, you have to have a Yahweh. You have ancient Romans who spoke a lot about family values while treating their women and children as property. Archaic goddesses are never simplistic, never mere embodiments of human virtues because they reflect real nature. Goddesses could be life-giving and total badasses at the same time, the nurturing breast and the red fang. They were above good and evil. So while we must reinsert the female into our spiritual life, that is not necessarily the same thing as only inserting stereotypical feminine attributes, because to some extent limiting loving and nurturing to women and war and wrath to men is an artifact of the very historical process we must turn away from.

The archaic gods and goddesses were also pretty gender-flexible, not to mention species-flexible. My favorite example is the Norse god Loki, who transformed himself into a mare and got himself knocked up by a stallion, giving birth to Odin's mount, the eight-legged superhorse Sleipnir.

Most Awesome Horse Ever. ;)

So the humanoid male trickster/troublemaker god Loki gave birth from his(!) female animal womb to the animal horse Sleipnir. So mixed up, gotta love Loki. ;)

Artwork by briannacherrygarcia

Some might say that on this International Women's Day I have not said much about women, or human women anyway. Even though I might have taken this as an opportunity for talking about being more loving and nurturing towards the animal and natural world, perhaps I haven't. Or perhaps you see actual human women you know in some of these goddesses, I know I do. I think the point however is that the stereotype of women as more loving and nurturing than men is part of a cultural legacy that has always oppressed women. So if I say that we need to incorporate more of the softer, more loving and inclusive in our spiritual life (which of course is always a good thing), to say that these are feminine characteristics is part of the severing of ourselves that has been the cause of much of the oppression of women, oppression of the natural world and oppression of people who don't fit the normal sexual or gender orientation. Men can be very gentle and loving. Women can be ass-kickers.

And women must be accepted as being more complicated creatures than the Virgin-Mary or Whore cardboard cutouts that our cultural heritage gave us. Like us all, both mother and bitch. Giver of life and destroyer. Like us all in fact, male or female, whether we accept it or not. Like Nature herself. 

In fact I am not talking about the liberation of women at all. I am talking about the liberation of us all.