Chapter Five

The Matercentric Systems Of The Past

AT PRESENT, most of the souls on earth are halfway through a soul cycle of spiritual development. The first half, for man, involves movement away from the Great Mother, into independent creativity, followed by a return to Her through unconditional love. The first part of the cycle has resulted in a male dominated society, which stresses the fulfilment of men's individual desire and creativity. It devalues the feminine and unconditional love for all, as a way of focusing on separation and self- consciousness for men. Once this part of the cycle is complete, the second half begins, which necessarily reevaluates the feminine, and restores the sovereignty of women as the representatives of the Creator. During the first part of the cycle, it is men who develop a strong ego, supported and nourished by women. In the second half, women are able to do the same, this time supported by men, who voluntarily place their skills in the service of women, in order to learn about unconditional love.
Before our known history, there was a previous cycle in which a patriarchal society was followed by a matercentric one, and there may have been others even before that. We do not know how far back this pattern goes, because there are few records left to inform us, even if we could interpret them correctly. It is indisputably clear, however, even though evidence has been lost, destroyed or suppressed, that we have not always lived in a patriarchal society, in which women are regarded as inferior beings. Many books have been written recently on these matercentric cultures, which revered a Goddess rather than a god, and paid homage to females as equal to, if not superior to, males. We have difficulties in interpreting information which comes from a vastly different culture, but it seems clear that these societies were characterised by harmony and co-operation. Men were not mistreated, as women are in a patriarchy, which has led many male scholars to say that they could not possibly be matercentric. At best, they see them as ones in which women were allowed a share in all aspects of community life. They cannot imagine a society in which one group of people governs without oppression being present, nor one where women are the governors.
In the previous matercentric age, there were many old souls, ones who had been through all the reincarnations they needed on earth, and they were ready to leave for new experiences in other dimensions. To replace these old souls, a new group of young souls came to earth, and began a new cycle. To begin with, the old souls protected and advised the young and baby souls who were incarnating for the first time. They were probably the princes, religious leaders and government of the time, and the new souls were the common people. It seems likely too that the old souls were women, and that those they nurtured to the point of independence were the males who would take over. This system worked very well until the old souls left, leaving behind them inexperienced and relatively unevolved souls who had to exist without their support. This was a necessary event, even though it led to apparent chaos. Man needed to make his own mistakes, learn from them, and acquire consciousness, if he was to become an independent creator.
There are many people around today who believe that man has previously reached a level of technological ability which matches that of modern society, then lost it. The stories of Atlantis, for example, describe a sophisticated society, able to harness huge amounts of energy through the use of crystals. It is possible that the destruction of Atlantean society, if it existed, was for the same reason that our own society faces a threat to its survival. The level of evolution of those who ruled society was not sufficient to cope with the development of Science. Even if the evolved souls who left the planet warned the young souls of the danger, it is likely that their warnings went unheeded. They may in fact have removed most of what they thought was harmful from the new souls, in much the same way as we lock the bleach in a cupboard out of the way of the baby. Nevertheless, the patriarchal societies could have continued to produce scientific wonders, without the balancing effect of unconditional love. The result was destruction.
When human society changes from a matercentric to a patriarchal system, there is a resultant loss of harmony. What was once happy and peaceful becomes discordant and troubled by conflict. We seem to have stories about this in the Bible, which talks about the Garden of Eden before the Fall, when Adam and Eve lived in Paradise. After their banishment from Eden, they had to work by the sweat of their brow to survive. Eve was cursed with pain in childbirth to punish her for her disobedience of god, and the first murder occurred, when Cain killed his brother, Abel. The story as told in the Bible does not fit our ideas of a matercentric society giving way to a patriarchy, until we look at even earlier Jewish stories. In them, the first woman was not Eve, who was created from a rib of Adam, but Lilith. She was free and independent, not subservient to Adam. She represents the matercentric woman. After a while, she did not suit Adam, and was pushed out of Eden. Eve was her replacement, a woman created by the male god for man's use. She represents patriarchal woman, who is told by god that obedience and submission is her role. As soon as man i.e. Adam ceases to connect totally with the Great Mother and goes his own way, then Paradise comes to an end. Naturally enough, Eve is blamed for the hardship and unhappiness which followed, and which has not yet come to an end. She is seen as the one who tempted Adam to disobey the god, and caused our fall from grace and sinlessness. All we can say is that she was framed!
There are echoes of this same story in the Tarot, about which we'll say more later. But if we briefly look at the card which is called 'The Lovers,' we can see the same scenario. A man is choosing between two women. Each artist who has interpreted the Tarot has drawn it in different ways, but the underlying message is always the same. When man chooses the matercentric woman, often symbolised by an older woman, or his mother, he is choosing the path of the Goddess. When he selects the younger, or more passive woman, he is following the path of the god.
Nowadays, it seems normal to us to have a male god. When we look at some Eastern religions which still have goddesses, we dismiss them as pagan or superstitious belief systems. But the further back one looks into history, the more one finds goddesses and not gods. Men tend to dismiss this finding with comments about primitive nature worship, and the supposition that women were revered only because of their childbearing powers. There is a widespread attitude that goddess worship was a part of man's religious 'childhood,' and that he abandoned it as soon as he became more mature and enlightened. Man does not wish to know that at one time women were leaders of their people, and men, as well as women, prayed to a female deity. A good example of this way of thinking can be shown when we look at Egypt and the Pharaohs. Originally, the Pharaohs were female, and the representatives of the all-powerful goddess Isis. They were looked on as divine themselves. Later on, when Egypt became patriarchal, descent was still traced through the female line, because this was the link to Isis. In order for a man to rule, he had to marry either his sister, or in some cases, his mother. Not only did this shock the Victorian men who were exploring the tombs of the Pharaohs, it left them baffled, because they could think of no other reason than moral decadence to explain this behaviour. What is even more telling, is that they uncovered the rich tombs of the earlier Pharaohs, who were clearly the supreme rulers, and assumed that they were men. Even when the sarcophagus contained the remains of a woman, they thought that this must be the wife of the Pharaoh, or perhaps his mother. The same has occurred when the graves of female warriors have been opened. Even though the women were buried with their weapons and clearly died in battle, the archaeologists have refused to accept the obvious conclusion. They have twisted themselves in knots with stories of wives who were buried instead of the male warrior because his body was not recovered from the battlefield etc. Sometimes, of course, women have been forced to commit suicide and be interred with their husband's body when he died. Slaves too. But in these cases, the male is clearly identifiable and in a prominent position in the grave.
Britain was also matercentric at one time, though of course, records do not exist of this time, only myth and legend. When we look back only two thousand years or so, to the time when the Romans invaded Britain, there were still female leaders. Boudicca, or Boadicea, was a queen in her own right, and any school child can give you her name. The Romans, who were the incoming patriarchal culture, were aware that descent came through the female line, not the male. It was for this reason that they raped and then murdered her daughters, ensuring that Boudicca's kingdom (sic) would be left without heirs.
The deities in the last matercentric society were not all female, although the Great Mother was seen as the Creator. There was god worship too. Sometimes the Goddess had a consort, or a son, who was always lesser than Her. His role varied. In many societies, he became the sacrificial victim who ensured that the crops grew. This was often enacted literally, and a young man would be killed to safeguard the harvest. His blood was the offering of the people to the Great Mother, in return for which they would receive food to sustain them. His death also reflected the endless cycle of birth, death and renewal which the people saw around them and accepted as part of the Great Mother's nature. The parallels between these beliefs and Christianity have been pointed out by many writers. In both traditions, a young man sacrifices himself for others, and his blood is offered as new life for them. In both traditions he is the son of a virgin, either the Great Mother, or the Virgin Mary. In the matercentric system, however, a virgin is a whole woman, who needs no man to complete her. She is independent and self-sufficient. In a patriarchy, a virgin is a woman who has not had sex with a man, and is valued because of this. She can be bought and possessed by her husband as untouched goods.
Some matercentric gods, like Pan, were half-animal, half-human, because the Great Mother is also Goddess of Nature. Pan was half- goat, half-man, but there were others which combined horses, bulls, stags and dogs with humans. The strength and potency of these animals was emphasised in the god, who would often be depicted with a huge erect phallus. Although we like to talk knowledgeably today about 'phallic symbols,' like cars, tall buildings etc., what we have to remember is that the penis is itself a phallic symbol. It represents the part of man which belongs to the Great Mother, and can create by reuniting with her. Matercentric society celebrated sexuality, as we have mentioned before. A rampant male god not only emphasised fertility and abundance, but indicated an honest appreciation of the male sex organ. Elsewhere, of course, the breasts and vulva of the woman were depicted as sacred, which is a long way from our society's distaste for them as anything other than secret sex toys for men. Now we have lost our reverence for our Creator, the penis, breasts and vulva are seen from an entirely sexual viewpoint, rather than a reproductive or creative one. Because we do not wish to enquire too closely into the sacredness of these parts of the body, because they are representative of the Great Mother, we have placed taboos on them. They are 'naughty'.
It may be that in a matercentric age, men were subservient sexually as well as politically, which is the reverse of the case in our society. Christianity emphasises to us that it is a woman's duty to satisfy her husband's sexual needs, because it is a patriarchal religion.
Pamela: When I first married, out of my sexual ignorance I bought a book which promised me a totally wonderful sex life as a married woman. It told me that my happiness lay in what was called 'loving service' to my man. Even if I felt no desire for sex, I was to submit to my husband's desires, and in that way find fulfilment. Eventually, the book said, emotional gratification at having pleased my husband would give rise to physical pleasure, but if it never happened, I would still be happy because my husband was satisfied.
This attitude towards female sexuality is still prevalent twenty years on, despite reams of articles and books on the 'new woman' and her enjoyment of multiple orgasms. Nor is it wrong. The patriarchal woman can gain immense emotional satisfaction from seeing the pleasure of her husband, and desire nothing for herself. Others simply put up with sex as a duty, or positively hate it. In a matercentric society, part of man's service to women may well be to place her sexual pleasure before his own desires, and women may expect as well as want this. More and more women are moving towards this by reconnecting with their full sexual nature, and demanding fulfilment. The fulfilment will come when both sexes move onto the path of the Goddess. Until then, women will still need to give, and men to receive.
In patriarchal pornography, we find fantasies of men subjugating women, and taking the emotional content out of sex. This allows men to use women without giving love to them. In matercentric times, men will have fantasies of worshipping women. Here, the emotional contact is much greater, and there may be no thought at all of sex with the woman. The very idea of this both frightens and repulses a truly patriarchal man, because he always does his best to remove feelings for the woman from any sexual experience. He fears that if he were to begin to care, then his selfish behaviour would be compromised, and he would gain less pleasure. Many men today feel forced to take their partner's needs seriously, when in fact they don't care two hoots whether she has an orgasm or not. This produces a confusing situation. The woman does not experience much pleasure, because the man is not giving her love, yet he may be a technically proficient lover. She may conclude that she is at fault, which does nothing for the development of either her ego or her sex life. Or she may have a very loving man as a partner, yet still be unable to enjoy sex fully. There is no way that a woman can become completely responsive on a sexual level while she still has internal conflict, however loving her partner is. She needs to resolve this rather than try complicated sexual manoeuvres. The form of her difficulties may vary but the content is always the same - the patriarchal part of the woman is denying her in favour of the man, or the man, whatever his overt behaviour, is still locked into the patriarchal attitude that his pleasure is paramount. The answer for all women is to develop their connection to the Great Mother, and learn to love themselves, in whatever way is necessary.
Although we can say definitely that Jehovah, Allah and Jupiter are patriarchal gods, and that Pan is a matercentric god, there are others who fall between the two categories, such as Dionysius, Jesus and Buddha. Dionysius and Jesus were both reputedly sons of a virgin and therefore of the Great Mother. Both died and were reborn. They each talked about freedom and unconditional love, and attacked the unloving rigid patriarchal societies of their day. They were unconventional and life- affirming. The worship of Dionysius, like the worship of Jesus, soon became corrupted from its original ideals. Like Pan, who ended his days as the Christian Devil, Dionysius was eventually seen as a dissolute and evil character. As for Jesus, - his words were twisted to serve patriarchal society, when in fact many of his values and aspirations for people are totally in line with those of the Goddess worshippers before him. Buddhism, which arose from the words and ideas of Gautama Buddha, was likewise never entirely patriarchal in concept. It is very similar to Taoism, which was probably a matercentric religion, and which slowly became patriarchal as the patriarchal age dawned in China.
Matercentric beliefs never completely died out, despite the strenuous efforts of the rulers and priests. Christianity incorporates many ideas which come from a much older system than Jehovah worship. The idea of 'turning the other cheek,' for example, did not fit in with Jewish ideas of retribution and revenge by god. Nor did Christ's teachings on god being a god for all peoples, not merely the Jews. Other matercentric ideas were practised in secret, or changed into a form which could be incorporated into the prevailing patriarchal religion. Festivals and celebrations which had originated to worship the Great Mother, were Christianised and purified of all 'pagan' content.
There was no lack of effort when it came to patriarchal society's attempt to eradicate all vestiges of goddess worship. People were not only told that the new male god would punish them for worshipping a female deity, but that such activity was evil and immoral. We have few reliable records of what bloodshed resulted from the wiping out of matercentric religions, but we do have an example much closer to our own era, which has been well documented. The wholesale slaughter of women claimed to be witches, in Mediaeval times, is a clear manifestation of the fear and hatred of the Great Mother. Some of the women may have practised the Old religion, Wicca, in which women were valued, but many were entirely innocent and ignorant victims of a mad blood lust focused on females. The male priests claimed the women were in league with the Devil, who was the Horned god, or Pan, of the Old religion. No mention was made that the supreme deity they worshipped was female. Having said the women were evil, the men felt free to practise all sorts of cruelties on them. This process of dehumanising people so that you can torture and kill them is not confined to the era of witch hunting, of course. We can see it in society today, wherever there is war and hatred of any kind.
There is good reason to believe that the elimination of knowledge about matercentric societies still goes on. It is now too difficult to deny that the old Minoan civilisation, centred on Crete, was female-orientated, but scholars can still evade or diminish the mounting evidence that Amazonian i.e. warrior women, existed. Patriarchal society is unhappy to acknowledge that women were ever anything other than pawns in a male game. Even when we have a female ruler of a country, the woman is criticised for behaviour which would go unremarked on in a male. A good example is Catherine the Great of Russia, whose supposed proclivity for young male lovers is commented on far more than if she had been male. There is also patronising surprise in historians' voices when a female rules capably, and credit is often given to her male advisers.
One of the difficulties faced by anyone trying to piece together a picture of a matercentric society is the lack of hard evidence. Part of the problem is undoubtedly the destruction of information by patriarchal men, but other factors contribute as well. Patriarchal society enjoys laws, rules, hierarchies and structures, knowledge of which is usually preserved in documents or on tablets of stone. The Ten Commandments is a classic example of this. Matercentric society, being much freer and laissez-faire, would be unlikely to have so many records, except perhaps ones concerning harvests or trade. The art of the culture would be well represented, since it would be highly valued as an expression of the life force, but it is more difficult to interpret clearly than lists of kings, wars and conquests. Also, we may not have evidence from any truly matercentric society, but from ones which were a transitional stage. If we look for example at Wicca, which has managed to survive for many centuries, despite Christianity's attempts to eradicate it, we see a religion which is a mishmash of both patriarchal and matercentric features. It worships the Great Mother, and espouses individual freedom and love, but it has rituals and regulations, and a hierarchical structure of high priests and priestesses. In a truly matercentric society, the woman who becomes the leader does not do so by virtue of passing exams, fighting for supremacy, or having a title conferred on her. She exhibits the wisdom and love of the Great Mother, in great measure, and it is this which gives her power. In such a society, there can be no artificial demarcation lines between religious and secular life. All is one.
In one sense, it could be said that there will never be a matercentric religion or society, and one has never existed in the past. The coming of a matercentric age means the end of organised religion, with its dogma and structures. Each person will be free to worship the Great Mother in any form, - in ways which we may not be able to imagine at the moment. There will be no necessity for books which instruct you in how to live your life, or for buildings which separate worship from everyday existence. Every activity will be harmonious, and therefore an offering to the Great Mother, who merely wishes us to be happy and creative. Naturally, people may still congregate together for all sorts of reasons, but the formalising of this into a set ritual will no longer exist, because it destroys spontaneity. Priests also cannot be necessary in a society which allows an individual to contact the Creator directly. While the matercentric age is still coming into being, there will be those who are 'further along' in their evolution than others, and therefore more in touch with the Great Mother. They can help and advise others who wish it, but in no way will this imply that they are superior or that they must be obeyed. It is patriarchal society which insists on rank and concepts of progress towards the deity or a heaven. Such a thing will not exist in a truly matercentric era, which sees everyone as a unique individual, yet an equal part of an undivided creation.
Some of these ideas are very difficult to assimilate. We are so used to rigid structures in both religion and society in general that we can't envisage doing without them. But men in particular are going to find that a world in which no one gives or receives orders is much happier for them. Very few men get to give orders; most have to follow them, and not usually in the interests of their own good. We can see this very clearly if we look at the events of the First World War. Millions of men went 'over the top' to be mowed down by machine gun fire, on the orders of generals safely tucked up at Headquarters. Most obeyed the orders without question. Those who refused, or deserted to avoid their fate, were killed by their own side as traitors. We can't imagine women in the same situation. Not only would it put paid to the reproduction of human beings if this happened, but a large group of women would not walk to their deaths simply because someone has ordered them to. They are quite capable of sacrificing themselves for love of people, but not for an abstract idea like patriotism.
Some people will argue that if society is not organised, then there will be a wasting of resources, and this is one of the reasons why the last matercentric society, if it indeed existed, died out. Discipline, efficiency and structures are necessary to progress. If people are allowed to do whatever they want to do, who will plant the crops and harvest them; who will do the jobs no one wants to do - the shit-work of society, like emptying dustbins and cleaning the streets, digging for coal and caring for the mentally insane? There is an underlying assumption that most of our actions are motivated by necessity, duty or financial need rather than pleasure. Remove those, and everyone will sit around contemplating their navels or getting drunk rather than working. If there is no reward in the shape of money, power and status, the story goes, who will bother to train for years to become an accountant or doctor?
The collision between the matercentric way of looking at life and the patriarchal equivalent is shown by Shakespeare in 'Anthony and Cleopatra.' Cleopatra's Egypt was a last bastion of matercentric society, with a Queen who was the divine representative of the Goddess Isis, and a relaxed, pleasure- loving ethos. The Egyptians loved their queen, who was the embodiment of a rounded human being. She was not perfect, but she loved life, and she was capable of deep emotional and physical response to others. The Romans, in contrast, were focused on work, which in this case meant conquest, and the disciplining of large bodies of men into armies. They had a contempt for the common people which enabled them to use them as pawns in a power game. They saw women, emotions and pleasure as unnecessary luxuries, and despised them. Anthony has a foot in both camps. The matercentric side of him adores Cleopatra, but the patriarchal part owes allegiance to Rome and concepts such as honour, loyalty and obedience. Though he chooses Cleopatra, he is still divided within himself, and loses his life as a result. Rome wins, and Caesar adds Egypt to the Empire. Cleopatra's children are murdered, so that there will be no rebellions in the future.
So, to get back to the issue of the whether a matercentric society is wasteful, what exactly would happen within it? Would there be large-scale idleness and hedonism, leaving essential work undone, as Caesar obviously thought in 'Anthony and Cleopatra'? The answer is both yes and no. Our society makes meaningless work in large quantities. Most bureaucracies and legal or governmental systems generate huge amounts of non- productive paperwork. Large multinational companies do the same. Products are manufactured to have a brief life, so that the consumer will have to replace the item within a short space of time. Efficient and long-lasting machines are suppressed by vested interests. We use fossil fuels in large quantities to run internal combustion engines, which are only 20 -25% efficient, and run about in them while they are half-empty. It is a cliche to say that we have a disposable society, but nevertheless it is true. We cut down trees to make advertising hand-outs which reach only as far as the rubbish bin, and package everything in plastic which then has to be thrown away. Our technology has enabled us to lead healthier and more prosperous lives, in some ways, but there is no doubt that it is hugely wasteful of time, energy, resources and human potential. In a matercentric society, since there would be no structures, there would be no waste of people's time in supporting the structures. No taxation or law means no tax inspectors or lawyers. No crime means no policemen or criminals. Health as a result of harmony means fewer doctors or nurses. People will be free to choose an activity which fulfils them, and makes them happy. In a system which has underlying harmony, no direction of people into specific areas, like agriculture or mining will be necessary. It will work organically, without the necessity for regulatory devices and coercion, and no one will be deprived of anything because they choose not to 'work.' Jesus puts it beautifully in the Bible when he describes his vision of a world which is responding only to love.
'Consider the lilies of the field. They toil not, neither do they spin. Yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.'
All this is a long way off, and we could be accused of naive idealism about the far future, which may never happen. Of course none of this will occur overnight, just as the change-over from the last matercentric era did not happen in an instant. What we can do, though, is to trust that the Great Mother has our welfare in mind, and that harmony and happiness is possible. Only our belief that structures and rules are necessary keeps them in existence. We can, if we choose, throw away the crutches, and walk without them, or we can dig in our heels and refuse to move.
It is far easier and more sensible, to mix our metaphors well and truly now, to swim with the current rather than against it. In the last analysis, it makes very little difference if we resist the changes which are happening in our society. They are manifestations of the Will of the Great Mother moving, and both necessary and inevitable. They will produce confusion, upheaval and distress in direct proportion to our resistance to them. If we do not trust that the changes are for the good of all, however they might look, we will fight to retain the world as we have known it. Men in particular may resist the growing power of women with great fear and rage, to the point of being willing to destroy the planet rather than allow the necessary movement towards the feminine. There are many famous predictions that the world will come to an end towards the close of this century. They are right, but it does not have to be through fire, famine, nuclear war or a comet striking the earth, as some of the hypotheses suggest. The end of the world will be the end of patriarchal society. Those souls who refuse to move with the Will of the Great Mother may shift to another reality in which one of these awful scenarios actually occurs. This will not be punishment by the Great Mother, but a result of their own choices. They will prefer to experience this catastrophe rather than respond to the movement towards the Great Mother. Others may not have such an extreme response, but feel that a few concessions here and there are all that is necessary. They may go through the motions of changing their behaviour to fit in with new levels of consciousness they do not actually feel, and be confused when their intellect tells them one thing and their emotions another. We all prefer the devil we know to the devil we don't, except that in this case the devil is not evil but the Great Mother, misunderstood and devalued for millenia. She is here to give us all we need. All we have to do is ask. As Jesus said. 'Knock and the door will be opened. Seek and you shall find.' As soon as we want joy and unlimited creativity, the Great Mother will show us the way to find it.

Chapter Six

Changing Paths.From The Limited To The Unlimited Universe

IF YOU BELIEVE in flying saucers and aliens, pixies and fairies, ghosts and clairvoyance, not to mention parallel universes, time travel and the existence of reincarnation, then you are not a patriarchal scientist. All of these things are outside the model of the universe which such people have built, because whether or not they exist is something which cannot be proved. Patriarchal scientists want a controllable universe, and anything which is outside the reach of empirical proof, which can't be verified, doesn't exist, as far as they are concerned.
Despite the fact that many scientists (the most famous example being Einstein) use intuition to arrive at answers to difficult questions, they refuse to acknowledge its validity as the prime source of their knowledge. They prefer to use the tools of logic and mathematics to prove that what they currently think is true, backed up by actual physical proof if at all possible. Emotion and subjectivity are held to have no place in scientific research. Because of this, we have had a singularly unbalanced view of the universe until recently, when more matercentrically inclined scientists emerged. The universe described by patriarchal scientists seemed to have a finite boundary. It worked something like an amazingly large clock, with rules and regulations which covered its actions, and it possessed no mechanism for interaction with human beings. It satisfied the inherent need for order possessed by patriarchal scientists, yet it was an order that had no soul. It was entirely impersonal and external.
Scientists resisted new ideas and new ways of looking at the world with amazing tenacity, despite their apparent thirst for knowledge. One of the reasons they did this was that the ego, which in itself is not an impediment, blocked their vision. On a simple level, they didn't want to let go of old ideas, because they may have spent long years learning about them, or developing them, and to acknowledge that they needed to revise their ideas would have been devastating. A man who has been given status, honours and respect for his knowledge in a certain area, is often loath to abandon his fixed ideas in favour of new ones. He will obstruct younger men arriving on the scene with fresh views unless the evidence for them is overwhelming, and even then he may still resist. This is all explained quite rationally in terms of 'necessary proof,' and sensible comments about 'insufficient evidence,' but behind all this is usually the massive ego of some powerful scientist, or the vested interests of those who are similarly threatened by the new theories.
On a collective level, the ego also prevents the influx of new ideas. It was easy, for example, for white scientists to 'prove' the inferiority of other races when there was an investment in this being true. Only when society changed its attitude towards such people, and it began to affect the scientists' views, could we see that most of the 'evidence' was irrelevant or spurious. The myth of the patriarchal scientist, that his ideas have been unaffected by emotion or bias, and are hard cold truth, is absolute nonsense. Once the so-called 'rational' scientist had escaped the censorship of the mediaeval church, and was not likely to be burned at the stake for telling us that the Earth circled the sun, he firmly believed that he was dealing with objective facts in his scientific experiments, and nothing else. He chose not to see that the very areas he looked at were determined by his consciousness. He selected avenues of knowledge which could be used in a physical way, for example. He found methods of harnessing and controlling energy , of exploring the mechanics of disease, without any desire to probe into the deeper meanings of these things. In doing so, he improved the lot of mankind in many ways, but without addressing the real malaise at the heart of society, negative use of ego energies and ignorance. His aim was merely to gain knowledge which he could use in a controlling way, and therefore the information had to be 'real,' i.e. repeatable, physical and exploitable.
People who believe in ghosts, aliens and nature spirits etc, operate from a different premise altogether. Those who have encountered such beings have strikingly similar experiences. There is never any 'hard' evidence to support their stories as being true, rendering them inevitably 'false' to a conventional patriarchal scientist. At best such people are seen as imaginative, at worst, nuts. The limiting of information to the sphere of the purely physical is what we call Science. Anything else is put in another category, such as 'religious experience,' 'mental illness' or 'primitive beliefs.' This is not to say that ghosts exist, or that aliens land on this planet, just that the attitude of patriarchal science is one which precludes us finding out. We are brain-washed by their methods, into believing that what they say is real, is all there is.
Recent discoveries in science have blurred these hard and fast boundaries between what is 'real' i.e. predictable, and what is not real. We have realised that the subjective experience of the universe is as valid as the so-called 'objective' one. In other words, we are seeing that we are connected to the universe and not external to it. At the same time, we learn from relativistic theory that we are the centre of the universe, but then so is everyone else. We have also realised that the universe does not conform to the limitations we place on it, and like the Great Mother, is beyond the scope of our limited minds and experiments. So we are returning to a more holistic view of the universe, one in which there is room for both interaction and mystery.
When male scientists change onto the path of the Goddess, they encounter the same problems as anyone else. Their certainty about what is real or right becomes less sure. It is no longer so easy to say in any given situation that a particular thing will definitely happen, or, in moral terms, that it should. This may show itself as a lack of confidence. When you have been told for millenia that certain things are 'right,' so others are 'wrong,' the ability to suspend judgement because you're not so sure anymore can look like weakness. All around you are people who seem to be decisive about everything. They know and you don't anymore. The capacity to decide on a purely selfish basis also disappears, because you begin to feel that others have a point of view, and your ego no longer feels the need to be right at any cost. The patriarchal view of god being on your side because in some way you are one of the chosen, begins to fade. You can't deceive yourself anymore that your belief systems are Absolute Truth. The Tao Te Ching described the sense of confusion experienced by a man moving onto the path of the Goddess, over two thousand years ago.

Sacrifice learning
And you will have no anxieties.
For what difference is there
Between Yes and No?
What difference is there
Between Good and Evil?
What all men fear
Must I also fear?
Their fears are endless.
All men seem happy
As if enjoying a party
Or dancing on the Spring terraces.
I alone am quiet
Not expressing my thoughts
Like a baby who has not learned to smile
Alone, with no place to go.
All men have what they want
I alone seem to have nothing.
I seem to be a fool
Unsure and indecisive.
Other men are clever
I alone am dull.
Other men sparkle
I am just a bore.
I am aimless, like the wind
Drifting through my life.
All men know their position
I alone do not.
For I differ from other men
I seek only to be cared for by the Mother.

At the point of changing to the path of the Goddess, each person begins to make a stronger connection to the Great Mother, and starts to feel an awareness of Her true nature, although this may be resisted because of fear. Men particularly, who have abused and denied women, may fear terrible punishment from a dark and vengeful Mother Goddess. Their god was interested in retribution, so they cannot imagine 'getting away with' all their 'sins'.
The renewal of the links with the Great Mother is accomplished in an entirely individual way, since everyone is unique, but it can have its difficulties. There is very little literature, for example, to guide someone who is changing paths, and so they may continue to practise a patriarchal religion, but with a different emphasis. Others may feel their way into a new relationship with Her on an entirely intuitive basis, somehow 'knowing' without words. This knowledge leads to different behaviour, without any consciously formulated reason why.
Since many people do not practise a religion at all, and have no conscious ideas about changing their concept of a deity, sometimes more mundane images are used to tune into the Great Mother. For example, in sexual fantasy there is the image of the dominatrix, or dominant mistress. She usually dresses in black leather and boots, often carries a whip, and may wear a mask. This figure provokes fear, adoration and sexual lust in certain men, because she embodies for them their new consciousness of the Great Mother. In submitting to a dominant female, the man shows humility, in contrast to his normal arrogance, which shows he is changing paths. In the woman, even if she is only acting out a role, it gives a feeling of power, which she may translate quite literally as power over the man, because she too is still in the process of abandoning patriarchal values. Just because this figure is sexual, and mixes in with it all sorts of patriarchal ideas of punishment, hierarchy and submission to a greater power, does not mean it is wrong. It may be just the right image to allow both the man and the woman to evolve.
The dominatrix wears black because this is the colour of the Great Mother. For millenia, we in the West have associated white with good and black with evil. Witches, for example, traditionally rode at night and had black cats as familiars. The 'black' races on earth have been regarded as inferior to the white races. The feminine side of our nature is seen as evil by Christianity, so it became black by definition. When we have 'sinned,' our souls are described as being black as a result, and when we die, our mourners wear black, the colour of death, to show respect. Light, or day, is seen as good , and night or darkness as bad. All our religious imagery centres around this. We talk about 'seeing the light,' or 'becoming enlightened,' for example, and many people who have mystical experiences describe a pure and clear light which transports them into a state of ecstasy. All this is a consequence of our dualistic way of perceiving the universe. We divide it into light and dark, good and bad, male and female, then decide one is better than the other. In our patriarchal world, light, which is consciousness, and is associated with males, becomes good, and darkness, which is everything else, becomes bad. It is a little like shining a tiny torch beam into a vast space, then saying only those things which can be picked out by the light are valuable. Everything else is worthless.
In the beginning was the Great Mother, who is all there is. It was her will to create, and her child is Light or consciousness. But Light is not separate from her, and in opposition. It is merely the part of Her which is conscious of seeing. A simpler way of thinking about it is to imagine yourself immersed in a warm bath. If you allow your fingers to emerge from the water, they become visible as eight disconnected objects; not only that, but they appear to be able to move independently, strengthening the idea that they are totally separate. Under the water, of course, they are joined to the rest of your body, and their freedom of movement is limited by that fact.
The part of your body under the water can be seen as the unconscious, i.e. it is everything we can't see and be aware of. In this sense the water is darkness, because it contains everything which is not visible to our conscious minds. The light, which is everything we can see, is represented by the air above the water. Because light, or consciousness, illuminates such a tiny part of everything, it can seem that we are separate from each other, just as the fingers seem separate. This has led to disharmony, because we attempt to build our societies on the basis of our feelings of individuality, ignoring the fact that we are connected at a level below our conscious minds. The knowledge of our connectedness is available, and we can make it conscious, just as you can make the completeness of your body clear by stepping out of the bath. Normally, our fingers are 'aware' of each other. The fingers can still be moving in a different way from their neighbours, but they work together harmoniously, the result being that the hands perform useful actions. If they attempted to move with no regard for one another at all, the outcome would be chaos. We have chosen to ignore our connectedness to others, and put it in the darkness, along with the Great Mother. We have instead, 'lit up' the patriarchal values of the separate ego, and seen everything else as either non-existent or evil.
This metaphor has its limits, but it serves to explain why the colour of the Great Mother is black. We came from her darkness, and we will return to it, not as we do now, through death, but through allowing ourselves to be aware of all that we are, and responding with acceptance.
The dominatrix also wears a mask, to represent the mysteriousness of the Great Mother, who is unknown and unknowable. If we look back in history, we find that the goddess Isis was always veiled, because of her unfathomable nature. No mortal man could look on her true being until he had passed all the tests of the soul, which of course meant he had to acknowledge her power.
If we look at the style of clothes the dominatrix wears, we find that they are not in any way conventionally 'feminine.' Nor is her way of behaving. She is a 'doing' type of woman, so in our patriarchal terms, much more 'masculine' in orientation than a stereotypical female. She makes things happen, whereas a 'feminine' woman is one who has things happen to her. She allows a man to make her decisions for her. In return she devotes herself to him, and forgets any desires she might have that do not promote his welfare. A dominant woman remains free to choose her own path. She is the one in control of her life, but at the same time she is still looking after the man. One does not exclude the other as it does in patriarchal society. In this she reflects the Great Mother, who knows how to help us, if we will allow that help, yet we always have free will. The man who desires a dominatrix wants to surrender to the Great Mother through his submission to a woman, even if his motivation is sexual pleasure.
The whip is another potent and ancient symbol. Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt were depicted holding a crook in one hand, and a whip or flail in the other. The crook was to guide the people, and the whip was to punish or control them. When we look at some of the images associated with Jesus Christ, we see that the 'Good Shepherd' is a prominent one. The shepherd leads his flock and gathers in the strays with his crook, but the emphasis is on caring. It is a matercentric symbol. The whip is for the path of the god, because it is an instrument of coercion. It shows us that a man who gains pleasure from being punished, or from the threat of punishment, is still on that path, still changing over from a patriarchal to a matercentric way of thinking.
Many people in our world believe in Karma, though they have different ideas of what it is. The most commonly accepted definition is summed up in the phrase, 'As ye sow, so shall you reap.' If you have harmed someone, then in turn you will be harmed, perhaps in a future life if you believe in reincarnation. At its most primitive level, karma is seen as a punishment. You may be born blind, for example, because you have blinded someone in a previous life, and the punishment will allow you not only to suffer because of your wrongdoing, but experience blindness as a 'lesson'. It is part and parcel of the patriarchal ethos of suffering as a teacher. In recent history, this particular idea of karma has been expanded a little to allow for freewill. It now says that you experience retribution for your sins through your own free choice. Before you incarnate, you decide which 'bad' karma to pay off, and live your life accordingly, suffering meekly at the hands of those you harmed in other lives. There is 'good' karma of course, favours to be paid back to you because of helpful actions you have done, but the emphasis is on retribution.
The idea of karma as a punishment can only exist in a world which worships a wrathful deity. It also ignores the fact that everyone is connected at a deeper level, and emphasises the separation of victim and aggressor, so it must be a patriarchal idea. There can be no such thing as a victim when we realise that we choose everything that happens to us, and collude with our oppressors at an unconscious level. Even women, who have been abused for thousands of years, consented to this abuse, by giving their power over to men, so that mankind could pursue the path of the god. This does not in any way excuse unloving actions and place the blame for everything with the 'victim.' Too many patriarchal apologists have done this already, by blaming the poor for their poverty, or the oppressed for their oppression, in an attempt to justify their lack of compassion and involvement in the plight of those who are suffering. It merely shows us that we can choose again, either to reclaim our power from the abuser, or to stop oppressing others. Indeed we must. Our life and destiny are firmly in our hands, and we should realise this. If you can change your consciousness, then external events will also alter, to fit in with your new state of being. Once you realise that all the 'bad' things that have happened to you were because of your own confusion and denial of your will, how could you wish to punish anyone? All you will want to do is to seek out and rescue those parts of you which still wish to suffer, in order to comfort them, and teach them about self-love. Having done that, you can then take action to change the world about you.
The man who is adoring and obeying a dominatrix who carries a whip is still in the grip of patriarchal ideas about karma. He firmly believes that punishment is necessary if you have been 'bad.' He has a dim idea that he has been a naughty boy in the past, by behaving selfishly and callously towards women, so he must be chastised. Though he will feel pain from this punishment at a physical level, at an emotional level it will satisfy him, because in some way he sees the pain as 'atonement' for his 'sins.' The woman herself is also still partly patriarchal. She too still believes in punishment. Men have used her selfishly, and reduced her to the status of a slave, so they deserve to be hurt. She may take great pleasure in inflicting pain on the man, out of a strong desire for revenge.
The scenario we've described, though it still contains many patriarchal elements, may be a great leap forward for the participants. The man has begun to realise that he has caused pain to other people, by denying and controlling them, and he feels remorse, however unconscious this is. Because he is only just beginning to change paths, he does not know that all he has to do is be different from now on, forgive himself, and allow the will of the Great Mother to assist him in responding lovingly to others. Even that will be difficult enough, because his ego is still very strong. It assures him that dreadful things will happen if he stops being so selfish, and he still fears the unknown. He is caught between fear of loss if he changes, and a growing realisation that he is changing anyway. To 'practise' submission and adoration of a woman in a sexual context may enable him eventually to extend his growth into other areas. The woman, similarly, may find that she does not have the feelings in 'normal life' that she experiences as a dominatrix. She too can experience her power in a limited way, in this context, and see what it feels like. To dismiss this activity as debased, trivial or imperfect, is to miss its significance. It is possible to leap from a patriarchal way of being to a matercentric one in an instant of total realisation, but most people require slow and steady change, through activities which suit them as individuals.
We are reaching a stage of society where many women are becoming increasingly aware of their oppressed role within patriarchal society, and are slowly changing paths. Many of them are extremely angry, and willing to express this anger in a forcible way. If a man comes along who wishes to be dominated or punished by them, they will happily oblige, whether he has actually harmed them or not. In this way they release the patriarchal side of them, which looks for retribution and revenge, and sees life in terms of a power game. Other women do not feel anger, because they have truly reached the stage of forgiveness and understanding. They merely cease to be in the state of mind which allows them to be oppressed, by recovering their connection to the Great Mother. Still other women are angry, but not yet aware of it, or too afraid to act it out. They may resort to subtle manipulation and cruelty in an effort to 'get even' with men, yet still appear 'nice' people to themselves and others.
Many feminists leaving the path of the god have decided that they want nothing more to do with men. They view them as so destructive that any contact is anathema. Sometimes such women also become lesbians, and refuse to rear male children. They mix only with women, and interpret everything in their lives in terms of female energies and symbols.
In the old witches' covens, although women predominated, there was an attempt to pair the sexes so as to have a balance of male and female energies. Some of the 'New Age' witches have dispensed with this, and only allow women to join. They say that this leaves them free to worship the Great Mother without the negativity of men interfering. Some of these women have also written books reinterpreting history only in terms of women. Just as the patriarchs removed all goddesses and feminine symbols from their religions, and saw women as unworthy and unclean, so these women are doing the same to masculine symbols. They have, for instance, brought out a version of the Tarot which has no men in it. The Magician becomes The Witch, and on the Lovers card there are three women, not two women and a man.
There are many manifestations of different behaviours when a person is changing paths, since each person is on an individual road which eventually leads to reunion. We should not be fooled into making judgements on the basis of the outward form of behaviour. Our perceptions are so limited that we really can't tell whether an action is loving or unloving; nor can we see inner motivations. Someone who appears to be caring and responsible may be acting that way in order to earn brownie points from their deity. The action doesn't spring from love, but is part of their self-discipline and control. Perhaps the best thing for us all to do is to get on with our own growth, and interfere with others as little as possible, asking for help from the Great Mother to achieve this.
When people change to the path of the Goddess, they not only experience confusion and uncertainty because they are moving into new areas of expression; they can also encounter the resistance of patriarchal society. This can range from disapproval and derision to violence, imprisonment or death. To a certain extent, this can be avoided by removing internal conflict before acting out new beliefs, but not all of us are so methodical or sure what's going on. The human race is moving into new territory, and no-one has yet explained to us what the purpose is.
Twenty years ago, a man who stayed home to look after his children would have been looked on as unmanly. So too would a man who made it clear that he was totally uninterested in his career. We have moved on, yet those now in the forefront of change are just as likely to be laughed at or locked up. We can just about accept that a young man may be eccentric enough to love a woman much older than himself, but we still consider transvestites as abnormal or sick. Yet such a man may only be expressing his inability to cope with the role society has handed him as a male. He may wish to be more 'feminine,' i.e. more passive and caring, and translates this into dressing in female clothes, or wearing frilly knickers under his more conventional male garments. It is not that he is homosexual. Most transvestites are not. He simply does not wish to 'wear the trousers' anymore, in the sense of being in charge within a heterosexual relationship. We may say that he is being a little too literal in the way he has shown us his dissatisfaction, but in the end it's up to him. He may also be following a long tradition of worshipping the Great Mother by wearing female clothes, although he is unlikely to be aware of this. Shamans and other devotees of the healing and magical powers of the Goddess in ancient religions, wore female clothes, to acknowledge the supremacy of the Goddess. To a certain extent, this was also sympathetic magic, as it is with the transvestite. The priests of the Goddess wore long dresses because they hoped to tap into the female power of women, as matercentric cultures became patriarchal. We can see the last vestiges of this in the long robes of male priests today.
Men with 'dominating' wives are similarly looked on with contempt by patriarchal society. It is seen as unnatural and unfeminine for a woman to make decisions, whereas a decisive, assertive man is not only a 'real' man, but attractive to women as well. Those men who find a strong woman just as sexy as the patriarchal woman finds the strong man, are growing in number, yet they will still encounter opposition from other men, who feel threatened by such women's confidence and lack of passivity.
The whole realm of sexuality is bound to change as we move onto the path of the Goddess. For thousands of years, while men have been separating themselves from the Great Mother, and hating both Her and women, they have been also redefining for us all what sex is and how it should be used. One of the most fundamental distortions has been their over-simplification of sexuality. This comes out in the Christian church as 'sex is for reproduction only,' something which reduces women to a walking womb for the production of male children. But it also leads to other nonsenses. Until recently, our society has divided us neatly at the level of sexuality, as it divides us at every other level, and assigns values to those artificial divisions. We are men who are attracted to women, or we are women who are attracted to men. If we do not fall into either category 100% of the time, then we are evil, sick, or if they are being kind, 'confused.' Although some patriarchal societies have allowed and encouraged male homosexual behaviour, this has largely been an unhealthy way of denigrating women even further, and reinforcing the solidarity of men and male values. If women are seen as loathsome and inferior, then one turns to another male for love and friendship, if this is still a need. Or one turns to another male because he knows the rules; sexual gratification with no strings attached. Although patriarchal society has attempted to tell us that we are sexually either heterosexual or homosexual, it is not true. We are all different, and at different stages of personal development anyway. Some of us may feel attraction towards the opposite sex on a physical level, some of us only for our own sex, and others for both. Nor will this necessarily be fixed for our entire life or lives. Our wish to express love and connection with someone through sexual activity has no limits. A matercentric society will allow us to do that, in a way that suits us but does not imply fear of other modes of expression, as occurs today.
Women's new role for men will involve them in massive changes. They must begin to allow the power and wisdom of the Great Mother to flow through them, so that they can guide and advise men, and fulfil their own creativity. Power is a loaded word, so we have to emphasise that this is not power over, but merely the power which comes from unconditional love. Most women, for centuries, have equated love with service and self-sacrifice; the love of others. They have been 'givers,' with no reward other than the satisfaction of seeing the people they love thrive and achieve. Any pain or suffering endured by women came from seeing harm come to their loved ones. Later on, they began to develop an ego, and feel their own pain,, but they still saw it as their duty to love others, and put themselves last.
Pamela: I can give an example of this which used to stun me as a child. My mother often told me stories of her childhood, and I would press her for details if anything particularly interesting came up. She was brought up during the years of the Great Depression, when jobs were scarce, and sometimes there was not enough food to feed all the family. At times like this, her mother would cook whatever food she could afford, and the family would eat in strict rotation. First the 'master,' then the other males, and finally the mother and female children. My mother thought nothing of this, and indeed the point of the story was to show how times have changed. No-one in our family goes hungry any more.
Women who are even reasonable representatives of the Great Mother are few and far between. We have no acceptance of the 'Wise Woman' in society. The most admired woman on the planet is probably Mother Theresa of Calcutta, simply because she was an example of someone who dedicated her life and energy to helping others. Other women we might admire, such as Mrs Ghandi, or Margaret Thatcher, are or were politicians, and therefore working within the parameters of patriarchal structures. They show that women can be leaders, but they do not show the blend of compassion, wisdom and strength which a Wise Woman would have. Within religions, it is impossible to find a female spiritual leader, though there have been some, such as Mary Baker Eddy, who founded Christian Science. We do see women priests and ministers, but again, it is impossible for the Great Mother to manifest fully in this situation, because the women are operating within a patriarchal structure, and preaching about a male god. There is too little room for intuitive wisdom, when what you are supposed to do and believe has already been laid down by men.
What is needed are priestesses, some of whom have always existed within witches' communes, and are now appearing in the 'New Age' movement. So far they have not reached the consciousness of the general public. A priestess is not the female equivalent of a priest, who relies on an organised religion to validate him. The Church appoints him as a priest because he accepts the dogma he is given, and sends him off to be the representative of the god for the ordinary person. His wisdom and Knowledge may be non- existent. A priestess, in comparison, does not need an organisation around her. She is also unlikely to wish to collect followers; she knows that the truth she has may be different from that of others. She will help other people, but not lay down rules to achieve heaven or enlightenment, as men have done. In fact it seems unlikely that we will ever see a 'great' female religious leader, in the sense we know it. Perhaps, at the beginning of the matercentric age, while people still have many patriarchal values, there may be such a woman, but after that there will only be women who are priestesses by virtue of their wisdom, and can help those within their immediate vicinity. To function properly, they will have to eliminate from themselves all patriarchal ideas and values, so it is extremely unlikely that many exist at present. Most women are only just beginning to change paths, and have not yet begun to allow the Great Mother to work through them in any significant way.
There are many 'priestesses' today who are trying to ride two horses; still attempting to work within a patriarchal structure, yet put forward matercentric ideas. This is because of habit and fear. No-one is brave enough at the moment to do away with all rules and operate in total freedom, trusting that everything will still work out fine. It takes courage to remove all props, and step out into the unknown, saying - there are no rules, only love. Some of this same conflict can be seen if we look around at the many communes which exist today. Almost all of them have even tighter structures than the average business or nuclear family. There are rotas for cooking and cleaning, often a leader, and rules about being vegetarian, non-smoking, a Buddhist, etc. We are not saying that these things are wrong, just that they are indicative of a need to maintain organisation within a community. When the matercentric age gets underway in a serious fashion, these needs will die away, because the fear behind them will have disappeared. We will still all choose who we wish to live with, but having done that, there will be total freedom. If we decide to leave a community or individual relationship, it will not be because we think the other people are inferior or 'bad,' but simply because we wish to go; our desire will to be where we are joyful, and that will be the only motive. Since at the moment we are mostly learning through suffering and pain, we often stay in an unhappy situation, either through ignorance of any other way to be, or from loyalty and duty. This means we suffer guilt and inhibition of our essential natures. Once we have realised that we no longer have to do that, and that we can learn through joy, we will no longer experience pain and restriction.
At this point, many people might ask, 'But what about children; what about the care of the old and sick?' Are you saying that we can abandon people when we no longer wish to be with them, when they are incapable of looking after themselves? It seems to women in particular, that freedom has meant freedom for the male to sow his seed, then clear off to pursue his own selfish desires, leaving women with the job of rearing children, looking after aged relatives and caring for the sick and needy. Freedom in this situation has a hollow and selfish ring to it. We agree that this has often been the case. In fact,
Pamela: several of my friends and I have a stock phrase which we use, albeit fairly jokingly, when we hear of any man being lauded for heroism, new discoveries, or rising to the top within his chosen sphere. 'Bet he isn't looking after three kids under five,' we say, trying to envisage a captain of industry achieving his position with such a massive extra responsibility. It seemed to us that freedom meant only freedom for a man to make his dreams actual, and that for women, dreams had to be fitted into the five minutes left over after responsibilities to others had been met.
This has been true throughout the patriarchal era, simply because men, who did not love others, had no compunction about pursuing their own personal desires, whatever the cost in suffering. When men begin to move onto the path of the goddess, this option will no longer be open to them, because they will begin to be aware of others, and care for them more and more. They will find themselves unable to ignore this growing sense of love, even if at first they suppress it. Eventually, they will see that in helping others, they are helping themselves, because there is nothing that is not connected to them, and freedom will come to have a totally different meaning for them. Women, in their turn, will have space to choose freely what it is they wish to do, as they will no longer be solely responsible for the care of others, who will be less dependent anyway within a matercentric society. Harmony and happiness means that far fewer people will require help because they are sick, infirm or needy in some other way. Since women's spiritual development is moving them towards individual creativity, they will feel less and less guilty about taking time for themselves. They will no longer desire to spend their whole lives supporting and encouraging others, as many women still do today. Internal change will push them into acknowledging that they have to expand and grow into the area which they have always felt was the province of men; independent creativity.

The End Of War

FROM THE LITTLE that we know of the changeover from the last matercentric society to a patriarchal one, we can undoubtedly say that violence and war was involved. The female-centred societies seem not to have had armies, and their art suggests that they did not celebrate heroism in battle or the conquest of other peoples. It was difficult for such societies to resist the invasion of war-like tribes who worshipped a male sky-god, and who were quite happy to gain what they wanted by force. It may be from this time that we have the legends of female warriors like the Amazons, since the women leaders may have attempted resistance. The male warriors would undoubtedly have had the edge, not only because they were ruthless and intent on expansion, but because it was the will of the Great Mother that they win, however insane this seems to us.
We now have a society which threatens us with extinction. Both Russia and America, despite their recent friendship, have enough nuclear missiles trained on each other to wipe out life on this planet. In its recent past, the U.S. has been willing to use nuclear bombs to wage war on its enemy, Japan, which could not retaliate. We have people who if ordered to press a button which destroys us all, will undoubtedly follow orders and do so. We are also seeing nuclear weapons in the hands of more and more countries, some of whom are headed by despotic dictators. There is also the possibility of terrorist groups gaining access to weapons of mass destruction, and using them as levers for political ends. It is a clear pointer that the time for change has arrived, and the misuse of the power of the ego, whether it is an individual one or a national one, has to end.
The use of violence to achieve a particular end is not likely to disappear overnight. The tradition of obedience to strong leaders and a rigidly organised chain of command will likewise be around for some time. In the past, the powerful male leader has often been seen as a god, or at least a semi-divine representative of a deity who is not far removed from being an omnipotent warrior- king himself. In many countries, this still prevails, and the people will often endure dreadful suffering in war because the leader has decreed that the cause is righteous in the eyes of god. There are also many people who still believe that if they go to war for any reason, then god is on their side. We can point to many countries for proof of this. Each side in a conflict can be entirely sure, with no apparent hypocrisy, that truth, justice and god is with them. However peaceable many of the inhabitants are, for example, the leadership of many Middle Eastern countries still thinks in terms of believers and infidels, Arabs and' 'others,' and can justify a holy war on that basis. The West tends to be a little more sophisticated, and speaks of fighting for world peace, and the suppression of tyrants, but there is still the idea that one side is right, and the other side must of course be wrong.
In the West, we pay lip-service to the idea that to invade another country because it is militarily weaker is immoral. Though we still maintain armies, navies and air forces, we claim that they are merely for defence. To a certain extent this is true, but we are also reluctant to wage war at the drop of a hat because of the cost, in terms of both money and human life. The advantages to be gained from conquering other nations has to be very substantial before we are likely to do so. We are far more likely to take them over by economic and cultural methods. Though we are slowly moving from the path of the whip to the path of the crook, attempting to persuade others rather than always bludgeoning them into submission, as yet we have only just begun.
As mankind moves from the path of the god, there would seem to be a danger that peacefully inclined peoples on the path of the Goddess will be overrun by countries which are still firmly patriarchal, and think in terms of war and force. If matercentric countries disarm entirely, in love and trust, will their bloodthirsty neighbours clap their hands with glee, and make immediate invasion plans? Many people today believe that this would happen, and are reluctant to disarm for that reason. They see a standing army and nuclear weapons as a necessary deterrent to aggressors. Looking around at the world, they see many unenlightened countries where despotic rulers are intent on expansion through aggression, and say 'not yet' to disarmament.
It is not sufficient to use 'common sense' when looking at this question. We have to take into consideration that the Will of the Great Mother exerts an influence. When we were changing to a patriarchal society, it was inevitable that the violence of the patriarchal societies would win them supremacy. Now, it is inevitable that the more peaceful societies will succeed in the long run. This may not happen in an obvious way, say from military superiority, but through what appears to be luck or chance, which is one of the aspects of the Great Mother. It defies logic, and seems to be bestowed indiscriminately. Gamblers rely on it simply because it has nothing to do with reason, and one of the ways they develop intuition is by tuning into 'Lady Luck.'
A good example of the apparently chaotic way luck works to fulfil the will of the Great Mother, can be seen in the election of Margaret Thatcher as leader of the Conservative party in Britain. Even a month before the election, she seemed the least likely winner, even to herself. Not only was she relatively inexperienced, she was a woman seeking the leadership of a party which feels women are very good at licking envelopes and supporting male candidates, but not much else. It came as a surprise to all concerned when the Conservatives discovered they now had a female in charge. Whatever we might think of Margaret Thatcher on a personal level, and however Machiavellian we see her as being, there is no doubt that without luck, she would never have achieved her position.
We are saying that the will of the Great Mother ensures the eventual establishment of a peaceful society, for those of us who wish it, however violent the remaining patriarchal people are. But this does not mean that we must throw away all our weapons, disband our armies, and turn our swords into ploughshares tomorrow. For one thing, there will be too much left of the patriarchal ethos within most of us for that to work. If we are still afraid of aggressors, or condemning of them, we have to come to terms with those emotions, because they are symptomatic of a patriarchal outlook. To override fear and anger is foolish. They will merely go underground, into our subconscious mind, and wreak havoc there. We will find that others still attack us, still try to force us, because whatever is inside us expresses itself in the outside world. If we are all connected, then the oppressor is part of our larger consciousness, and our fear or condemnation of him is known to him too. He can do no other than home in on our fear and give us what we were expecting anyway, though to those outside us, we look like innocent victims. If we can see him as expressing that part of us all which still has a heavy investment in violence, then we inevitably wish to help him rather than judge him, even if that help seems to take a relatively violent form. If we do not, we will merely put the problem outside ourselves. We will see him as a baddie, and end up either feeling self-righteously 'peaceful,' or waging yet another war in the name of eventual peace and freedom. In forgiving the oppressor, we forgive ourselves collectively for still having violent and selfish urges, and pave the way for the day when there will be no more war, and we can throw away our weapons.
There can be no question of the Great Mother being on 'our side' in a war, as a male god is. The Great Mother sees no-one as outside her love. If we are to reconnect with Her, we must feel the same way. Not with our intellect, but truly, throughout our whole being. Until we can do this, it is likely that we will need to maintain armies to defend ourselves and others from aggression. But what we must also do, is to pray to the Great Mother for help with the part of us that still sees through such fearful and judgemental eyes. If we do this, we will gain the trust and love which enables us to throw away our defences. We will realise that our supposed vulnerability to attack only comes from fear, and that love is the answer, in all cases.

The Environment

ANOTHER MANIFESTATION of the change to the path of the Goddess is our growing desire to treat our environment more lovingly. It is no accident that we call our planet 'Mother Earth,' and refer to 'Mother Nature.' Since the beginning of the current patriarchal age, man has been as much at war with nature in his attempts to control and exploit it, as he has been with women, and anything else he sees as 'feminine.' They are representative of the Great Mother, the Creator, whom he both hates and fears. In his desire to become independent, and see himself as separate, man has unfortunately seen himself as so separated from all other forms of life that he cannot any longer feel his connection. This has enabled him to plunder the earth of its resources, without recognising his dependence on it. His god has given him permission to do this, by saying that he has dominion over every living thing. He could have seen this in a responsible way, and exercised his power for the good of all, but this has not happened. Instead, he has used it to ruthlessly exploit people, animals, plants and the earth itself for his own personal gain. As we have said many times, this can only occur because he has lost his feeling of connectedness with his source, the Great Mother, and therefore his links with everything else. In his desire to be individual, he has forgotten that he is also a part of everything else, and interdependent with it. Seeing himself as separate from Nature, separate from his god, and separate from the of women, has allowed him to be selfish, but it has also led to loss. He is alone, and limited to his own individual resources, instead of being able to tap into the inexhaustible collective energy of All That Is. Not only that, but the earth herself can be exhausted if she is abused too much. Just as he cannot torture a person beyond the point of death, so he cannot torture planet earth forever. At some stage, she will be unable to provide him with what he wants, because he is taking without replenishing, and with no thought for the harm he is causing. Though the Great Mother does not need gratitude for what she freely gives, and there are no limits to her giving, we do not know this. We appear to have a finite number of resources, and, like the Prodigal son, have almost spent them. Those people who are beginning to realign with the Great Mother necessarily begin to feel differently about all of the things which patriarchal society have associated with Her, and one of these is the planet and its various life-forms. They begin to care more for some or all aspects of planetary life, and seek to restore balance. Of course this can take as many forms as there are people. Some may join movements which aim to preserve species on the verge of extinction, or protest about acid rain and deforestation. Others may simply feel a diffuse emotional rapport with the earth, and begin to take long walks in the forest. And all points between. All are correct. There is no one right way to reconnect with the earth. We all have our own path and our own truth.
Many people are beginning to panic about the 'death' of the earth if we do not take radical and immediate steps to stop our mistreatment of her. They feel that even if we change our patterns of behaviour, future generations will still suffer the consequences of what we have done in the past. They point to continuing damage which shows no sign of being stopped, and despair of ever finding a solution, because the problem of environmental abuse is so complex, so harmful and so widespread. If we can stop the torture of people within dictatorships, or the abuse of women and children, they say, then there is no long- lasting damage, as there is when huge tracts of Amazonian rain forests are burned, wiping out an environment which may take centuries to restore. We can't bring back species of animals which have become extinct, or wipe out the effects of radioactivity, in the way that we can make rapid changes within human society. Because of this, they believe that we should concentrate on environmental issues alone now, and forget everything else until we are out of danger. What does it matter if women are disadvantaged, or black people disenfranchised, when we may not be able to sustain life at all quite soon. It has priority.
This is simply not true. The damage we have done in every direction is the same, because the consciousness which has created the conditions is the same, the movement away from the Great Mother into feeling totally separate beings from Her and each other. Anyone who in any way begins to reconnect to Her helps the environmental problem, because everything is related to everything else. We have a great deal of healing to do in so many areas, it may seem that we have to have some sort of hierarchy again. This problem is more important than that, so why are you worrying about the lack of facilities for disabled people when the planet is dying? Not only does this allow those who work for environmental protest groups to feel superior to others, and thus perpetuate their patriarchal consciousness in another form, it pushes guilt onto those who have different priorities. They may leave their path to follow another's because of this, yet have no real interest or commitment to it.
Trust is again the answer. If we allow ourselves to go with our feelings, we will be drawn to the very areas in which we can best help on the path of the Goddess. If we listen to the still small voice of the Great Mother inside us, and follow that, then healing will happen, of both ourselves and everything else. The planet can recover, but it will come through genuine love for her rather than because of fear of loss. If we go through the motions of attempting to prevent environmental damage because it is fashionable to do so, and confers status of some kind, because of guilt, or because we are afraid that we are going to die if we don't, then we are still on the path of the god. We have simply swapped what we do, and retained the same consciousness. No real healing will result from such actions. But if we join groups to help the earth through love of her, that love will heal her. There is nothing else that will succeed but love.

Again, Lao Tse realised what our relationship with Nature should be over two thousand years ago. To quote the Tao Te Ching once more,

When men control the world to improve it
They cannot succeed.
For the world is a sacred vessel
Not to be interfered with.
He who improves it, spoils it.
He who tries to control it
Has failed to understand.
When we do not seek to better the world
We do no harm.

Healing Our Separations

PERHAPS THE MOST FUNDAMENTAL, but most difficult thing we will do as we change paths is begin to recognise and solve the paradox of being both separate from and united with each other. Males were created by the Great Mother to be the outsiders. Their function was to enable us to move away from the Great Mother into independent creativity. To do this, they were given a drive which propelled them outwards and away from her, into exploration of being separate. They began to develop an ego which told them that they were unique individuals, with unique desires, and that it was right and proper to fulfil them. This separate sense of 'I,' eventually became all that they knew, and they forgot their source. Everything seemed outside this ego, which they mistakenly defined as being the whole of themselves; other people, the planet, and the god were external. All of the problems we have had within the patriarchal system have sprung from the misuse of this perception.
Because it was the will of the Great Mother, and therefore our will, for men to develop a sense of being separate, we had to have the path of the god, in which male, separatist values predominate. Women, whether consciously willing or not, followed men, and accepted their leadership. Though they retained a link with the Great Mother, and both loved and cared for others, they could not resist the development of patriarchal society. At the spiritual level, they knew it was necessary. Many writers, commenting on the peaceful and settled Neolithic communities which existed in the last matercentric age, see patriarchy as unequivocally evil. Certainly it has been a bloody, painful and apparently futile era to some people, but in essence it was intended merely as a learning device for the human race. We have explored what being separate is like, largely through the actions and consciousness of males, but it is now time to relearn that we are all connected. Since women already know this more than men do, men must learn it from them, and become more loving of others. Since men have acquired an ego, they can teach women about self-love.
Since patriarchal society emphasises our separateness from each other, and not our common humanity, it is no accident that the sexes have been so clearly set apart. Western man has defined woman as negative, and himself as positive, in ideological, physical and spiritual terms. Man is described by what he does do, and woman in terms of what she does not do. Man is active, woman is passive, and so on. When the patriarchal era began, man decided that since the sun was important, it was male, so the male sky and sun gods replaced the female deities who represented the totality of creation, not just part of it. Earth and water were assigned to the female sphere, and only the fertility aspects of the Goddess were retained, for a while, as having value in producing food and new, male children. Women were associated solely with the moon, since their menstrual cycle followed the moon's waxing and waning, and they were put in charge of emotions, i.e. caring feelings for the whole of the human race. The Sun, light, and consciousness were seen as male; females then had to be darkness, the unconscious and the moon, since by now we were living in a world which contained opposites. As the holistic world-view of the previous matercentric era began to fade, we forgot that this dualism was an artificial invention, and enshrined it as holy writ.
In terms of this dualism, of active=male=creative=yin, opposed to passive=female=receptive=yang, women and men are moving towards the opposite pole, in order to restore balance, both in themselves, and in society. Men will learn how to be passive and receptive, women how to be active and creative. During this process the opposites will disappear, since both sexes will retain what they already know, and build on it. We will all necessarily move towards our centre, which is both within us and outside us. However, the movement does not necessarily stop at this ideal; it continues past the centre, to produce a reversal of the polarities and a new cycle.
It is for this reason that there will be no similarities between a matercentric world, and our present patriarchal one. Our movement is towards the reconciliation of the opposites, into the restoration of our intrinsic unity. In such a situation, there can be no question of a simple flipping of the coin, replacing male domination through conflict and separation, with a female- ruled world operating in exactly the same way. We are bound to become more, not less co-operative with each other, as the matercentric era gets under way. Man will lose the illusion that he is separate from the Great Mother, as he begins to realise he is not alone. Through following the lead of those women who are in touch with the Great Mother, he will learn all that he needs to know, and experience joy as a result.
How long will this take? The prospect of a happy and harmonious world is an attractive one, even if we are suspicious of its being yet another impossible Utopian dream. The answer depends entirely on our desire for peace and co-operation. While we are still interested in suffering, and separation, then we do not want joy. Men, for example, presented with the prospect of a world led by women, may well still choose to be oppressed by other men in the form of patriarchal structures and laws, rather than face the loss of ego in relinquishing their ideas of being the superior sex. While they have such a heavy investment in this, they will not move onto the path of the Goddess. Nor can they be helped by women until women exist who have begun to throw off patriarchal conditioning. A world ruled by women who have absorbed and accepted the path of the god, for example, would not be a happy one. Such female 'Patriarchs ' exist, and have always done so, but they are merely aping the methods and attitudes of male separatists. It is possible that the numbers of such women will rise as we move onto the path towards the Great Mother. It is one of the ways for women to develop their personal power. Later on, when they realise that men do not have enough will or power to block them, they will relax, and allow the love which they are suppressing to resurface.
Although the past is not necessarily a good guide to the future, we can see from examining it that change may not be swift. It took many hundreds of years, in some cases, for a matercentric society to become male-dominated, even though force was being used. For centuries, the worship of the Great Mother lingered on amongst the common people, often secretly. In fact it could not disappear entirely, even when it was renamed and distorted. This would have meant a total breakdown of any sort of society, which depends on co-operation far more than conflict for its continuance. Since men still needed and loved women, the earth, and the Great Mother, and knew this at an unconscious level, they could not entirely break free of them. Seeds remained which are now beginning to grow into a desire to return to harmony. If we wish these small tendrils of change to flower into a wholesale return to bliss, then we must be patient - with ourselves as much as with others - open-minded and trusting. All the information we need will be available to us from the Great Mother, but we can prevent ourselves from hearing it because of our fears. We may need time to adjust to new ideas, but feel that time is not available. This in itself is a product of patriarchal ways, which have speeded up the pace of life to the point that we feel unable to cope. Life sometimes seems like a fast-food meal; speedy but somehow insubstantial and lacking in true nourishment. We may have many diverse and interesting experiences, but lack time in which to digest and assimilate them, because we live life at such break-neck speed.
The reason behind the speed of Western life is the movement away from the Great Mother. For one thing, we have lost touch with the natural rhythms of the earth, and our bodies, because they have been identified with the female side of us. In choosing to ignore natural cycles such as day and night, and by living in environments which are essentially 'dead matter,' we have lost natural time, and replaced it with an artificial one, regulated by clocks. This does not, however, prevent us from experiencing subjective time, which is an internal process.
In a matercentric world, creation in all its forms proceeds from the feminine, and works according to a different sense of time from the patriarchal world. If we look to our own biology for an illustration, we can see how the male's part in creating new life is fairly rapid. Once he has supplied his sperm, it takes about nine months for a baby to be brought to term by the mother. This allows proper growth of the infant, and a chance to abort the foetus if the situation is not suitable for its birth. In a matercentric world, women choose whether to conceive or not. Their desire to give birth is necessary. In a patriarchal world, no such freedom exists. The woman often has no choice about whether she wishes to become pregnant, and no opportunity to refuse sex because of lack of desire. She may give birth to a child a year in this situation, beginning as a very young woman.
How does this relate to time? In a patriarchal world, the male produces ideas as he produces sperm, prolifically. Man possesses the spark of creative genius. But instead of offering this seed to the woman, or a balanced world, to be gestated for a time before being put into action, he births it himself. He leaves women, (and the earth and all it contains,) out of the creative and decision-making process. He deprives himself of their contribution, and also shortens the time which was needed to see whether the idea might have deleterious effects on human society. In forgetting the female part of the equation, man is not just disenfranchising half of the human race, and imposing his will on women. Since he lacks unconditional love, he is leaving love out of the process of creating his world. The result is a very fast moving but unbalanced society, where change is made on the basis of men's priorities and men's needs. The unlimited wisdom and love of the Great Mother is nowhere to be seen.
So the ability to wait patiently for the right time will be a facet of a matercentric world. There will be no need to feel desperate that change is not occurring rapidly enough for us, because we will trust that it will happen when the time is right. Men will bring their creative ideas to women, to be given guidance and to see whether the idea has love in it, until they can do this for themselves. Women will learn once more the ability to generate creative ideas, instead of looking to men for this. Eventually we will all be able to both impregnate ourselves, and bring forth our own fruit, because we will be whole. At this point, balance will be restored within society, because it will have been restored within us. What we do next will probably not involve separate sexes. How could it? The job of learning to be both separate and united will have been learned. We will go on to other experiences in other dimensions because we have at last learned how to be fully human, and found peace and happiness as a result. If we leave the planet it will be because our nature is forever to expand into new ways of creating through love. We will transcend the body and the three- dimensional world when our exploration of them is complete, and our desire is to seek new experiences. Not because of fear and pain, but for joy.

Chapter Seven

Marriage In The Matercentric Era

The changeover to a matercentric society will be important to the institution of marriage, in ways we cannot envisage. Although we can look back at previous matercentric societies for guidance, we know that human evolution does not go back on itself in a full circle, but is more like a spiral. So we may not reproduce the patterns of those times. Marriage at present has a patriarchal emphasis, which we have commented on in earlier chapters. It ensures that a man can pass on his property to his biological heirs, by restricting women to sex with only one man, (and theoretically the man to only one woman.) In order to do this, it has to convince women that their sexuality should be restrained, by emphasising religious codes, or persuading them that sex itself is highly dangerous, and/or solely for the pleasure of men and the reproduction of the species. Patriarchal society designates the roles of the sexes in a specific way, assigning child-care, the running of the home, and emotional support of the family unit to the woman. Work which is at a distance from the home, including going to war, is given to the male.
This is an over-simplistic picture of course, and does not apply to many cultures outside Western society. Nor do we adhere to it except in theory any more. Many mothers are both raising children and working outside the home, albeit often in menial jobs. Almost as many women have affairs outside marriage as men do. Nor do we all have one partner for life, because of the high incidence of divorce. Often, we co-habit with someone, rather than marry them.
There have already been changes. Women's sexuality is now seen as having some validity, rather than being seen as non-existent or sinful and dangerous. Men occasionally change nappies and cook dinner in many families, though, as many women complain, there is a long way to go before men take as much responsibility for the running of the home as women do.
These changes are as yet superficial. If we look back at some matercentric societies of the past, we find that women were not sexually possessed by any man. They were free to choose at all times. Nor was pregnancy dictated by the constant sexual availability of females for the benefit of males. The cycles of menstruation, pregnancy, birth and death were venerated, not avoided, technologised or hated and feared, as they are today. There was no insistence that women follow the cycles of men. No woman who responds emotionally or physically to her menstrual period, can succeed in a workplace situation, which is geared entirely to the male. Nor is she allowed to both care for her children, and pursue an occupation which interests her. Although some women in the Western world have skills which are in demand, and can avoid the loss of promotion which comes with motherhood/ time out from climbing the career ladder, for most women, there is only an either/or; motherhood or a satisfying career. Those who attempt to do both, often referred to as Superwomen, find that they are plagued by guilt, exhaustion, and a nagging sense of emptiness. They have been asked to behave like a substitute male, and succeed on male ground, on male terms, in a society defined by male values and structures. The cost is very great at a psychic level, because they are inevitably still strongly in tune with the god, and not the Goddess; with competitiveness, striving and achieving patriarchal goals.
All of this has been said many times by feminists. They see the 'equal' marriage as a solution, a relationship in which both men and women share child care, housework and work outside the home. So far, this hasn't come about. Until children arrive, many couples can have a stab at trying the 'equal marriage' route. Although the man is likely to have a better paid job, and more chances of promotion, at least the work in the home can be shared. So it goes in theory, but in practice, most men avoid the sharing of household chores, and merely 'help,' which forces responsibility onto the woman. As soon as children are born, the situation frequently deteriorates for the woman. Either she leaves her job, in which case she is economically dependent on her husband, or she returns to work, part-time or full-time. If she is working part-time, she will find that she is not taken seriously any more, and moreover, seems to have lost all of her employment rights and career prospects in one fell swoop. If she returns to work full time, she will find that it is still her responsibility to rear her children while pursuing a demanding job. She is usually the one who has to find child care, stay off work when the kids are sick, and ferry them about to and from school. Her husband, as with housework, 'helps,' which may range from token things like taking the kids to the park while the woman catches up with the ironing, to genuine participation. The latter is rare, since many men undergo an astonishing transformation when their wives have children. They revert to age-old attitudes and ways of behaving which betray their confusion. A childless wife may be a partner, but a woman with children is a mother, and completely different. He may become sexually uninterested in her, stubbornly undo all the strides he has made in terms of their equal marriage, and begin to have affairs. The change has been well-documented by bewildered and angry women, who thought they knew the man they married extremely well. It has been explained by many commentators as a result of the extra work and responsibilities of parenthood, the lack of sexual desire in mothers, the Catholic madonna/whore split, the jealousy of the man when faced with competition from his children for his wife's attention, and so on. Behind all these explanations, which may well have validity at one level, is the root change. The woman is now in a new world, one he can't enter, because he cannot give birth. He can love and look after his children, or out of fear, he can revert to selfish patriarchal attitudes. But at bottom, the change in him is caused by his reaction to the inescapable fact that women create life, and men do not. His god allows him to forget this, as does the patriarchal world he has constructed, which shunts childbirth into a corner. So it is all the more shocking to him when his wife turns out to be 'the other,' instead of more or less like him, give or take a few anatomical details. If he is changing paths, he will be awed and responsive to this new change in her. If he is still on the path of the god, he is likely to react by reinforcing his patriarchal attitudes, which have lurked below the surface of his relatively 'enlightened' behaviour.
The 'equal' marriage is an impossibility in a patriarchal world. It attempts to ignore the fundamental loading of the dice against women in our society, and creates an illusion of parity. At any moment, the power of the man can be reasserted, backed up by all the force of patriarchal law and custom. It is as if the king is pretending to be a slave, to humour a favourite concubine, but if he tires of the game, or the concubine displeases him, he reverts instantly to his former status. A man can count on the fact that if he fails to keep up his side of the bargain, women will still ensure that children are cared for, and the home maintained, partly because they have been conditioned into seeing this as their responsibility, and partly because they genuinely love their husbands and children, and wish to care for them. Safe in that knowledge, a man can play at equality for a while, then abandon it if he sees fit, leaving the woman impotent to do anything about it. We have only to look at the behaviour of divorced fathers to see how little we have achieved. Many men, after divorce, neither maintain their children financially, nor take much interest in them. It is assumed by both men and women that the mother will take over the role of both parents after a divorce, while being disadvantaged by that choice in almost every way.
Pamela: Speaking as a divorced mother myself I have found that despite the poverty and lack of personal space, bringing up children alone has developed my strength immensely, in an entirely positive way. So maybe it is one of the many routes which women have chosen to break free of some patriarchal values, even if it is a relatively tough one.
What then is the answer to this failure of the 'equal' marriage? Many women writers, scrutinising the customs of the previous matercentric era, see communal living as the answer. Looking at the nuclear marriage, of wife, husband and 2.2 children, they see a recipe for the isolation and repression of women, within a world which has abandoned 'communities' of human beings, and replaced them with a soulless economic unit of three or four people. The modern house defines the limits of a woman's life, especially if she is at home with small children, and renders her likely to suffer depression from such an unnatural lifestyle. If she were to live in a way which allowed her easier access to other people, particularly other women, this would not happen. She could share her children, thus reducing the relentless task of full-time mothering, which might not be at all what she wants to do. In addition, these writers point out, there would be no need to reproduce identical machinery in every house. There could be communal washing machines, vacuum cleaners and perhaps cars, thus using the earth's resources more efficiently. Some women, those who chose to, would look after children, all children, while others might work outside the community or on other tasks within it. Nor would that have to be at all inflexible. There would be enough people involved for changes to happen, either long or short-term, in what an individual woman actually did with her time. The emotional support from others would be invaluable, especially in a situation which had no or few rules.
The drawback of communal systems in a patriarchal world is that pressure is placed on individuals to conform to group norms. In fact, many people have seen communal living as so stifling of the individual that they can see no attraction in it. This would not be the case within a matercentric society, which allows and encourages individual desires to be expressed. As we have said before, only fear forces us to force others. When we know that all action is prompted by love, then there can be no need to fear that 'different' is harmful to us. We can allow others to be as 'individual' as they choose to be, yet not feel that the community is threatened. At present, any community which exists does so by having written or unwritten rules, in order to ensure 'fairness' or to keep the limits of behaviour clear. We will not need to do this when love is the root of all action, since no-one could harm or subjugate another human being. This can only happen in a woman-centred world, which allows us to be both a unique individual yet totally connected to everyone else. In a patriarchal world, there seems to be a choice; either you can fulfil your individual desires, or you can compromise them to ensure the stability of the community. What this adds up to, usually, is that dominant men within a community make sure they get what they want, and apply regulations and laws to everyone else to ensure that this continues without interruption. There is little love in a society built on such foundations.
Although both men and women could live communally, each contributing according to particular desires and talents, most writers agree that this is a difficult proposition at the moment. Men still think in dominance/ submission patterns, and have little idea how to co-operate instead of compete. Since we still live in a patriarchal world, they would have the advantage of still feeling superior to women, who struggle to achieve even a small measure of self-confidence. It would be very easy for them to subtly dominate any community in which they were involved, and indeed there is a great deal of evidence from studies of communes, that this happens even when the men make strenuous efforts to avoid it. Perhaps, some people say, we may have a situation in which all-female communities are necessary for particular women, until they are more in touch with the Great Mother. After that, it will simply be a matter of choice as to who they live with, rather than an action dictated by their need for self-development.
If we begin to live communally in future, sharing and co- operating more, it is likely that another change within modern marriage will be accelerated. Fatherhood as a potent patriarchal force is in decline, and it is inevitable that it will become totally changed in meaning within a matercentric society. In a totally male-dominated world, with a father god, the father of a family naturally has all the power. His behaviour, and the perceived behaviour of the god, are identical, since the deity was created to reflect male, separatist values in isolation from female, connecting ones. The father god is stern, judgemental but just, punitive, lacking in all human emotions save anger if disobeyed, contemptuous of females, sex, and bodies (because he is male and spirit only), a law-giver, and most importantly, separate from us rather than interdependent with us. The last fact is important because it is so fundamentally tied in with the path of the god. If you are developing a sense of being separate from other people, then of course your deity will be separate from you, and outside you, as you are from him and from all other human beings. What a lonely position to be in, for both the god and the man!
Since many people within society are changing to the path of the Goddess, matercentric values are 'contaminating' this picture of both fathers and the father god. As men become more loving, and less authoritarian, so their god becomes a little more loving and less intent on sending us to hell for our sins against his authority. In fact, Christianity is now beginning to make a few attempts to incorporate some teachings of Christ into its behaviour and attitudes, though the Catholics still firmly draw the line at acknowledging that women exist to do anything other than bear children and serve men. Fathers today, in Western society, are less frightening figures than they were even a generation ago, and this trend will continue. Men will begin to care more for their children, instead of seeing them as economic resources, nuisances, or heirs, if they are male. Where we see difficulties arising from this is when a more patriarchal culture is imported into our own. Girls from Asian families, for example, whose mothers accept the total control of husbands over the whole family, often rebel against the traditional arranged marriage. It is not that one person is right and another is wrong in this situation, merely that you have instant change when swapping countries, instead of a more gradual one. The result is that the two generations have a chasm between them which spans centuries of change instead of decades.
Since a woman's relationship with her father fundamentally affects her attitude to men within a patriarchal society, we will see changes accelerating in the next generation of females, who have not all been fathered by dictatorial and distant males. In the future, when the nuclear family begins to give way to much more experimental ways of living together, the influence of the biological father will be less intense. We can already see this in the aftermath of the explosion in divorces. Many men are fathering children who are not 'theirs' in a biological sense, and many children have several 'fathers,' by which we mean men who take an interest in their welfare and development. Again, change produces its difficulties. We have already mentioned the phenomenon of the father who loses interest in his children after divorce. He may find it is too painful to be reminded of the mother when he sees them, so he stops, or he may never have cared for his children at all. They were something 'everyone' had, and he provided for them financially perhaps, but otherwise ignored them. After divorce, he can leave them behind with the ease of total lack of love. Still other men simply do not know how to relate to children, however much they might love them. They are used to a woman being around to look after the children, and without her, they panic. They avoid seeing their children out of an inability to parent them, rather than a lack of affection, yet do not love them enough to try to overcome this.
Another problem arises when a patriarchal man is involved in caring for a child who is biologically not his 'own.' He is likely to be deeply outraged at an unconscious level, because the child does not carry his genes, and attempt to rid himself of the responsibility. With very little provocation, he may use violence against the child, to the point of brutal murder. Many men throughout the patriarchal era have physically and sexually abused their children, as well as their wives. This is nothing new. But a man who places a premium on a child being 'his' is still firmly on the path of the god, whereas on the path of the Goddess, we are all connected, so in a wider sense, all children are 'ours.' When such a man is fathering another man's child, he is far more likely to be mentally, physically and emotionally cruel than if he is the biological father. We can see this phenomenon in some other species; a male taking over a female or group of females, will kill the existing young, because they do not carry his genes.
Another problem linked with both step-parenting and the growing love of men for children, is sexual abuse. This is not the sexual exploitation indulged in by men who see all other people as objects for their use. Such men are still on the path of the god. As we have said before, a particular action cannot be judged by its form alone. The consciousness which has produced the behaviour is all that is real. So a man may have a sexual relationship with a child, not to harm the child, but because he knows no other way of expressing love. He may also be changing paths, and therefore at odds with himself. One part of him loves the child, and wishes to show this, while the patriarchal part is still interested in its own selfish gratification. So the energy is twisted into a form which is unacceptable in our society, and can cause severe trauma all round. Because our codes of behaviour prohibit sexual contact between children and adults, especially within a family, the whole issue is clouded by secrecy, guilt, horror and condemnation. It is judged, for example, that a child who has been in some sort of sexual contact with an adult will be irreparably damaged by this, as it is also said that women who have been raped will 'never get over it.' Discussing this subject is like walking into a minefield. Sexual abuse of children is perhaps the one crime which arouses universal outrage in our society. Even men who say that a woman who is raped was 'asking for it,' draw the line at implying that the child might be doing the same.
Part of our problem is that in a patriarchal society, children are at the bottom of a hypothetical pecking order, headed by dominant males. The abuse of that power, to force sexual contact on a child, contravenes freewill, just as it does when a woman is raped. If we wish to eliminate child sex abuse, we must not indulge in punishment of abusers, without addressing the real problem; a society which allows a man to think that he is free to coerce, cajole or trick a child into participating in sexual activity. We give this message to the child as well as the adult, even if we then throw up our hands in horror when it happens. We still tell men that their sexual desires are so strong that sometimes force is unavoidable, and correct. We still tell females of all ages that to fulfil men's sexual needs is their duty, and that anyway, they are to blame because they stimulate men's desires. We say that if they do not, loss of love will follow, and until very recently, that meant loss of everything for a woman or child, because they could not exist without the economic support of a male. A child is in a no-win position. The adult is loved, and/or in a position of power . All of our conditioning tells the child to succumb. The fact that there seems to be complicity between the child and adult in some cases should not cloud the issue, which is the inherent selfishness of men, given assent to by all of the structures and morals of our society.
In a matercentric society, without power ranking, and with men able to both love and respect others, this problem will not occur. No-one will consent to anything they do not wish to do because of fear or guilt. There will be no rape anymore, whether it's rape of children, women, or the planet. Those who live together will do so because of love, and this means that there will be diversity. To begin with, as we change paths, there will be many experiments, some attempting to combine patriarchal ideas with matercentric ones. Undoubtedly, we will be told that one particular form of marriage or relationship is now the 'right' one, and all the others are wrong, because people will still believe that what is truth for them is truth for all. There may be those who wish to continue living in traditional marriages for quite some time. Others may decide that a series of exclusive 'marriages' is what they like. 'Open' marriage, in which the two people have sexual relationships outside the primary one, is currently fashionable, and right for those who wish to do it, though it does seem a contradiction in terms. We see many homosexual relationships in which the partners are learning about themselves in ways which they feel could not happen within a heterosexual relationship. People will still use relationships either to grow or to hide from growth, as they have always done. They may cling to others who harm them because of need and fear that there are no alternatives, but in the last analysis, no-one can resist change.
It is impossible to predict what form communities will take, simply because we are all unique individuals. This knowledge has been denied by patriarchal society, and we have been forced into a paralysingly narrow range of ways in which we are allowed to interact with other human beings. Marriage in particular, has been a source of immense restriction, especially for women, and it seems unlikely that it can survive for long in its present form. We will change slowly, and make mistakes along the way; but eventually, we will find that our trust in the Great Mother will allow us to relinquish relationships which are not based on total and unconditional love, and find joy.