aka Gluadys's rant

I am only part way through writing this. It will take me another week to get to the core of the argument. And at least three, maybe four posts to cover it all.

This one is some preliminary background on the concept of dualism which has a very important and very influential impact on many forms of spirtuality including everything from Gnosticism to Marxism in the history of western thought.

Dualism is natural

To some extent it is impossible to avoid a dualistic outlook. The physical world with its opposites of light/dark, heat/cold, wet/dry, hard/soft, male and female sex provides us with ready-to-hand evidence of a reality characterized by dualities which wax and wane like summer and winter each being constantly transformed into the other----symbolized classically in the Yin/Yang icon.

Dualism becomes problematical

Problems arise when this undeniable physical dualism is translated into theological and philosophical categories and into sociological realities.

To begin with, we note that opposites exist not only in the physical world, but also in psychology. We distinguish between extrovert/introvert, rational/passionate, aggressive/docile and so forth. If we did so independently of the physical opposites, no problem. But anciently these dualities were connected were assigned a connection with the physical dualities ---- which included an assignation to biological sexual differences. So we get a constellation of male/female psychological attributes in which the ideal male is extrovert, active, aggressive, war-like, Yang and the ideal female is introvert, passive, docile, peace-ful, Yin.

Of course, both in ancient and in modern psychology we are supposed to remember that all of us are a mix of male and female. Testosterone may be the male hormone, but it is also found in the female physiology and the same applies in reverse to estrogen. The male has his anima--his feminine side, and the female her animus--her masculine side. But in concrete practice we don't. Psychologically young males are encouraged to prove their manhood---their worthiness to be called men-- by adopting the psychology and concrete practices associated with maleness, and suppressing their feminine qualities. While girls are held to be blameworthy and not true women if they attempt to develop their "male" attributes. Neither is socialized to become a whole human being.

The sociology of dualism

To both physical and psychological dualism is then added another layer: sociological dualism. And this becomes especially potent when, as is universally the case in ancient times, the social order is deemed to reflect the cosmic order. In fact, disturbances in the social order are held to arise when it fails to properly express the cosmic order.

It is at this point that the obvious biological difference of sex is transformed into the not-so-obvious social construct of gender. For now we add to the Yang column such terms as father, husband, brother, older brother, patriarch, lord, governor, king, and sky/heaven (in most languages the same word is used for both). While in the Yin column go mother, wife, sister, younger brother, child, commoner, servant, subject, and earth/nature.

It would appear that at least some of the hunter-gatherer and early agricultural societies were matrifocal and maintained a social order that kept Yin and Yang in balance. Although gender roles existed they were complementary and this complementarity was reflected in the complementarity of male and female deities. The Earth Mother Goddess was just as important as the male Sky God. But at some point in the transition from neolithic to bronze age societies, we have in Mesopotamia the casting out or conquest and subordination of the Earth Goddess to the Sky God. It is not an instantaneous transition and occurs in different societies in different ways and in different ages. One example is the Babylonian myth of the war of Marduk against his mother Tiamat, which ends with him slaughtering her and making the earth from her body. And here is another great difference between matrifocal and patriarchal societies. While the Earth Mother Goddess was revered, creation myths focused on the birth, not the making, of the earth and its creatures. But in patriarchy, birthing is replaced by the technology of making. (Interestingly, in Genesis, the image of birthing/hatching is used in 1:1, while the image of the craftsman is used in 2:7)

Patriarchy is by no means limited to Mesopotamian civilizations and their western descendants. In India women are, by the laws of Manu, relegated to perpetual childhood, ruled by father, husband or son at various stages of their lives. In China, Confucian order (known as the "rectification of names") requires the subordination of younger to older, child to father, wife to husband, female to male, commoner to lord and subject to emperor. Even before the Christian era, the roles of women, with few exceptions, are circumscribed to the domestic circle in the Orient, India, Greece and elsewhere, while public life is the preserve of men. (In Korean, the very word for "woman" means literally "inside person".)

to be continued......

Are you asking that we refrain from posting here? I don't suppose that should be a problem. Just let us know okay? I can always delete any unwanted posts if need be.

I think clarifying questions would be ok. But hold off with substantial criticism until the conclusions are drawn.

Part two:

Dualism and other social phenomena
The male/female contrast is not the only significant contrast in social dualism. The link of male with head-of-household in the domestic sphere translates into the contrast of aristocracy and commoner in the public realm--with the aristocracy claiming the right to own and to command. In a startling reversal of the tribal concept of land as a gift of the gods to all and free to be used by all according to need, the dualist sociology concentrates land ownership into the hands of the king and other high dignitaries and turns those who actually work the land into owned beings. Throughout feudal times, peasants were listed as part of the assets of an estate, along with the orchards, fields, pasture and cattle. It is as if the peasants became part of the earth itself, like the grass---and as expendable. This legacy of landlessness for those who depend on agriculture for their livelihood is still with us today--in countries like Brazil, for example, where 98% of arable land is owned by 2% of the population and used, when used at all, for the plantation economy of crops for export, rather than to supply local food needs.

No doubt the phenomenon of class distinction originally arose through practical needs. In the burgeoning civilizations of the Nile, Indus and Tigris-Euphrates valleys, the organization of society to develop irrigation systems provided the means to conscript labour for other projects, such as building roads, temples, ziggurats, pyramids and palaces. The need to defend agricultural societies from raids by desert nomads generated a need for fortifications, walled cities, and a militia with a chain of command that helped establish monarchies and trained, standing armies. But the end result is what Marx called the alienation of the worker from the work and from the fruit of his/her productive labour. And even though we have made many strides toward democratization and holding the governing authorities accountable to the people, the ideal of the prophets of Israel, that each should be able to sit unafraid under their own vine and fig tree is still very, very distant.

The cosmology of dualism
The demotion of the largest part of the human population to the status of servants/slaves/peasants whose reason for existence was to statisfy the needs and pleasures of their "betters" (for "aristocracy" means "rule by the best") did not go uncontested. History is replete with instances of slave and peasant revolts. "Land to the tiller," cried the peasants of 14th century England. And rhymes like "When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?" ("gentleman" then having the meaning of "aristocrat", not "nice, polite guy".)

No, the hierarchy of sociological dualism can only hold for long when it is supported by the cosmology of dualism. It is the cosmology of dualism which turns a social revolt into rebellion against the order of nature and the will of God. So the dualism which began with such obvious and natural contrasts as day-night, earth-sky, male-female, now goes on to associate heaven, God, divine authority, good order, stability, right to command, etc. with maleness and earth, creature, submission to authority, breakdown of order, chaos, duty to obey, etc. with femaleness. And this not as an understandable, if regrettable, historical evolution of social order, but as a divine decree, as a measure of "rightness" in the design of the cosmos. The genius of the cosmology of dualism is to render the hierarchical social order as acceptable to the peasant, pauper and female as to the monarch, plutocrat and male.

to be continued......

Part three

Special features of Western dualism
The notations on physical, psychological, social and cosmological dualism are the foundation of patriarchal societies everywhere in the world and are found in Japan, China, India, the Middle East, Africa and many Buddhist and animist societies as well as the Christian West. Western society is no worse, and is sometimes better, than these, but it does have some interesting features of its own.

1. Monogamous marriage and clerical celibacy
One of the most distinctive features of western society from the early days of Christendom is the insistence on monogamous marriage. In most patriarchic societies, polygamy is the norm. Women, being associated with reproduction and fertility and the earth are naturally associated with the wealth that is derived from the land, and the fertility of field and flock. This is the core of the fertility rites of many ancient religions. And just as a patriarch can increase his wealth by increasing the extent of his ownership of the land, so he increases his wealth by acquiring exclusive use of many females. Hence polygamy, hence the harem. Western Christian civilization repudiated polygamy. And in doing so had to channel sexual energy elsewhere. Hence the ideal of virginity, chastity and celibacy.

It is also interesting to note that in the very early days, the ideal of virginity and celibacy was seized on by the women more so than by the men. If you check the Roman Catholic calendar of saints you find a number of female saints from the second and third centuries whose sainthood was demonstrated by their refusal to obey their parents and accept the marriage arranged for them. This points to another significant difference between western and non-western societies. In the traditional societies outside of Europe there is absolutely no social function for an independent, unmarried female. Marriage and motherhood, specifically becoming mother of a son, are the defining roles of a woman, so much so that in some societies a woman is not recognized as a person until the birth of her first son. Failure to produce a son is grounds for divorce. For young women in the early church, the opportunity to be free of this single defining role, to have an honoured place without the necessity of being sub-ordinate to a husband was a heady, liberating experience. And one that an increasingly male-dominated church moved to act against.

In the early church, virgins, male and female, were part of the ordinary Christian community. Although pledged to chastity, they did not live apart from the rest of the community. They were also lay people as well as clergy, and clergy were free to marry. Some of those pledged to chastity even lived in mixed gender households in a relationship known as chaste marriage. (The concept is derived from an obscure passage in one of Paul's letters.) So they were chaste but not celibate. Some, however, moved out of the (mostly urban) congregations to establish monastic communities. Again, some of these were mixed gender communities. But from the 4th to the 14th century the church exercised all its formidable influence to achieve three goals. 1) All females pledged to chastity must be part of a monastic community; 2) All monastic communities must be single gender; 3) All female monastic communities were to receive spiritual direction and the sacraments from male clergy. Convents were increasingly cloistered to the point of becoming as sealed off as any sultan's harem. They became dumping grounds for unmarriageable and unwanted females, such as the daughters of Galileo. Only after Vatican II did religious sisters begin to integrate into the ordinary community again. Ironically, the success of the Reformation in northern Europe closed off even this vestige of respectable non-married life for women, who became the object of pity as "spinsters".

At the same time as female virgins were being increasingly cloistered, there was also an attack on marriage, including chaste marriage for Christian male clergy. While monastic communities continued to exist for males, the ideals of monasticism were increasingly forced onto clergy outside the monastic community as well. Eventually it became impossible to take holy orders without simultaneously pledging oneself to both chastity and celibacy. In northern Europe at least, this ended with the Reformation, but has continued in Catholic societies.

2. Colonialism and the feminization of non-European peoples
The 15th century explosion of Europe from its confines led to massive European contact with cultures it had not known before. Throughout the Middle Ages, Europe had been a backwater, and compared to the golden age of Islamic culture, it had been barbarian. In Asia, where China and India had also known barbarian invasion (e.g. by the Mongols) the conquerers had been absorbed and civilized into the prevailing culture. Such was not to be the case as the European barbarians flung their net over the other continents. In the Americas, of course, they largely displaced the indigenous peoples, driving them into the jungles or penning them into reserves. But in Africa and India they took over the reigns of government, and in China, Japan and the Middle East ensured an economic control of the nation. The success of colonialism enabled Europeans, and their American (meaning here the Hispanic and Canadian as well as the US variety) cousins to see themselves as not only technologically, but culturally and religiously superior to non-white peoples: and so to claim, as the aristocracy had always done, the right to own and the right to rule. Just as the peasantry of Europe had been relegated to the earth, so was the peasantry of India. The peoples of the Americas were deemed likewise to be children of nature like the animals rather than truly human. There was genuine debate over whether they had souls. The labour of Africa was conscripted for the plantations of America and the wealth of all colonies was claimed for the enrichment of the colonizers. Effectively, non-European peoples as a whole were assegned the subordinate role of females and peasants vis-a-vis people of European descent. As with the question of land, this legacy is still very much with us today in the phenomoenon of racism and in the inequity of wealth distribution by nation, class race and gender.

3. The stigmatization of female education and sexuality
When Europeans were finally permitted into Japan, one of the social institutions they found fascinating was the geisha. Yet the role of the geisha is also found in our own European antiquity among the hetairoi of Greece. In the patriarchal society which confines the wives and daughters of the patriarch to the enclosure of the women's quarters and domestic duties, the education of a respectable woman is geared to her role as wife and domestic help. Obviously, the development of the mind is not a serious requirement. (Similarly, in apartheid South Africa, Bantu education was intended to be the minimum necessary for Blacks to fulfill their assigned social role, and in the ante-bellum US several states forbade teaching slaves to read and write.)

Yet, in their social life, men also wanted female companionship. Such companionship included, of course, sexual services. But men also wanted more. They wanted intelligent conversation, wit, entertainment. So we have the strange spectacle in such societies that while the respectable married women is denied access to education, the talented prostitute is schooled not only in arcane refinements of love-making, but in music, arts, literature, and dance. (The classic dances of Indian culture were developed in temples where the female dancers were also prostitutes.) In Europe we see some individual instances of the same phenomenon in the powerful concubines of some monarchs (e.g. Mme. Pompadour in the court of Louis XIV). But the ideals of celibacy and chastity which had been engraven in European culture acted to criminalize prostitution and certainly did not lead to a program of education for those who made their living in this way. So in European culture, the unmarried woman was forced into the role of either virgin or whore. And education was by and large denied to all women save those who had a father or husband that was sympathetic, or had some independant means to act on their own.


This ends the background material. Next I move onto what this means in today's western culture--including the tie-in with science and evolution. Any comments on what is posted so far are quite welcome.

Clarification: weren't the hetairoi all young men who pledged themselves to great battle commanders to garner favor for their families?

Ahh! I forgot to spell the correct gender. Should have been hetairai. You may be quite right about hetairoi. I hadn't heard that one. But the context fits.

I had once,---and have long since lost--a quote from a Greek writer to the effect that they had wives to bear them sons and hetairai to give them pleasure. They may well have had both hetairai and hetairoi come to think of it. The statement would apply for either gender.

There may not be any gender difference inherent. Hetairoi simply means companion in Greek, but I don't know if the language is stuctured by gender. The references I've heard were for battle formations where the hetairoi formed a unit around certain commanders, and also that certain young men were put forth by their families while feasting a noble to act as companions, and were subsequently used as bodyguards (fodder?) in battle. Seems logical that there would have been a female equivalent as well, just not for battle.

I am not an expert in Greek, but it is structured with grammatical gender, much like Italian or Spanish.

Part three

I will be busy with spring planting this weekend, but I will try to take time to have the conclusion up by Sunday evening.

Dualism in western civilization today
Modern western dualism and modern western science find their roots in the philosophy of Descartes. In one sense, Descartes simplifed the long list of Yin-Yang dualities into two mutually exclusive categories: mind and matter. He also decisively linked human Being with mind rather than matter. It is mental, not bodily existence which makes us human: cogito ergo sum. Equally, Descartes denied mental existence to anything else in nature. For Descartes, nothing on earth outside the human mind is mind. Everything else is matter.

This has enormous consequences for the newly budding discipline of science. For it means that all material substance is related to humanity in a purely utilitarian fashion. As the only mental being--the only entity on earth with any kind of existence that has eternal importance--humanity has the right to do with anything non-human as it pleases. There is precedence, of course, in the biblical pronouncement that gives humanity dominion over all the creatures. Descartes is not entirely breaking new ground here. What is significant here is that this becomes a bedrock assumption of science that is still very much with us. The material world in Cartesian terms is "nothing but matter" and its sole value lies in how it can be exploited for human purposes. The quest of science is to learn enough about it through scientific inquiry to turn it to human use.

Closely associated with the utilitarian approach to matter is the mechanization of the material world. Descartes and his successors, such as Newton, promoted the concept of nature as a great clockwork governed by the pulleys and chains of natural laws. For Descartes, this mechanization extended even to living beings, for he describes animals as mechanisms and assumes that they are actually insensate. The animal reactions which appear to register such things as pleasure, pain, memory or emotion, cannot, in Descartes view, be anything more than clever mechanical imitations of these things, since animals are purely material and do not have the requisite sentience to actually experience such things*. Descartes, therefore, had no compunction about practicing vivesection on animals. And although vivesection is no longer used in science, the use of animals in scientific research is still founded on principles which draw the same sharp distinction between animal and human life.

* I was surprised recently to find this idea is still alive and well in some circles. I had a brief conversation with the author of this web site, and he has personally confirmed to me that in his opinion, animals are incapable of feeling pain, and that squawk you hear when you step on your cat's tail is merely an instinctive reaction to harm---not genuine sentience.

What we need to be very aware of here, is that Descartes, Bacon, Newton, all the 17th and 18th century practitioners of philosophy and science, were thinking and acting in a civilization based on the exclusion of women from the life of the mind. The consequence of this is that when they locate the essence of humanity in the mind, the human they are speaking of is male and not female. "Man" is not a generic term. "Man" is human; woman is not. "Man" is rational; woman is illogical. "Man" is scientific; woman is superstitious. "Man" is noble; woman is a harlot. "Man" is above nature; woman is a part of nature.

And what applies to nature and to woman applies with equal force to all those categories of beings closely associated with nature; to the peasant, to the colonized peoples of Asia, to the indigenous peoples of Africa, Australia and the Americas. These are quaint savages, primitives, like children, women and animals, beings to be studied as part of nature, not as essentially human in themselves. They are at best "lesser races". These attitudes predominated in western scientific, academic and theological thought right into the 19th century and, in spite of a veneer of political correctness, still have much influence today.

If we ask why dualism, which on the face of it simply recognizes real opposites in nature and life, became patriarchy with all the negative social consequences that entails, we can quickly ascertain that the problem is not dualism per se, but dualism as hierarchy.

In theory the Yin-Yang relationship should be one of dynamic equality, male and female, light and dark, earth and heaven and all the opposites interacting as equals with the ascendance of one followed by the ascendance of the other as summer follows winter and night follows day.

In practice, patriarchy halts this healthy alternation of opposites by giving preference to male over female, light over dark , day over night, sun over moon, heaven over earth, a single male God over the dual deities of Sky Father-Earth Mother.

This has left us with three legacies which we need desperately to overcome.

1. The legacy of patriarchy: the preference of male over female
2. The legacy of racism: the preference of the European (and its American, Australian, etc. offshoots) over the non-European
3. The legacy of gnosticism: the preference of spirit over matter, heaven over earth.

And of these, I suggest that the most important is the third. For the first two deal with the sociology of hierarchical, patriarchal dualism. But the third deals with the cosmology of hierarchical, patriarchal dualism. And, as noted earlier, sociology is shaped and sustained by cosmology. In short, we need more than political correctness to change from a hierarchical to an egalitarian and natural dualism. We need a profound change in our philosophical/theological understanding of ourselves, our world and our God.

My understanding of gnosis is incomplete, but I thought the earliest beliefs in gnosis emphasized that knowledge, and the fullness of it in both spiritual AND material matters, was the true salvation for humankind. I know this is my personal belief. Did I overlay my wishes on what I read in the Pistis Sophia?

My understanding of gnosis is also incomplete. I would not be surprised if you are right concerning the earliest beliefs. But that doesn't necessarily apply to later forms (e.g. Manicheaism). Gnosticism, like Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc, is a big tent. Probably no generalization is true of all its forms.

I am not familiar with the Pistis Sophia, but I do know that Sophia is not "knowledge" but "wisdom", of which more below.

rant continued---part four

Logos and Sophia
Another aspect of western patriarchy which should be discussed, is the way the Church substituted the Logos (as in the prologue to John's gospel) for the OT figure of Wisdom. Logos, of course, is masculine, rational and linear as words must be. It is the order of the syllogism. But Wisdom is feminine, and expressed in dream,vision, symbol and oracle--in the Wisdom of the body as well as of the mind, in the depths of the unconscious as well as in conscious thought. The suppression of Wisdom takes extreme form in the European witch trials. We have long forgotten that in Old English "wic" = "wise". "Wisdom" is spelled "wicdom" (with the 'c' pronounced as 'ch' in "child"). The "wicca" were the wise women of pagan times, bearers of the knowledge and skills ("wiccraft") and wisdom ("wicdom") on herbs, midwifery, and medical treatments. It is also worth noting that while witchcraft was condemned at all times by the Church, most persecution of witches did not occur in the dark ages, nor even in medieval times. No, the great Burning Times coincided with the Enlightenment and the rise of modern science. Is this the great war of male knowledge vs. female wisdom (cast, of course, by the "rational, scientific" male persecutors as a war on "irrationality" and "superstition")? The same era, of course, saw the displacement of female midwives with male obstetricians.

Sex and gender
I want to touch briefly on the difference between gender and sex.

The Gospel of Thomas concludes with a passage in which the disciples ask Jesus to send Mary Magdalene away, because she is female and "females do not deserve to live." It is a very startling phrase for a very startling attitude. This is not just saying that women are not equal, that women should be subservient or even that women are chattels. Females, say the disciples, do not even deserve to live.

Jesus does not send Mary away. He tells the disciples that he has made Mary male and that he will make any woman who becomes his disciple male, so that she can be part of the community. The solution is as bizarre as the objection. In effect, Jesus agrees with the disciples. Females do not deserve to live. But they can live and even be equal if they become male.

Is this still not the condition on which females are accepted into the ranks of males? Look at the women who do achieve positions of power and leadership. Is not the price of their success that they become "one of the boys", at least in public life? Do they not have to draw on their "masculine" traits, become "Iron Ladies" a la Margaret Thatcher, to be taken seriously?

Of course, while demanding that women self-masculinize to achieve equality, our society also encourages females to be feminine in order to be "real women". And popular media continue to portray the strong, successful woman as a conniving b*tch. It is a maddening catch-22.

Do we also have males who are not male, but female? Indeed we do. Any man who fails to achieve a requisite level of masculinity is similarly deemed not to be a "real man". One extreme version of this I came across was a study on the incidence of homosexual rape in male prisons. Psychological surveys found that the perpetrators of homosexual rape did not self-identify as homosexuals. They saw themselves as "real men" and saw homosexuals as effeminate, "pretty boys". It was their victims whom they deemed to be homosexual. This is consistent with the historic use of homosexual rape to emasculate one's conquered enemies. In lesser form, this same emasculation is seen when non-Europeans are said to be "like children", or when a boy is ridiculed and bullied if he doesn't measure up to macho standards.

So some "males" are biological females who have emphasized those traits of character and behaviour that we equate with dominant males, and so achieved a measure of equality with their male counterparts. Some "females" are males who have failed to measure up to society's criteria of masculinity in some way. But the undelying theme is the same. "Females" ---whether they be women or men---"do not deserve to live." (Male homosexuals can attest to the force of this attitude as it applies to them.)

Johannes Scotus Erigena once noted that in the Resurrection sex would be abolished an nature become one. "Then", he said, "there will be only man, as if he had never sinned." Only man in the Resurrection, only man in eternity, man "as if he had never sinned". Perhaps the "sin" of homosexuality is that the homosexual has deserted maleness for femaleness---and this "real men" can never forgive?

I warned that this would be a rant. I haven't sourced a lot of stuff for that reason---but I do have sources for most on hand and can get others if I need to. But I think it is important to look at the many, many ways in which hierarchical dualism (aka patriarchy) works. Any one of these items, taken alone, can seem a piddling trifle, but as strand is added to strand, the great cord of patriarchal oppression becomes impossible not to see. And historically, right up to the present, the foundation that upholds this superstructure is the dividing of reality into dualities combined with the privileging of one of these dualities over the other.

Now, credit where credit is due, we have moved significantly in some ways. In most countries, education at least to primary level is now available equally to boys and girls. And, in industrialized countries, to men and women through under-graduate levels. Opportunities in business, politics, the military, and in some denominations, even the church, are being made available to women, as well as to people of diverse faiths, origins, skin colours and ethnicity.

But one thing we have not yet appreciated is that these are openings into a world still dominated by patriarchy, in which the rules of thought and behaviour are still patriarchal, so that the feminine is still excluded and those formerly identified as female gain entrance only by acquiring maleness.

It is also still a world where knowledge is valued more than wisdom, and in which nature is still seen as "nothing but matter" whose only value lies in its potential for human use and exploitation.

Above all it is still a world in which God is indisputably male, and only man is made in the image of God. Our Yin-Yang division still looks like this:

God heaven light knowledge reason spirit soul man
__________________________________________________
Nature earth darkness wisdom passion matter body woman

If we are not to continue perpetuating the oppression of patriarchy, this is a hierarchy that must be dissolved at all points.


Some steps toward dissolving that hierarchy will form the concluding section of this rant.

I decided to split Gluadys' thread here, due to "my miscue," so she can continue posting without further derailing the thread, Okay? Thanks.

__________________
So when the body dies, and consciousness departs, where do "we" go? ... Off to define another "reality" perhaps?

Well, family life, work and gardening have really slowed me up. But I have finally finished. Sorry for the delay.

So where do we go from here.

1. Recover the divine feminine

2. Resacralize earth and despiritualize heaven

3. Value darkness as well as light

4. Value wisdom as well as knowledge

5. Stop being afraid of passion

6. Unify spirit and matter as dual aspects of the same reality

7. Learn to listen to the body in order to nurture the soul

8. Affirm the normality of the feminine


1. Recover the divine feminine
In ancient times the Earth Mother was as frequent if not more frequent an object of worship as the Sky Father. The Earth Mother was warm and near, the giver of life. The Sky Father often seemed remote and austere, the giver of law. In the Catholic tradition, the Virgin has taken on some aspects of the Earth Mother and is often venerated with more fervour than God because she is seen as closer, more sympathetic and understanding, while God is seen as demanding and judgmental. That is, of course, an unfair depiction of God. For Father-love can be as warm and gentle as Mother-love, and we need to permit tenderness and compassion as part of the Sky-Father's character as well. Just as we need to permit strength and righteousness as part of Earth Mother's character.

For monotheists we need to note that reviving the divine feminine does not require reviving paganism. We all know, when we stop to think about it, that God trancends gender and is not appropriately confined to either maleness or femaleness. But we tuck that away in the back of our minds and continute to worship God as if God were male only. So it is not enough to have a correct theology on the matter. What is needed is a living and active worship of the feminine as well as the masculine in God. We need to become as comfortable worshipping the God who, according to Judaeo-Christian scripture, knits or weaves our being in our mother's womb, like a grandmother knitting booties, who births the nation of Israel, who gathers her people under her wing like a hen her chicks, and countless other images of the divine feminine that were not foreign even in patriarchal Israel, yet have become strangely foreign in our supposedly more egalitarian age. We need to reduce the use of male pronouns for the deity, even though we lack a neutral pronoun other than "it". And to reduce the use of male titles such as "Lord" and "King" and "Master" in favour or more generic terms like "Ruler" "Sovereign" and "Monarch". When we have to use pronouns, we need to use the feminine as often as the masculine; and when we choose to use masculine images, we need to balance them with feminine images. Only when we make our recognition of the feminine in God active in speech and song and writing will we succeed in bringing to life that bit of theology we have tucked away in the obscure corners of our mind as if it is irrelevant to our relationship with God/dess and with each other.

2. Resacralize earth and despiritualize heaven
Ancient worship of the Earth Mother involved reverence for the earth itself and for the creatures of the earth---an attitude which has been preserved in several aboriginal cultures such as those that venerate the corn goddess or have close ties with animal totems. Such reverence also persisted in Western culture through much of medieval times as attested in the nature-oriented hymns and prayers of Francis of Assissi, and the writings of Julian of Norwich and Hildegard Bingen.

This reverent attitude was lost in the early days of the Enlightment, as symbolized by Descartes consignation of all of nature to the realm of matter, so divesting the earth entirely of spirit and sacredness. Around the same time, Francis Bacon publishes his theories on the renovation of scientific inquiry--writings in which nature (still clearly perceived as feminine) is removed from the pedestal of divinity and placed on the rack to be questioned. Bacon, we should remember, is progressively a lawyer, a judge, the attorney general and the lord high chancellor of England at a time when witch trials are common and torture is still an approved method of interrogation.

This change in attitude was important to getting the early scientific endeavour underway. But now science itself tells us we must re-invoke attitudes of wonder, respect, awe and love for this planet. We are currently generating, largely through human activity, the sixth and most rapid mass extinction of biodiversity. We have already lost 1/3 of known species in the last 40 years and scientists expect we will lose another 30% in the next three decades unless we can pull back from our exploitative ways and learn to treat nature as an ally rather than as a conquest.

We need to carry forward with the approach suggested by Teilhard de Chardin and consider again that there is no such thing as matter which is only matter, but affirm the spiritual nature of all material existence. Matter is not devoid of spirit; it is an expression of spirit.

The flip side of the resacralization of earth is the need to de-spiritualize heaven. I speak in relative terms of course. But my meaning is simply that we should restore the ancient concept of heaven as being part of the universe, not outside the universe.

I do not know just when the church began to speak less of the coming of the kingdom of heaven and more of going to heaven. But this switch in perspective has had a profound impact on our spiritual lives. Gnosticism may have been officially condemned by the church, but in this instance it took over the church's theology. Yet it is entirely post-biblical tradition and has not one iota of scripture to stand on. The Hebrew scriptures, echoed by the New Testament, place heaven firmly within creation. That is, heaven is not eternal or purely spiritual; it is part of the created material world--a fact that is easier to comprehend in those languages which use the same term for "sky" as for "heaven". "Heaven" is where the rain comes from, the place through which clouds wander, the residence of the sun, moon and stars and the dwelling place of God, gods and angels (including Satan).

Of course, when we discovered the sky was atmosphere insread of celestial spheres, and explored space with telescopes without finding angels, we mythologised this homely description and began to say that heaven is not a place but a state of being: on another plane or in another dimension--a purely spiritual state of being like that of the angels. Couple this with the already established notion of going to heaven when we die, and we are right back in the full-blown neo-Platonic quest to escape the material world. And why should we have any reverence for a state of being we are trying to escape?

Yet our supposed religious mentors, Jesus, the prophets and the apostles, never spoke of going to heaven. They spoke of waiting for the coming of the kingdom of heaven to earth. All the eschatological passages of scripture from Isaiah to Daniel to Jesus to Paul to the Revelation of John conclude with the heavenly kingdom established on earth. All speak of a new heaven and a new earth freed from evil and sorrow. We are not, in classical Christian theology to be saved from earth, but to be saved with the earth and all its creatures. That is the true meaning of the kingdom of heaven. It is the reign of God/dess on earth. And that was the heart of Jesus' gospel.


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3. Value darkness as well as light
Darkness must be valued equally with light, and night with day. Naturally, these differences should carry no more difference in value than heat/cold, long/short, etc. But think how our philosophy and theology is shot through with images of light. Light is good, light is God. Man is distinguished from animals by the light of reason. But darkness is mystery, the untamed jungle, the abode of all that is threatening. Light is the conscious reasoning mind; darkness is the irrational, unconscious mind.

Yet what is truly evil about mystery? about passion? about untamed wildness? It is only allegory that connects these with darkness and evil. A re-think of our vocabulary is needed. Can we learn to speak of holy darkness, sanctified passion, the beauty of wildness? In scripture, the wilderness is the place in which prophets encounter God/dess (e.g. Moses, Elijah).

Light is not necessarily good. It's glare can blind, create illusions (as of pools of water in the desert), be pitiless, as Descartes was pitiless toward animal life.

And darkness is not necessarily evil. Cool twilight is welcome after the heat of the day, shade provides definition to light and gives it shape. Life-giving rain falls and God/dess speaks from the concealing cloud. We need positive images of darkness such as Joseph Blanco White has given us in his sonnet: Mysterious Night! http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/...y/poem2276.html

4. Value wisdom as well as knowledge
Knowledge must be governed by wisdom. It is simply not enough to know stuff. We need wisdom as much or more than we need knowledge. We must also learn to recognize the wisdom of those who do not have our knowledge. Illiteracy is not stupidity; a simple, primitive culture is not backward in all its ways. As we impose our civilisation on people around the world, we are in fact losing immense stores of both knowledge and wisdom, as the last keepers of indigenous traditions die without an opportunity to pass on their knowledge to the next generation. Two recent news articles come to mind. One tells how in Bali, the planting, growing and harvesting of rice was geared to the temple calendar. When green revolution seeds were brought in, the western advisors counselled a different approach, and the people tried it for a few years. But problem after problem occurred, with pests proliferating and poor crops. So they went back to using the temple calendar and have had good success ever since. The second tells of a volunteer who goes to schools in Toronto, teaching children traditional childhood games and stories. Seems with two parents working and kids spending so much time with computers and TV these days, they haven't learned nursery or skipping rhymes or how to play marbles and all sorts of other things kids used to teach each other.

Note too, that mythologies around the world identify wisdom with woman. The wicca were revered as wise women until vilified by the church as witches.

5. Stop being afraid of passion
We need to stop being afraid of passion and emotion. There is so much to be said here. Misogynist literature is filled with the vilification of passion and of woman as the temptress luring men to give into their passions. Passion is depicted again and again as the enemy of reason and therefore as the enemy of manhood, as the enemy of humanness. Passion is the untamed beast within which the human, the man, is called to bring under control. Giving way to passion is to become weak and womanly. Real men don't cry.

Men who shield themselves from passion also do not know joy or love or compassion. Far from beng the epitome of humanity, such "real men" can become devoid of humanity. They can calmly plan the insanity of Mutual Assured Destruction and turn the lives of men, women and children into a cold phrase such as "collateral damage".

When Dr. Helen Caldicott was President of the International Physicians for Nuclear Disarmament, she toured Canada and our National Film Board made a documentary of her presentation called If you love this planet. Naturally, it was made by Studio D--the studio specializing in films of particular interest to women. It won an Oscar as best foreign documentary, even though its showing was banned in the US. Dr. Caldicott spoke of conversations with the military about passion. "They tell me," she says, "that I shouldn't get so emotional, that I should calm down and be reasonable. But I say,we must be deeply emotional about the potential destruction of all life on this planet, we must care deeply about this planet, we must be passionate about saving it. For if this planet is not worth being passionate about, what in God's name is? If we have lost the ability to care passionately for life, have we not lost our humanity?"


6. Unify spirit and matter as dual aspects of the same reality
For millennia, a concept which has run through philosophy and religion has been the Great Chain of Being. This is a grand concept of universal hierarchy, with pure Spirit at one end and pure matter at the other, and all other entities from worms to humans to angelic beings ranged in order from one to the other. I met it in some Hermetic studies I took as part of my instruction in astrology. The school I studied with conceived the soul as eternal, without beginning or end, as a spark of divine being. But to understand the physical world, the soul needed to experience it in all its multiplicity. So it incarnated by falling from the realm of spirit into the lowest and densest form of matter: a mineral crystal, specifically lead. Over aeons, it would re-incarnate in other mineral forms exploring the various minerals and gemstones until it moved up to vegetative life, which again was explored in order from the lowest mosses to the vegetative perfection of the rose. Then came animal life, and then human life, the highest and last stage of physicality. After that would come many many levels of astral life until the soul re-united with its source in the divine Being.

There are differences in detail, but many forms of religion are based on the basic concept of the Great Chain of Being. What is essential to this concept is that matter and spirit are opposites. Matter may not be "bad"; but it is as far removed as possible from spirit, and to become pure spirit, to return to the spiritual state which the soul had in the beginning, is the goal of existence. And within the chain, there are always those which are closer to being spirit (more perfect) than others. In human terms, the mind is closer to spirit than the body, man is closer to spirit than woman and noble souls are closer to spirit than peasants and savages.

This is a concept that must be thoroughly repudiated. It makes sense of a feudal order. It has no place in an egalitarian order.

Ironically, though people think it is derived from the primary western scripture, genuine Christian theology opposes the spirit/matter hierarchy. Hebrew scripture, unlike Greek philosophy, never saw matter as having fallen away from spirit, but as a creation of God/dess and declared to be good. Heaven is not a realm of spirit, but a physical place, part of the material creation. And the material world though not eternal (without beginning or end) is, like the angels, immortal (with beginning, but without end.) All biblical visions of the perfection of the reign of God/dess depict a material world with plants and animals as the habitation of a redeemed and perfected humanity---and as the dwelling place of God/dess.

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6. Unify spirit and matter as dual aspects of the same reality (continued)
Recently both spiritually-minded scientists and scientifically-oriented theologians have been making the same point. Spirit and matter are not separate states of being, but dual aspects of a single reality. Our salvation does not lie in turning our backs on matter in order to become unified with pure spirit; but in embracing spirit within matter. In the 1950's Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, priest and paleontologist, introduced the concept of "interiority" in which every material form is seen to be an external expression of a spiritual interior. (See his Phenomenon of Man [sic]) for details. In the 1970s Franz Capra, physicist, linked the new discoveries of quantum matter to the ancient teachings of Taoism (The Tao of Physics). In the 1990s, John Polkinghorne, physicist, priest and theologian, ideveloped a scientific perspective on traditional Christian thought. (Faith of a Physicist, Belief in God in an Age of Science). One concept he promotes is the eschatological belief in creatio ex vetere. Christian thought has always held that this world is a creatio ex nihilo--creation out of nothing. It is also, according to science, a universe destined to end, either in a big crunch or, more likely, in a long-drawn out whimper as galaxies and stars separate and the last star uses up the its fuel and winks out. Polkinghorne's thesis is that this cannot be a true end. All that is good in this creation will find itself in eternity, and the material world is part of what is good. The eternal world does not spring from nothing, but from this world. It is God/desses' reshaping of this world to fit it for eternity. Hence it is a creatio ex vetere---a creation from the old to make the new.

Although these ideas have come from modern science, they are far from being new. The idea that material things are embodiments of spirit is fundamental to animism, the oldest of human religions and is preserved in many aboriginal teachings. For Natives of the western hemisphere all things in nature are of equal status. The sun, mountain, wolf, etc, are brothers; the moon, lake, tree, etc. are sisters. Literally every material thing is shot through with spirit and deserves the respect given to divinity.

Eastern Christianity has retained something of this concept as well. For it does not see our goal to be the renunciation of the material for the spiritual, but the forging of an indissoluble bond between spirit and matter. In eastern Christian thought, God/desses' purpose is to divinize the world by completing the incarnation of God/dess in the world. The incarnation of God/dess in Christ was a foretaste only of the complete union of God/dess and creation. In eternity, God/dess, like ourselves, will be embodied in matter, with the difference that the material body of God/dess will be the whole material universe. And the universe will no longer be separate from God/dess but a divinized being.

In such an eschatology, there is no place for the renunciation of matter in favour of spirit. There is no place for a hierarchical ranking of anything as being closer to or farther from God/dess.

7. Learn to listen to the body in order to nurture the soul
All that has been said above, of course, applies equally to the bit of matter that we are: our bodies. Hierarchical dualism despises the body as the vehicle in which the soul is entrapped and from which it must escape. It fears the physical drives of the body as distractions which impede spiritual progress. It demands control of the bodily passions, sometimes through rigid and painful asceticism.

Since one of the strongest drives of the body is sexuality, it fears sexuality as the temptation of the devil, and with Saint Jerome, views the feminine with deep suspicion as the devil's gateway. Following Saint Augustine, even sexuality between married couples is seen as tinged with sin.

One of the early discoveries of feminism was the need to throw off this patriarchal suspicion of sexuality. To reclaim our bodies in their natural state as good and beautiful, without artifice, without cosmetic surgery or deforming clothing such as corsets, girdles and high heels. To reclaim the beauty of age as well as youth. To reclaim the right to enjoy sex, and to control when and with whom we will enjoy sex.

We are still far from achieving this for most women. What is more, we haven't even begun to develop a non-patriarchal sexuality for men. At present men tend to see a strong sexual woman as intimidating rather, to fear her and denounce her as "emasculating". This indicates how much still needs to be done to reclaim men's right to enjoy healthy consensual sex with an equal. (I know, for some men this is already a reality, but it does not seem yet to be a general cultural norm.)

Important as it is, sex is not the only way in which the wisdom of the body needs to be reclaimed. Another is the bodily need for food. Our appetites have become horribly distorted by the time squeeze, the availability of fast food, and the disconnection from nature that is the norm of urban life. Obesity is the new big health problem of America. Yet when allowed to function normally, our bodies know what they need in terms of nutrition. It is a matter of taking the time to listen.

Another is the bodily need for activity. Physical exercise used to be a normal part of everyone's working day. Now we need to schedule it in sports and workouts, or dance classes. The ancient Greek ideal was "a healthy mind in a healthy body". Somewhere along the way we have replaced that norm with either asceticism or indulgence. We need to restore the concept that physical activity is not only necessary for health, but enjoyable in itself and a vehicle for spiritual development as well. The Chinese meditation in motion of Tai Chi is a good model here.

Finally, we need to be much more aware of the senses as gateways of the spirit. In art, in dance, in food preparation, in meals, in the use of incense and aromatic oils, in massage, in a simple walk around the block, the physical sensations can be attuned to spiritual vibrations in ways that cannot be achieved by a concentration on the spiritual alone. There are literally thousands of ways to turn physical gestures into sacramental channels of contact with the divine.

8. Affirm the normality of the feminine

"Man" say the male grammarians, refers in general to humans of both genders. It is inclusive of both male and female. Yet, the history of western literature, especially philosophical and religious literature, shows that this is not the case. Almost no where is woman referred to as human. Always woman is contrasted to man. Woman is not man. Especially, woman is not normal or ideal man. Woman is all the negative things the ideal man is not. She is childish, impulsive, not in control of her passions, especially her sexual passions, not to be trusted with responsibility or leadership. She needs to be controlled sexually and economically by her father or her husband. She needs to be protected and fenced in to the domestic sphere. She is incapable of handling affairs of state, being too tender-hearted to make tough decisions. Or too subject to hormonal urges to make rational decisions. She is easily misled and easily seduced by the wiles of the devil--which explains why 90% of witches are women. Woman is the weaker sex, in every respect falling short of what it is to be fully human.

Seems pretty silly when it is all put together in a single paragraph. Yet the image of woman as inferior, incapable of human nobility, is strong and enduring. And that is why inclusive language is not a mere foible of political correctness. It is fundamental to affirming the humanity of woman. To refuse to bury woman in "man" is a theological necessity in the struggle against hierarchical dualism. So long as we use "man" instead of "human" or "man and woman", so long we affirm that only man IS human, and by corollary affirm that woman is not. And, in consequence, we affirm that only man is made in the image of God (male of course) or has godlike qualities. Woman can enter the spiritual domain only on suffrance, at the cost of denying her womanliness, her earthy, bodily womanliness, her tempting, sexual womanliness, and adhering chastely to the role of woman become sexless male.

It is not only important to women to affirm the normalcy of female humanity. It is just as important for men. For sex and gender are different things. All those psychological qualities which we apportion to male and female (male aggression, female docility, male rationality, female emotions, male toughness, female sentimentality, etc, etc.) truly exist in us all, male and female. Women are just as capable of aggression, toughness, rationality, logic and so forth as men. And men are just as capable of tenderness, nurture, compassion, sensitivity, etc. as women. But when women and men express the characteristics of the other gender, there is a price to pay. It is less for the woman, for the sacrifice of her femininity may bring the rewards of power and respect in business or politics. But the man tends to lose respect--even from women who claim they desire a sensitive guy--and certainly from other males who see him as effeminate, emasculated. Yet if those aspects of human nature associated with women were seen as normal for all humans of both genders, there would be no need for every male to seek conformity to the macho cultural norm of maleness. Men and women both could simply be what they are without regard as to whether they are seen as manly or womanly.

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Conclusion

We need, for the sake of this planet and its human and non-human inhabitants, to rethink traditional dualism. It is not, as stated at the outset that dualism is wrong. The problem has been the historical religious, political, social, cultural and philosophical connection of dualism to hierarchy such that one half of each duality is seen as more perfect, more godlike than the other and therefore more fit to rule.

There is no need to close our eyes to the obvious dualities of nature, including male and female. There is a need to restore the balance between them. Interestingly, there is both religious precedent and modern scientific support for the equality of dualities. I have already alluded to many of the religious roots of egalitarian dualism. Let me finish with one other religious image: that of the Circle of Life. In many indigenous forms of spirituality, it is not the Great Chain of Being that images the place of each thing in creation. It is rather the Circle of Life. In the circle are not only humans, but beings of every sort. Not only living beings, but also beings such as clouds, rivers, stars, mountains and so on. Every being in the circle is recognized as belonging there. Every being in the circle is recognized as equal to the others. The grass is as important as the buffalo; the rock is as important as the sun, the child is as important as the elder, the beetle as important as the human. Every being is recognized as having something to offer every other being. No one being is complete without all the others. Every being is recognized as equi-distant from God/dess. For God/dess is centre and circumference of the circle, above and below all.

There is no need to return to whence we came, for we have never left it. There is no need to become angelic, for angels are already part of the circle, and the circle would be incomplete without humans. We are not above creation. We are not prisoners of creation. We are part and parcel of creation, and our place is here in the circle with the rest of creation.

Science, in the 19th century, and most horribly in the 20th century, was co-opted by hierarchical dualism to support slavery, vivesection, racism, eugenics, anti-semitism and the holocaust. Its own patriarchal roots in the mind-matter dualism of Descartes which consigned nature to the spiritless realm of matter permitted the utilitarian use of anything perceived as less than fully human. That included not only land, vegetation and animals, but also all those who did not measure up to the full standard of humanity--which in Western Europe and America meant all who were not white, middle-to-upper-class males. Eugenics, for example, was practised not only on physical and mental defectives, but on the poor generally on the assumption that poverty was rooted in personal defect.

There is still much in science that needs to be remedied. There is still far too strong a tendency to base research on males only, without doing separate research on females. Or to take a male perspective as normal. It has taken the HIV/AIDS epidemic to make condom use prevalent. No true effort was ever put into promoting it for birth control while millions were spent on researching pills and IUDs for women (including exposing millions of women in Africa to a sub-standard IUD which caused thousands of infections and hundreds of deaths). The vast majority of research funds continue to go to improving the war machine, while environmental research is starved.

Yet science and scientists are also in the forefront of moving us away from the patriarchy of the past. David Suzuki in Canada and Niles Eldredge in the US are prominent spokespersons for protecting the environment. The international team of 300 climatologists tracking climate change have verified the dangerous possibilities and the message has sunk in as far as getting most governments on side with the Kyoto Protocol--with the significant and unfortunate exception of the US.

The whole environmental effort requires a new attention to the non-human reality of our planet-- a new level of wonder and respect that is totally out of sync with all theologies which depict this world as a temporary residence of the human spirit.

And the biological and environmental studies that lie behind it confirm the reality of the Circle of Life while repudiating the Great Chain of Being.

When Darwin first presented his thesis, evolution was first described in terms of the accepted mode of hierarchical thinking. It was thought that physical, biological evolution mirrored what was then believed about spiritual development. Species place on the Great Chain of Being was an indication of how far they had evolved. They might evolve further and rise to a higher rank. Or, if they failed to evolve, they would remain forever inferior.

But the study of evolution showed that this image did not describe reality. Orthogenesis, as this hierarchical version of evolution came to be called, eventually bit the dust, toppled by the evidence. Evolution does not convey species to higher ranks. It moves species laterally into a Circle of Life connected by intricate webs of relationships. And in the circle, all have a place of their own, neither higher nor lower than others. Evolution is not a drive to perfection, but a drive to diversity, branching out in all directions with no thought of setting one species above another, but rather of finding a niche for each and every one. And as humans who are part of nature, a product of the evolutionary process, we also have our place in this unique web of life.

The truest spirituality is to affirm what we are: children of creation. And to play the unique role allotted to us as we learn to share this planet with our fellow-creatures. And this requires turning to the earth, turning to its creatures, and embracing them as part of ourselves. Turning away from this earth, this life, this body, is not the way to God/dess. Loving her creation and taking our place in it---that is the way to salvation for all of creation--material and spiritual, body and soul, earth and heaven, woman and man.

Would it be inappropriate to look at God as the Husband and the Church of Man as the Bride?

Indeed, if we understood that the knowledge of God is not obtained except through the knowledge of ourselves, then the only means we truly have of accomplishing that is by embracing the feminine within. Meaning, this is the only way conjunction with God is truly possible.

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So when the body dies, and consciousness departs, where do "we" go? ... Off to define another "reality" perhaps?

As phrased above, it certainly would be. A Church of Man??????? No place for me in THAT church.

How about simply the Church. It is very traditional (as the biblical reference shows) to depict the Church as the bride of Christ. And note the "husband" in Revelation is Christ, not God the Father.

So I would also object to looking at God'dess as Husband.

Christ, the Logos, the Word of God'dess, incarnate in the man Jesus of Nazareth could be seen as the masculine essence of God'dess as the Holy Spirit is sometimes seen as the feminine essence of God'dess.


God'dess is both masculine and feminine. In respect of Christ (masculine), the Church is bride (feminine). Yet the Church, being the body of believers, is composed of both males and females. So, the Church, like God'dess is actually dual-gendered.

How can we make this visible in the way we speak of the union between God'dess and humanity? Why not ask,

"Would it be inappropriate to look at God'dess as the spouse of the Church?"

And then the answer would be: indeed that would be most appropriate.


Again, this is appropriate advice for a man; but one needs the converse as well for a woman. Otherwise, the feminine is left in the subordinate position of being merely an instrumental means for a man to be united to God'dess. She has no function but to serve man as a pathway to God'dess.

Is the feminine not also to be united with God'dess? Can she find her way to God'dess without embracing the masculine within?

So let it be said explicitly that man is also in the subordinate position of being the instrument by which woman is united to God'dess. The two genders need to mutually serve each other, mutually submit to being used by the other, so that they are joined together as equals in conjunction with God'dess.

By the way, did you note that the Revelation passage does not speak of human souls going to heaven, but of Godself dwelling on earth among men and women?

That is consistent with the message of Jesus and all the prophets. That is what the bible calls the reign of God'dess.

Even if that meant man establishing his relationship with his wife (feminine side) is more important to him than anything else?

Do you believe Eve was born from Adam's rib? If not, that it at least symbolically represents something? ... i.e., that the masculine represents the form and the feminine the essence?

Do you mean men should be men and women should be women?

Except that the very goodness of Jesus Christ springs from His feminine side.

In which case I would suggest the feminine is revered even more, at least by God which, should be reflected in man's relationship with his wife. Meaning, I think this is what men need to discover about women. And yes, that would put women on equal par with men, in terms of God versus Goddess.

Agreed.

If the truth (masculine) is separated from the good (feminine), then the truth neglects the good, and this I think is what the problem is. Incidently, did you know the dragon in Revelation 12 refers to the masculine aspect and, that his persecution of the woman which, is the New Church, represents the feminine aspect? Isn't that usually how works, that men blame women for their problems?

If you read chapter 4 of my book (specifically the part about Sybil), I suggest that the relationship between men and women can't go any higher than what the woman understands intellecually (through her masculine side), neither can it go any deeper than what the man experiences emotionally (through his feminine side). In other words this becomes the ideal relationship whereby men and women become reciprocals and balance each other out.

However, I think you may be in danger of taking something too literally here. For what happened to the sea?

There's nothing to say the New Jerusalem can't be established on earth in the representative sense, however, that doesn't imply people don't die and go to heaven which, becomes the ultimate realization of God either.

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So when the body dies, and consciousness departs, where do "we" go? ... Off to define another "reality" perhaps?