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Psychological Implications of the Advent of the Goddess in the Male Psyche
John Heuser
California Institute of Integral Studies
The Dark Mother, Spring, 2000
Female Mystery, which appears to be enjoying a revival on this dawn of the new millennium, has a natural corollary in the form of Male Mystery. The Dark Mother, whose antiquity places her among the most archaic layers of the feminine, provides a direct route to the unconscious. While Lucia Birnbaum (2000 & 1992) suggests the Dark Mother as a metaphor for the new millennium, I find psychological confirmation of this possibility in the writings of Carl Jung, Erich Neumann, Tanya Wilkinson, and Marion Woodman, who provide an interior archaeology of the soul that is replete with the Goddess in her many aspects. Birnbaum introduces layers of ground that provide an opportunity to go even deeper within the Goddess Mysteries, because of the evidence of prehistoric dark goddesses surviving the original human diaspora out of Africa. Anthropologists and other life scientists now acknowledge evidence of DNA tracings to African human ancestry. This is one way modern scientific technology tends to confirm Birnbaum’s exhaustive research of Black Madonnas who, originally worshipped as goddesses by black ancestors of all humans, survived since ancient times as a vernacular sub-culture of Church-dominated religion in Europe. But, confront, say, a white male christian, or a US politician with these assertions, and you will no doubt be met with stiff resistance if not violent disagreement. The constellation of male reactions to the notion of an awakening Goddess- consciousness can be focused with some resolution through a Jungian lens.
Feminist and Jungian psychologists (e.g., Wilkinson, 1998, Jung, 1956, Perera, 1981, & Neumann, 1955) agree that males in American and other Logos-dominated cultures suffer from almost universal, and sometimes pernicious mother complexes. On a personal level, the mother complex divides a man’s psyches to include three unconscious processes, all derived from self-rejected, scorned pieces of his own femininity. Each of these three are archetypal manifestations of one of the three aspects of the Triple Goddess, expressed variously throughout all human cultures as virgin/whore, mother/nourisher, and terrible mother (Woodman & Dickinson, 1997). Collectively, the energy from millions of males’ split-off femininity have created cultural analogues which are temporarily gratifying, but only partially fulfilling, to the male need for experiencing the feminine. Some of these cultural analogues have captured energy for the benefit of the human culture and channeled it into creativity, technology, entertainment, and art. But there is also vast exploitation and examples of apparently purposeful stupidity.
For an example of exploitation, one need look no farther than the Internet, which has been a huge conduit for pornography ever since its early deployment. Until just three years ago or less, pornography was the only real money-maker on the Internet, and was the economic driving force that permitted its flourishing. Why does the porno market bear so much profit? Because of (primarily, but not exclusively) men’s driving need and longing for experiences of the feminine. Because the virgin/whore is a psychologically inferior component within men, it is overwhelmingly true that men keep her unconscious, not knowing that what they are looking at in pornography is literally a split-off aspect of their own core of being.
Also, even the most benign aspects of the dominant American culture have failed to take the non-human Earth Community into account, except as a collection of non-living or inferior objects whose only value is calculated in terms of intellectual or commercial currency. I think the coming age of the goddess will include the story of the earth according to all that is now known about the evolution of species, the evolutionary usefulness of human behaviors, and the idea that evolution has come under the realm of human choice. I predict it will be a matter of a few years when DNA research uncovers secrets of manipulating not only the human genome, but any species, resulting in power to alter the appearance and fundamental structures of plants, animals, and humans. For example, it will be possible to grow beef meat protein in tanks; when you want some meat, you just slice off pieces, and it continues to grow. These “tank-grown cows” will resemble cattle as we know them only in taste. Or, we could grow replacement human organs, cloned from our own cells.
Not only that, but within this decade, we will have the capacity to make micro machines whose computing power will be based on molecule-sized components—after all, the basic unit of all information is the tension between the proton and the electron—tiny machines the size of dust, some of which will actually attach to and interact with sections of DNA. Such a system, if deployed, will make the reality of the environment indistinguishable from a global computer network. This is not science fiction; it is the real goal of some technologists. A large part of the technology is already an achievement, and lacks only the wiring fine enough to interface the microscopic computer components with human systems. There are genius technicians working on this now, as I write (Us News and World Report, 2000).
The point is, we humans now have the knowledge and power to change the biosphere of the entire planet, and all our wisdom traditions and world religions were developed inside a cosmology that did not include the fact that we could wipe out or change species globally. Most wisdom traditions from the past deal with how to advance the human community, but do not inform the process of unlimited dominion over a limited planet. What will the choices be when we are capable of deploying computers that can be inhaled though the nose, that are self-replicating, and can spread throughout all living systems, like a human-made microbe? Will we choose to abandon that research, or will it be in the control of a government agency? Will we illegalize it, only to see it developed for the profit of a criminal element, or as a relentlessly powerful weapon of the military-industrial complex? These are choices that are being made. It might be a good idea to start thinking them through.
Jung once wrote that there are really no solutions to problems by direct means; people just grow into more whole beings, with more consciousness and awareness, and the problems diminish in importance. On a personal level, at this time in the human species development, this means coming to recognize and actualize the denigrated feminine within oneself. Tanya Wilkinson once said it is quite possible that women in this time are also overbalanced in favor of Logos, and by virtue of being embedded in a patriarchic system, are also in need of reinstating the feminine. Also, since Jung’s time, the boundaries between genders are recognized as being more diffuse, due to the recognition of homosexuality as a valid expression of intimacy. Most men will never be women, and perhaps it is safe to assume that accessing the feminine will require work in a different way from most women.
In any case, the goal of Jungian philosophy and Jungian psychotherapy is the integration of opposites, primarily the male and the female. When this happens, Logos, the mercurial brightness of intellectual and scientific technology, the Male Mystery, becomes balanced by the moisture of Eros, the Female Mystery. Then we have soul experiences; we see the pulsing light of life glowing within trees, animals, and water.
Whenever men encounter the unconscious feminine in any of her three aspects, it is always with a feeling of deep meaning, emotionality, and soul-connection. Likewise, I imagine women encounter their own feminine experience of Eros and enjoy similar constellations of meaning. The most culturally conscious and socially-developed example of such a constellation is during an experience of romantic love.
One could say a couple falling in love is getting in touch with a soul experience, which means they are actually experiencing the archetypal warmth of the virgin goddess, the maiden Kore, before she is kidnapped by the dark masculine and taken to Hades. Before that usurpation, the maiden symbolizes innocent love, and the anticipation of fecundity. Men attach all sorts of past baggage to their Kore, and then project all the energy of this new love into the other love partner. This is a mistake of attribution.
Instead of recognizing and integrating the virgin freshness as one’s own, we feel it must certainly come from the love object. This is a fatal and disastrous mistake in many cases, because after we give our Kore away to the other (allowing her to be kidnapped by the Dark Masculine through neglect), the other has the right of refusal. A refusing and withholding female is a threatening experience for men, just as a distant, withholding male evokes keen disappointment and rage in many women.
Suddenly, one finds that the soul-connection has been severed, and the perception is that the other lover has certainly taken it away. We feel ripped apart inside, and it is quite literally true that we have allowed the ripping. Primal rage roars forth, in the form of unconscious, archetypal forces exemplified by the Terrible Mother and Bluebeard, who go at it until they draw blood. The power of these archetypal forces cannot be overestimated. They result in the fact that most homicides in America are within close relationships.
The qualities associated with the mother archetype are maternal care, sympathy, and the magic of female reproductive power. In the mental realm, we find qualities including wisdom, spiritual transcendence, and benevolent instincts and impulses. The mother is identified with places of magic, transformation, rebirth, and the underworld with its inhabitants. On the complimentary “dark” side, the mother archetype may contain the secret, hidden, abysmal, world of the dead. That stygian shadow enfolds all which devours, seduces, and withers, and is fate, terrifying and inescapable. These ambivalent attributes are embodied in images of “the loving and the terrible mother”, found throughout the world. For example, Jung noted that the Virgin Mary was not only the mother of “the lord”, but also was his cross, according to medieval allegories. “The loving and terrible mother” in India is Kali, whose images contain the same paradoxical ambiguity (Jung, 1959b).
Three essential aspects of the mother are her nourishing goodness, her orgiastic abandon, and her Stygian, fearful gloom. These features of the feminine within men, according to Jung , belong to the archetype of the anima, which are invariably, before things are brought to the light of consciousness, confused and mixed with the mother. As long as the feminine processes and constellations within men are left in the unconscious, their archetypal powers are activated, in response to the right stimulus. When, through meditation, therapy, or altered states, they are brought into consciousness, the ego must be strong enough to bear the tension of ambiguity. If the ego is not strong enough, in the face of an at-once nourishing, yielding, gentle, and yet angry or assertive feminine presence, ambiguity is not tolerated and the response will be predictable male rage or literal unconsciousness (Jung, 1959a).
For example, I was once listening to a couple who were having fairly typical marital difficulties. When the wife asked her husband what he was feeling about her need for him to be more expressive, he closed his eyes, as if thinking deeply about the question. But were we surprised when in a moment he began snoring! This man simply did not have the ego power to contain his love and his pain in the same moment, so he simply checked out. Most men I know are somewhat more clever with their avoidance in the face of intolerable ambiguity.
One such strategy is to bury oneself in work. The dominant economic culture is one for which Logos, the Male Mystery, is nicely adapted. The work ethic is condoned and even praised by judeo-christian morality. It is considered devotional and good to go into a job that requires all of one’s life force, and both men and women apply with all their Logos might to the task of willing sacrifice. The resulting accomplishments of technological enterprise are admirable, but they are for the most part an expression of an extreme overbalance of the powers of the Male Mystery.
Interestingly, in turn, the workplace becomes a ground, a place associated with nourishment, yielding money and social rewards. Such a definition is associated, once again, with the mother archetype. Vocation was once described as a river by Emerson, who saw the soul as a boat upon it. So we can envision the boat and river as a container for the living of a person, and whose waters are the blood of mother Earth. Even when escaping the ambiguity of “loving and terrible mother”, the workaholic devotes himself to the feminine.
The problem is, this situation is rarely acknowledged consciously. It is pressingly difficult to maintain a contact with the integrated feminine aspects of the natural world, to see the glowing of life in all things, to feel connected with the universe story, from within a computerized cubicle. And yet, people, men mostly, who are the most powerfully able to make permanent changes in our planet are all operating from within glass and steel canyons, the financial districts of the cities. Stunning stupidity abounds. Credence and respect are given to the most backward and ill-conceived ideas: A certain san Francisco radio talk show host, a former rancher from Wyoming, speaks in his deep booming and experienced-sounding voice about how ecosystems are nothing but stuff that can grow anywhere. If you want to see a vernal pool, he says, just make a puddle in your backyard. That is patently false, and he is obviously uninformed by the tiniest grain of education about living systems, but what is scary is that he speaks to millions on the radio, and he did not get the job because he represented an unpopular idea. This man is a fine example of a person who cleverly disguises his intolerance of the ambiguous feminine by diverting his intolerance, not into thoughtful awareness, but into self-seeking, through sowing social-political seeds of hatred and discord.
Imagine the above Wyoming rancher or the likes of a Rush Limbaugh receiving the information that they are descended from black africans, and that the mother Mary was likely dark as well. They will, no doubt, along with millions of other American men and women, respond with outright scorn, deceits and diversions. The dominant world culture is dried up; it is so invested in monolithic Logos Mystery that not a drop of feminine nourishment can be found. In their commitment to the dominant economy, the blind ones comfort themselves by having completely buried and sealed their feminine mystery under psychic fortresses piled on tons of steel and bullshit. Their psychological tolerance for ambiguity is as brittle as glass.
And yet, if we try to overcome these brittle psychic fortresses directly, they will explode in rage and then the defensive impulses will reinforce the walls to become even denser and stupider. It appears fighting logos with logos makes for war. Instead of confronting problems directly, there has to be an indirect route, a route through inferior underbellies of psyches, through the portals of unconscious influence. This is where the longing for the feminine will be used to advantage. Stories, images and myths, even when the logical dimension of consciousness is well defended with the threat of male rage, inform the unconscious whether we like it or not. The job of the coming Goddess era, the coming Ecozoic Period (Swimme, 1995), will fall to art and story tellers. This is what Brain Swimme (1995) calls “The Great Work”. It is what I call the advent of the Female Mystery.
So, I make ambiguous drawings and construct ambiguous altars. Recently, because of the influence of Lucia Birnbaum’s class called the Dark Mother, at California Institute of Integral Studies, I made a Black Madonna. She was originally a dollar-store virgin attached to a night light. My wife and I discovered why she wound up in the dollar market—the only way she plugged into a wall socket was hanging upside-down. So I took her off the wall, sprayed her black, and enshrined her in a beautiful old hospital bedpan. I placed her under a huge weeping willow in the back yard by my fire circle. There is a huger white oak nearby. The oak and the willow remind me that Wiccan friends told me the willow and the oak are sacred. My black madonna embodies the sacred and the profane, in ambiguous tension. My wife pointed out that the bedpan has the association with the nourishing good mother, the caring symbolized by its previous use by nurses taking care of those too piteously sick to arise to their own most intimate needs. There is that holy aspect, and the whiteness reminds me of the hushed cleanliness of hospital convents. A candle placed before her at night plays her shadow against the white enamel.
At the same time, the shrine was unmistakably once a receptacle for shit and piss. People who were forced the indignity of its use probably took their last craps in it. My shadow projects that perhaps the madonna herself could have been formed out of crap in there. There is nothing pretty about that side of this madonna. People shiver in her cold withering poison, just before they die.
I approached her and sat there for a long time. As I entered the altered state of my meditation, I saw her energy pulse in the limbs of the willow and the nearby oak. A saying came to me, as if whispered from some ancient Kali: “As I freeze your bones, so shall I embrace your soul in the warmth of my arms.” I slept there, under the open stars, all night.
References
Birnbaum, L. (2000). The Dark Mother: Metaphor for the new millennium. (Manuscript publication pending)
Birnbaum, L. (1993). Black Madonnas: Feminism, religion, and politics in Italy. Boston: Northeastern University Press.
Jung, C.G. (1959a). Aion. In Collected Works, Vol. 9, Part 2. New York: Bollingen Foundation, Princeton University Press.
Jung, C.G. (1956). Symbols of transformation. In Collected Works, Vol. 5. New York: Bollingen Foundation, Princeton University Press.
Jung, C. G. (1959b). The archetypes and the collective unconscious. In Collected Works, Vol. 9, Part 1. New York: Bollingen Series, Princeton University Press.
Neumann, E. (1955). The great mother. New York: Bollingen Foundation, Princeton University Press.
Perera, S. (1981). Descent to the goddess: A way of initiation for women. Toronto, Canada: Inner City Books.
Swimme, Brian (1995). Canticle to the cosmos. (Audio cassettes, set of 6). Boulder, Colorado: Sounds True Audio.
US News and world Report article May 5, 2000 on microminiature computer components.
Wilkinson, T. (1998). Medea’s folly: Women, relationships, and the search for intimacy. Berkeley, California: PageMill Press.
Woodman, M., & Dickson, E. (1997). Dancing in the flames: The dark goddess in the transformation of consciousness. Boston: Shambhala Books.
