The Feminine

Mystique is the first word that comes to mind, along with a smattering of emotions, one of the more interesting, is fear. One might wonder why such an emotion would be aroused at the idea of the feminine. More introspective men might know why, but to put it extremely simply, it is selection pressure. Women select. The crushing power of nature upon your insufficiency and nakedness. The Medusa is the perfect symbol of this, the snakes for hair representing the deceptive nature and to gaze upon her turns you to stone. The feminine is what makes men self-conscious and to be in the presence of a beautiful women can quite literally turn men to stone. To come before her is to come before the great judge. Will you be selected, or not. Are you worthy, or are damned to join the near majority of men in history who’s line has ended with them. Destined to live out their day in the crushing punishment of rejection from the feminine. All the while, his work and often his life will be sacrificed for the feminine.

I chose the word mystique because of the mysteriousness of the power of the feminine. In our modern society the narrative suggests that women are incapable and weak, needing of society to boost them up. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Modern society has come to define what is valuable as masculine traits, which is idiotic, short-sighted, sexist and egomaniacal. If one has an appreciation of symbols and imagery, one can see the feminine in a very different light.

To understand the feminine one must understand the human psyche, or better put, the collective unconscious. The collective unconscious is a shared set of ideas, actions, journeys, roles which are represented in archetypes. We generally don’t know we know them, but we know them when we see them, we all know the hero archetype and the heroes journey. The Feminine is a powerful symbol and set of archetypes which influences us from the very core of our beings. To really conceptualise this, you have to think about mankind as an evolving being, not just what we are and how we live in modernity. Man has not always lived in the way he does now. There were times when we lived in trees, feared snakes above all, and roamed in small packs. The psychological effects of these times still affects our minds, as much so as the dawning of consciousness.

The coming of light, as it is often conceptualised, is common in almost all mythology, from the Bible to the Maori creation myths. This symbolises the dawn of consciousness. Part of the development from this stage was the influence of the feminine, a selection power which continues and ends blood lines with totality and without magnanimity. I don’t intend to speak of the Darwinian process, but of the effects this selection had on the psyche of man and woman.

The Earth, the Sun and the Moon are recognised as symbols of the Feminine and The Great Mother. The Earth is the mother of us all, she nourishes and protects, provides for us and houses us in her womb. The moon represents the mother, nurturing, childhood, home, roots, belonging, sharing, caring, soul, emotion, compassion and empathy. While the Sun is warmth, energy; it is the light and the way, the mother of mothers. These traits we have found, embodied and recognised in these celestial beings are ones we draw from the women we see before us. Our mothers, sisters, aunties and daughters. Their humble beings before us hold all this greatness. Many societies recognised and worshipped the Feminine, they saw the importance, the meaning, the purpose. They saw this is where life was created and they respected that by offering the highest praise they could, by deifying it.

I find it hard to really describe what I have in my mind on this topic, it just doesn’t translate well into words. What is in my mind is a mixture images, feelings, and symbols? I believe to truly share what I think of the Feminine, I must do that with images.

We must give our honour and respect to the Feminine for man is always brought into this world by the feminine, the masculine is preceded by the feminine. Man is nurtured by, as well as born of the feminine and the Great Mother. The feminine is an instrument of the Great Mother, a servant who enacts the her will.  Inside we know The Great Mother, we know Medusa, we know Demeter, Isis, Gaia and Cybele. We are born with the knowledge of these Archetypes within us, many of us embody them.

Today in our Western societies we have lost the value of the Feminine, the Mother, Motherhood and the Great Mother. We have abandoned all of this in the name of progress, equality and equity. Society once cherished the beauty of the mother, but now it directs women away for motherhood. There was a time when society knew the value of the Feminine and its pivotal role in society, now it directs women toward masculine roles, it teaches our young women that what they are naturally is unimportant or a symptom of a patriarchal and oppressive system. Their nature is to be repressed, pushed down and ignored. They’re driven to compete with men instead of looking inside, finding their inner feminine and offering all the beautiful, powerful and import roles they can, including the most important role society has, motherhood. Without mothers, we are lost, without mothers, we do not exist. The problem of existence is an existential threat in Western society such is the extremity of the problem. Birth rates among westerns are so low in many countries they are even well below replacement.

So why have we have we led our men and women astray from the beauty and power of the feminine? Why have women lost the desire to be mothers, and why do we not see this as negative? Answering these questions goes outside the scope of this topic but I plan to follow this with a piece that approaches those questions in the future.

What I did want to address here is the question of why we should value the Feminine, the Mother and Motherhood itself. What are we without mothers (and fathers), what is our world if we do not cherish that which gives birth to us, nurtures us, and feeds us. The Feminine is not beautiful, it defines beauty, it defines love. Worship what (the) God(s) gave us, appreciate the radiance of the expecting mother, appreciate the pureness and beauty of a young woman, give thanks to those ageing mothers in your life. Above all, worship the Feminine. In the end, I’m afraid my words fall short, they do not capture what I feel, see or experience. They fall short in measure, in grace, in presence, in beauty and in prose. So I leave you with one final image, I hope you see what I see.

 

Being A Dad

Being in my twenty-somethings and having friends falling pregnant, I often wonder. When I become a father, what will being a father entail. This is my attempt to define my imaginings:

 

The time had come, I am a dad. From the first time I saw the porcelain sheen of her forehead, never would I forget. Never would I lose touch with that moment. A man keeps the memories that inherently make him a man, close to his chest. Some would say in his blood. I say in me.

In that moment something bizarre happens. For the first time in any man’s life, whoever it may be. Stuart Green the smiley, charismatic next door neighbor. Martin Luther King and Adolf Hitler. The plumber that you hired, once you realized the blocked sink really was not going to fix itself and might have been a fraction too far outside your skill set to combat. See all of these men, at this exact moment in their existence were greeted, introducing their child, their newborn bundle of joy into this world. We are adults, we knew and damned well expected that our lives would change. But in what ways and by how much?

This Strawberry Candle

Fluttering candlelight on the ceiling.

Completely chaotic,

leaving me no chance to predict.

How something so faint or dull can illuminate the room,

allowing me to see,

ever so faintly.

When will this flame’s vibrations stop playing tricks on my mind?

Funny how nature holds all of the puppet strings.

 

Expectation: The Destroyer of Creation

While scouring through the internet slightly heartbroken, recovering, reminiscing. I stumbled upon two articles that touched at my intrigue-strings, that got me fragmenting and sorting, thinking,  about my ‘grand ideas’ and their definite place within them. During some troubling times, I aim my anger and confusion at my intuition (destroying my own castle from the inside), picking at it and querying as to why it did not provide me the insight I needed to see the coming of this troubling time. These articles provided me the answers to those queries. Should I say I found my answers to those queries in these articles.

I will put forward one of these articles now.

 

The first article weaved its way up to the point like a mountain biker does up a forested hillside:

You get what you create, not what you expect.

My understanding is that:

Creation is the husband to love. Creation is a production, a working on something that you have little to no attachment to once completed. A creation draws upon your current worldview, self-awareness and confidence and wraps it up in a package sent around the world, but returned back to you.  Creation draws me out of my head and into the now. Creation allows me to open up my heart. Creation allows me to accept others. Without creation, I would not have realized that those people who are too scared to create are not worth having around. Creation has made me realize that my life would be unrewarded without creation. Having creation is to have virtue, having bravery, empathy and hope.

Expectation is simply the death of creation. Expectation sets a benchmark, a limitation to your own growth. Expectation leads to being unsatisfied, anxious and bitter. What I thought were expectations, were mostly simple projections my intuition produced for me, for my future. I lost the ability to determine these expectations from my projections. For me as an INFJ I find that my projections are predominantly emotionally based, dreaming in endless love, purity, harmony, and in colors ranging from all regions of the color wheel. I dream about the feeling of waking up next to my partner, I feel the warmth of her face. My expectations however put a face to that dream lady, my expectations attach cold logical possibility to them. Pegging and strangling the beauty of my dreams by producing a timeline or step-by-step method to achieving its expectation. This expectation blinds me into thinking there is something to work towards. While in life if things are meant to work they will and the more you expect them to, the harder you strive to have them in your grasp and the more you suffocate them and push them away. Expectation weighs me down, filling my pockets with lead, while I attempt to swim to a remote island getaway.

I chased after that face in my bed, of the person in that expectation. Not allowing for that moment in my projection to rather flower and form its beauty if it was intended.

 

You walk your own path, do not walk mine, it is filled with self-sacrifice.

The Balcony

Perched on a black decked balcony, this outdoor chair fades overtime with a neighbor. Sunburned, they would apply suntan lotion to the other’s legs and arms if only they could. My posture is most erect while sitting in the one to the left. Meditating. Leaning my arms on its arms, relaxed, I apply their dead weight, dropping my shoulders. Utilizing every ounce of support offered to this body I call my own. If you are familiar with a cheetah, the way they relax, figuratively as rock, as royalty in their tree would be a fair comparison to mind. Transient but strong. The chair in agonizing pain, pressure forced onto blistery skin, shedding and oozing similar to that of a tree and it’s bark and gum. I will varnish them this weekend for the peace of mind before we move homes in two weeks time.

These chairs are not normal chairs. Each modelling the generic”MADE IN CHINA” label stitched into the seam like any other chair found on this side of the globe. However they are the only chairs to be placed on this balcony. The balcony. Being on the best balcony would have to qualify them as being the best chairs, right?

I have never experienced such power in a space previously. I mean yes, particular spaces have a presence, as if they were screaming for your notice. As if they were imprisoned behind bars. As if they were teachers of the psyche, asking you to take that head of yours out of the sand and just open the eyes. I sense this presence, importance, an energy in many places. Is it just me? Well I hope not. Such a beautiful thing is made to be shared. My heart lightens, conscious awareness of my slow, composed breath suddenly strikes me. A sense of knowing, of clear understanding prevails. Associated with emotions and what I can only comprehend are the emotions which individuals have had in the same space before and to come. This balcony is one of those spaces, and more.

Looking down on a cities streetlights.

Looking up to a sky illuminated by our moon, making certain stars vanish as if they were the to-be winners of the planetary hide-and-go-seek competition.

We leave our energy on our spaces. My friends, family and I have left ours on this space. I have developed, realized, awakened, learned, failed and learned again as an individual. Everything in my life, everything  I am has changed, morphed, leveled up, eroded down and appeared with this balcony. This balcony is my energy. This balcony is my life. I changing it, it changing me.

My next balcony will be shaped by the same two Chinese chairs, distilling the same back posture in its occupants. Always there to offer friends, family and I the support we need through our joys, heartbreak, annoyances and smiles. Varnished.

It will be solely missed and longed for.